There is a problem in the world and something needs to be done of it. There are children, primarily in Africa, that are forced to massacre innocent men and women. These kids are called child soldiers. Child soldiers are kids who are associated in war. A popular book about child soldier is an autobiography by Ishmael Beah called A Long Way Gone. It is a story about an African child who is forced to serve in the war. He is ordered to assassinate innocent people and burn down villages. This is how I was introduced to this problem, and now I want something to be done about it. These children that are forced to kill, raid villages, and steal, are innocent. The kids were drugged, brainwashed, and were forced to do these things.
First of all, I
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One, the lieutenants and generals are forcing them to kill, and if they escape them, they have nowhere to go, nothing to eat, and at some parts of the year, water is scarce. So if they stay, they are fed, watered, and housed, plus they get to watch movies, and play games. In the book, Ishmael Beah was in a city with his friends, until a rebel group showed up and forced the people to get out or they would execute them, so they left, and along did everyone in the city, and people evacuated nearby, towns. This made everything chaotic, kids couldn’t find their parents, and vice-versa. On top of that, there was a mass spread to cities farther south, overloading them, making people even harder to find. So, Beah and his friends escaped to look for their parents all alone, no adults, just kids looking for their own shelter, water and food. This shows that since they couldn’t find their parents they had to resort to finding things on their own, which can be hard for kids. So when they got captured by the army and finally got food, shelter, and water, they didn’t want to leave. So, since their only options were to stay or risk death, you can’t blame them for choosing to
Ishmael suffered loss of a place to call home multiple times which caused him to lose his hope for a better tomorrow ,"One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn't sure when or where it was going to end. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again." (Beah 69) Beah's memoir sheds light on the multifaceted damage done by civil war and terrorism which directly affected the loss of home.
Ishmael became a victim of the war the moment he became a boy soldier. He was only a young teen at the time, where substances took over his life, as he states, “In the daytime, instead of playing soccer in the village square,
The RUF go town to town raiding and destroying villages. Stealing food and supplies to fill their needs and they don’t have any sympathy for the people. Even if the people don’t get in their way, they will murder anyone in the villages. When the war came to Ishmael he found a village and they gave him shelter and food, but it return he was forced to fight against the RUF
This led to Beah and his family separating and doing anything to survive. Beah experienced many terrifvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vfdv dfv df v fdv dfv fdv dfv dfmv mdf vmdf vm dfvmfvdfvdfvying moments during the civil war in Sierra Leone and he helps us see what happens to him
Unfortunately, because of the torment the rebels have caused among people, Ishmael was traumatized. He thought to himself that he will never be safe
Ishmael and his friends now travel from place to place to trying to find shelter and other accessories to help them survive. They would take anything to help them survive this war. By the age of thirteen Ishmael was picked up by the government army and then found out he was capable of terrible acts. Ishmael and his friends were in
Killing people and destroying villages makes Ishmael a very dangerous soldier. Ishmael has joined the team because of how the Rebels killed all of his family. Ishmael was angry that his family died but he was not the one how did. He wanted to have his family around, so this parents can see Ishmael grow up to an adult. Ishmael had to do something to get his revenge on the Rebels, “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in the process I will kill another person whose family will ant revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will come to an end”
If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die” (page 54). Even though he faced depression and loneliness in the forest for a month, it was this lesson that motivated him to find a way out and stay alive because he believes that regardless the terrible things that had happen to him, there is still some good left in his destiny as long as he’s alive. Because of the loneliness of isolation from people, Beah was willing to spend everyday protecting himself from wild animals and looking for a way out even when he know that there’s a war happening outside the forest. The idea of isolation was too much for a 12 year old to
Since the invention of guns, they have brought chaos, war, and fear to the world. Guns give people power, and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, gives great examples of this. In the reading, children and villages are afraid of ongoing war and fear armed rebels terrorizing villages.
By sharing his own experiences, Beah is able to show his audience the consequences of war with an incredibly impactful way; one that can only be delivered through personal experience. One example of this is when Ishmael talks about slitting a man’s throat, during his time as a soldier: “His Adam’s apple made way for the sharp knife, and I turned the bayonet on its zigzag edge as I brought it out. His eyes rolled up and they looked me straight in the eye before they suddenly stopped in a frightened glance, as if caught by surprise” (Beah 125). This passage shows how brainwashing has affected the life of Ishmael, as it did to hundreds of child soldiers, and how ruthlessness became a part of their lifestyle. In America, the average fifteen year old’s biggest problems are grades or school work, but in these areas of war and devastation, childhoods are being ripped away and kids have to worry about killing and
Along Way Gone is heartbreaking biography written by Ishmael Beah. The book takes place in Sierra Leona during the time of the civil war. The war was fought over economic profit, rather than political and social pandemonium. There were 2 sides to this war, the RUF and the Government. The RUF was an organized rebel army.
However, Beah was unable to force himself to shoot his gun that they had given him. The commander then yelled “retreat” since the other unit commenced to throwing grenades at them. The preceding event that happened changed Beah’s perspective on his life and the life of the others around him. Beah suddenly felt blood on his face and in this shocked moment he accidentally tasted the blood. He then heard someone screaming for his mother with a vain and pleading voice.
Ishmael felt that he should be fighting in the war because that was all that he had known after fighting for two years. This quote shows that he truly felt lost without the military. “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn't go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity.
When the war unleashed in Sierra Leone, Beah and his friends have a difficult time finding villages with a food supply, and find themselves without money, so they decide to head back home in search of any money they had left hidden back home. The boys barely survived getting out of their village, only to find that no one in Mattru Jong was willing to sell their food, because they were saving it for themselves. This angered Beah for his time lost traveling back to his home village and risking his life for nothing, ultimately. Moreover, in that moment Beah realized that he had nothing left to do practice the survival tactics that everyone else was taking part in: “ Things changes rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one had nay control over anything. We had yet to learn these things and implement survival tactics, which was what it came down to.
Assignment page Video Where many children all over the world merrily and freely live under the protection of the law, for others, this is a distant reality, they live in a world where they’re battling poverty, stripped of their childhood and basic human rights are expunged, they’re the innocent victims of conflict, and war is made to seem their one and only duty, not to mention that these are children no more than 10 years of age. They are put into a situation where it’s to kill or be killed. The United Nations defines a child soldier as, “Any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.” Since the past 15 years, child soldiers are being used in almost every region of the world. Unlike most children, who go to school, they’re abducted from their families and forced into becoming a child soldier, where living conditions are beyond imaginable.