Essay On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
A Long Way Gone is a memoir of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, who struggles to keep his humanity. Ishmael Beah, the author, achieved success once he went off to speak at the United Nations conference and when he realized that he could not go back to the war.
Beah achieved success when he went off to New York and spoke at the United Nations conference. As Beah sat around the conference listening to all the other children that represented their country, Beah sat proudly “behind the Sierra Leone name plaque.. [he] had a speech that had been written for [him] in Freetown, but [he] decided to speak from [his] heart, instead. [He] talked briefly about [his] experience[s] and [his] hope that the war would end” (Beah 199). At this moment in time Beah is in New York speaking for his country and for the children, his friends, that are still fighting in the war; he is trying to help figure out a way to get those kids to safely and what the rest of the country can do to help. Beah speaking “from [his] heart” is exactly what helped him get to the United Nation conference and what help him get his humanity back; so it was only good for him to do it when it came to helping his country.
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One night, once Beah was back in Sierra Leone, the rebels had reached Freetown, both the rebels and the soldier filled up the city and Beah thought to himself, “I couldn’t return to my previous life. I [don’t] think I could make it out alive this time” (Beah 203). Before Beah got his humanity back, he would have loved to go back to the war, because that was all he knew for about three years of his life; but one can see that he has really changed because he knows that he won’t be able to survive the war with his new found humanity. He has achieved success because he does not want to go back to the war, he wants to continue his better life; by the end of the book he is able to free himself of his war
Summary Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
357 Words | 2 PagesA Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is the true story of Ishmael Beah’s, the author and narrator, experience leading into and eventually becoming a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s military during the Sierra Leonean Civil War. The story begins with Beah, then a twelve year old child, leaving his home village of Mattru Jong to attend a talent show where he and other boys, including his brother Junior, would hip-hop dance to their favorite music genre, rap. On his way he encounters his grandmother’s village where she convinces the boys to stay the night, in the morning he is stunned to learn that Mattru Jong was attacked by the Royal United Front (RUF) and that the people who were in the village were now dead or refugees. After this, Ishmael
Ishmael's Changes In A Long Way Gone
800 Words | 4 PagesBeah starts looking forward to violence and wishes to take part. This is a large jump from his baseline reaction, which was puking at the this eagerness to kill causes his primary reaction is resorting to violence, which we see happening at the
Book Report On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
522 Words | 3 PagesA Long Way Gone. Ishmael Beah. New York: Sarah Crichton, 2007. 218 pages. A Long Way Gone is a great book to read and it 's easy to emotionally connect to the events.
Book Report On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
1347 Words | 6 Pages“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.
Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
642 Words | 3 PagesFurthermore, Beah has struggled with losing his family and is brain washed that he starts to lose his humanity. To clarify, when the rebels were planning an attack on a village Beah releases his anger on the rebels by shooting as many rebels from the other village as he can. “Whenever I looked at rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many as I could, but I didn't feel any better”(122). In this moment, the pain that Beah has from losing his family turns into hatred for the rebels that killed his loved ones and Beah believes that killing more
Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
1802 Words | 8 PagesAt only thirteen, he was brought to the government army, and forced to fight the attacking rebels. After he managed to survive, Beah was taken by UNICEF and learned to live again. In A Long Way Gone, he manages to retell those days in a shocking and mesmerizing way. Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, wanted to write this book to give readers an inside perspective on this war.
Book Report On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
1413 Words | 6 PagesIshmael Beah feared becoming a child soldier again when Sierra Leone’s government was overthrown by the rebels, he gets haunted by the memories of the past and what has happened throughout his life back in Sierra Leone. Back when he was a child soldier in Sierra Leone all he did in his free time was take in drugs and watched war movies which got him use to the blood and violence that he experienced while he was part of the war. He committed crimes that nobody would normally do, like torturing others in cruel ways, but he was brainwashed and didn’t know anything else besides war. He was trained to kill and that’s all there was to it for his life back then. But that changed once he got rehabilitated and was able to live among normal civilians.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier By Ishmael Beah
423 Words | 2 PagesThroughout these pages, Beah discusses his journey into becoming a soldier for the Sierra Leone Army. Within a very short time of being exposed to war, Beah had been brainwashed to kill all rebels, raided villages, become addicted to drugs, suffered from insomnia, lost all sense of reality, and described killing as “as easy as drinking water” (Beah 122). I think it is safe to say that war certainly wrecked and altered Beah's life in unimaginable ways, as it turned a gentle, innocent, rap-loving boy into a brainwashed, drug-addicted, killing
Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
718 Words | 3 PagesWar is a haunting time that affects all humans in one way or another at some point in their lives, and this is explicitly shown in Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone. This book was written from the point of view of Ishmael himself, whose life experiences are almost unimaginably daunting, telling his story as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Civil War. The whole candor of the story is surprising, as Beah goes into much detail about some of the horrible things he did whilst fighting, and how this has affected him in his adolescence and adulthood. His purpose for writing is not very clear, as he published it a number of years after the war had already ended officially, which is understandable given the things he went through, which leads
Young Ishmael Beah: A Long Way Gone
1498 Words | 6 PagesMurderer. When you think about this word, the first thing that pops into your mind wouldn’t be a child, but for many around the world, this is the case. Over 300,000 children fight in wars around the world, slaughtering person after person without mercy. Ishmael Beah’s a long way gone is about the author’s first-hand experience of the 10 – year civil war in Sierra Leone, in which he was turned into one of these brutal, savage killers and then later rehabilitated. In the beginning of the book, young Ishmael, who is about 12 years old at the time, travels to a city called Mattru Jong with his brother, Junior, to participate in a talent show, where they learn that their village was attacked by a rebel group.
The Theme Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
1109 Words | 5 PagesWhen 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.
A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
1661 Words | 7 PagesFor Beah, as for any other refugee from warfare, there can be no rest. Whatever dreams he had in childhood of his adult life have not only been put on hold, they have been obliterated.
The Theme Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
744 Words | 3 PagesWhen these children grow up and live their lives they will never be able to completely shake off the effects of PTSD, but they can still find happiness and hope. Beah was able to find hope through music, and rehabilitation. He was exposed to violence and drugs at such a young age, which was all he really knew. That is why he was so mesmerized by New York City- it had everything Sierra Leone did not.
A Long Way Gone Analysis
1110 Words | 5 PagesNot experiencing war is a luxury many people unfortunately do not get; however, Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, lives and survives the war, though not without heartache. With war there is always fear, death, and hell. Ishmael Beah proves war is hell through the killing of civilians, the distrust, and the after effects of the war. Ishmael proves war is hell through the killing of civilians. Many innocent bystanders of the war are forced out of their homes, made to run for their lives.
A Long Way Gone Theme Essay
946 Words | 4 PagesThe 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.
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