Keratoconus is a disease on the eye that doesn 't allow the patient to see beyond six inches. These patients only have the ability to see throughout one eye. This creates a one-sided perspective on the world, a one-sided view on humanity. A one-sided perspective could have a dangerous effect on a person 's mindset. Keratoconus is only apparent in about three in every two thousand people, although we continue to place ourselves in the same position. Only hearing one side of the story is equivalent to only seeing one side of the world. A single story is the idea of just hearing one side, just listening to the prosecution, just hearing one side of an argument. A single story brings the dangers of a discriminatory perspective upon the world. …show more content…
The civil war in Sierra Leone amplifies the tremendous danger of a single story because one may see the rebellion as an act of justice, where another may see it as just another bloody rebellion. The civil war in Sierra Leone broke out on March 23, 1991. The book A Long Way Gone is an autobiography of a child soldier 's life throughout the war. Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, experienced the civil war in Sierra Leone firsthand. Sadly, while he was there, he had not uncovered the other side of the story. The army, loyalists, had manipulated the soldiers as well. “Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible to everything that has happened to you.”(Beah) The army had manipulated his mind to think that all soldiers were responsible for the death of his family. He had only heard this story, he had only known this to be the truth, so he believed every word. The other single story regarding the civil war in Sierra Leone is the cause of the war. The RUF, or the Revolutionary United Front, fought for “justice”. They killed millions of innocent civilians, and then the government army began to do the same. However, the soldiers did need money for the ammunition and firearms. The funding was coming from diamonds, blood diamonds. Clearly, the RUF soldiers weren’t fighting for “justice” because they were killing thousands of people, they were fighting for the diamonds, they were fighting for the money. The Blood Diamond Documentary explains how this secret was kept from most citizens of Sierra Leone. Those who knew, mined. In the Blood Diamond Documentary, Usman Conteh remembers: “We were in a motor car, in a truck, more than a hundred of us. I thought that since we had been captured, they were going to kill us. They brought us here to suffer, they told us to mine… It was day and night,... they would kill us if you tried to rest.” (Blood Diamond) Usman Conteh was just one of several soldiers who didn’t know what was
“A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” is a moving war story about the author, Ishmael Beah, and his life growing up in the african country. Sierra Leone is the setting during the civil war which spanned from March of 1991 to January of 2002. Ishmael provides a stance against child soldiers, and has stuck with that view ever since he was rehabilitated. This book presents strong first hand encounters and vivid war stories. This helps prove the argument that child soldiering is a cruel act, and by using rehabilitation, victims would be able to return to regular life.
First of all, every male over the age of 14 was forced to “...undertake military duty” (Doc. B). All males had to join the army regardless of whether they believed in the cause or not. It seems cruel to force someone to experience all that bloodshed due to the amount of killing involved, the risk to their own life
A Long Way Gone: inaugurates a world where young men, like Ishmael Beah, are forced to participate in the civil war of Sierra Leone causing them to lose their families. This book definitely outlines the importance of family through Ishmael’s experiences of adaptation, i s o l a t i o n , a n d m e m o r i e s o f h i s p a s t . A L o n g W a y G o n e t e a c h e s u s a l e s s o n t o a p p r e c i a t e t h e family we have, compared to the loneliness Ishmael once felt as a young
“The saddest sight these days is the imagine of hundreds of children kidnapped and lured into being child soldiers from the age of eight”(Roger Moore).”A Long Way Gone”was written by Ishmael Beah and published in 2007. As horrible and terrifying the experience was for Ishmael Beah starting in Sierra Leone from a young age,he still had enough courage to publish his own memoir. As a kid Ishmael was a happy child that loved music and dance. While performing rap music with his friends away from home his village got attacked by the rebels. Without knowing if his family is alive or not he has to survive on his own going from village to village.
The major theme in the story A Long Way Gone is that with family and love a person can make it through anything. Overall Ishmael’s story is a very powerful, eye opening read; it informs people on a subject that some know little to nothing about, the civil war in Sierra Leone. Beah uses the theme of family and love, along with the use of symbolism and other literary devices, to inform a larger audience of the issues that he and others had to face while trying to survive in a war zone. A Long Way Gone, an autobiographical memoir, written by Ishmael Beah, takes place in Sierra Leone during the time of their civil war.
Violence consists of savagery, sadism, and power. Victims of violence are usually not liberated from the effect it has on them. In ‘A Long Way Gone’ by Ishmael Beah, he elaborates on his personal effects of violence in which he endures and taken part in. Throughout the book, he suffers the consequences of being part of the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ishmael experiences war flashbacks, nightmares, lost of innocence and a normal life in the result of violence.
In Ishmael Beah's enthralling memoir "A Long Way Gone," the intricacies and conflicting viewpoints of war and terrorism, along with their profound impacts on Sierra Leone, are effectively conveyed through various literary devices, including vivid imagery, syntax, and diction. Ishmael's arrival at the village of Kamator after receiving news of his aunt's well-being from villagers is a particularly striking example of his use of sensory imagery. The evocative descriptions of "dew coming down every morning" and "the odor of soaked soil" encapsulate his longing to relish the captivating landscape and the transient moments of hopefulness and normalcy amidst the chaos of warfare (Beah 40). Nevertheless, Ishmael's use of short, fragmented sentences
At the age of 13 till the age of 16 the author, Ishmael Beah, pulls himself through many terrible conflicts in Sierra Leone. The author uses conflict to show his readers the realism of his story. By using conflict in many different ways, it allows readers to gain an understanding of how Ishmael struggles changed his life for worse and for better. By using person vs person, person vs society, person vs self, and person vs nature conflict the author is opening doors allowing readers to get a full understanding of Ishmael 's challenges of a life in war. The most commonly seen conflict in ‘A Long Way Gone’ is person vs society.
The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland accurately acknowledges one of the many troubling war affected lives. As a child living in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived very peacefully. She was surrounded by many family and friends so rumors of rebel attacks were not her greatest worries. This was until 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village as an errand for her aunt. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many only still children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu by cutting off both her hands.
The violence against the Congolese was caused by financial instability. This was primarily because Leopold lacked sufficient funds without the support from Belgium. As a result, the government was unable to generate revenue or pay for expensive military costs caused by civil disputes and constant revolts. After failed incentives such as restrictions on free trade, and taxing villages, the government turned to forced labour as a desperate attempt to generate revenue. Villagers were forced to collect rubber as a form of repayment to the state.
How powerful is a single story? At Ted Global 2009, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, expresses her view of single stories and the ways in which they are used to create stereotypes and divides us as a people. Adichie’s talk, “The Danger of a Single Story”, stimulates careful consideration to what happens when people and situations are reduced to a single narrative. She believes single stories are highly correlated with the power structures of the world and have the ability to strip people of their humanity.
Every time he spoke in defense of himself, he claimed that he just simply followed the order from his superiors. Obedience is the vocation of a solider, but it does not mean solider must carry out unethically inhuman order without any thinking. Blind obedience in this case caused a huge massacre to
Subsequently after viewing and listening to Chimamanda Adichie’s theory of a single story… I have come to understand her argument point. In easier terms said, a single story is a story told by one perspective and solo idea of a place, person, and thing. These single stories are created by the socialization and observations of every human being standing on this Earth today. A lot of these stories feed off of what people like to call stereotypes. Although, one must acknowledge that stereotypes are most likely the incomplete story of a place or person.
Imagine being taken away from your home, forced to leave all you know and love, and put in charge of killing, torturing, making innocent people suffer. Now imagine doing all of that as a young kid. Try to envision how mentally unstable someone would be after seeing all of that happen. Unfortunately, there are about 300,000 child soldiers all around the world that are being used to fight and take part in conflicts, right now in the year of 2015. Child soldiers are taken from their homes forced to fight, and do such inhumane things that no child should ever have to do.
She placed the idea in his mind and created this path that he couldn’t return from. It was her idea to put the blame on the soldiers, and she said that she couldn’t wash the blood off of her hands no matter what she did. One is not innocent just because they did not commit the