Every person has some sort of memory of their childhood. People can think of their childhood as good or as bad. In the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael wrote about his experience as a child in civil war and how his childhood was sacrificed to survive. Ishmael’s childhood was not the best childhood anyone can have. His childhood was full of murder and corruption. It caused Ishmael to become violent and unstable. A childhood without innocence can be a terrible time. Ishmael’s childhood was the civil war of his country. Although experience in war is different for everyone, being in war with the same circumstances as Ishmael would be similar because separating from family causes emotional instability and it would be different because Ishmael has a healthy body.
Family gives everyone the love and support needed to have more meaning in life. Every family does not have to be connected by blood. Family can be created by caring strongly for one another. Ishmael Beah had a big family that consisted of his birth parents, two brothers and his friend Talloi. During the war, Ishmael was separated from his family. Ishmael was constantly worried for his family because he can only think of horrible things
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Ishmael may have been physically strong, but he was mentally weak. Due to a lot of murder and corruption in war, Ishmael has become vulnerable and violent. The slightest uncomfortable situation makes Ishmael feel cornered and use violence as a defense. The book A Long Way Gone shows that war has a strong psychological effect on people involved. When people experience so many hardships on their own, their mentality gradually becomes weaker from having to believe that it is normal to depend only on
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Show MoreIshmael is at the army’s current base and is reflecting on his feelings about the enemy. He angrily thinks how, “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. ”(Beah 122) The pain and sadness Ishmael first felt after losing his family has morphed into uncontrollable anger after becoming a soldier.
In the book “A Long Way Gone” Ishmael has to overcome his fears and desperation especially when he ends up in villages that dislike little kids because of the assumption that they are rebel soldiers. Sometimes he comes face to face with death like the time when some of the villagers who were suffering the civil war, capture Ishmael and his new accompanied friends they were saying ”We told him we were students and this was a big misunderstanding. The crowds shouted, drown the rebels”(Beah 38). When the village guards found a rap cassette in Ishmael's pocket they played the music and it pleased the chief and so they were excused from execution and as a result they were offered to also stay in the village for how long they wanted. This part in the story paves a path from Ishmael to talk and although that was one of his major obstacles pertaining to his life he succeeded and faced adversity by pleading that they were not rebels but
Hiba Shaqra A Long Way Gone: Typed Reading Log Key Quote Insightful Comment Discussion Question “Perhaps it was necessary he This quote depicts Ishmael’s first Does Ishmael end up cling to false hopes, since they war experience. A child, clearly using this tactic, this had kept him running away dead, had lain in front of him.
In Ishmael Beah’s personal memoir, A Long Way Gone, music courses through the story quite often. Music is first seen in Ishmael’s peaceful childhood. He and his friends enjoy singing and dancing along to music, in particular, Rap Music. As the story progresses, and the war becomes more prevalent in the young boys lives, rap continues to play a substantial role in their lives, just in a different way. At the end of Ishmael’s life story, there is yet another role that music plays.
He tries to think of his childhood but is unable to do so. “The war memories had formed a barrier” (Beah 149). Ishmael is unable to think of his life before being in hell, and his only memories are of war now. These memories of hell destroyed the memory of his family. Another effect of the war is the numbness to violence.
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.
I think Ishmael changed a lot once he became a child soldier both physically and mentally. He stopped feeling pain completely and pushed away his thoughts and feelings. He got really hurt as a child soldier, but was trained not to show weakness. He did just that because he never talked about how much pain he was in or even screamed when he was shot in his foot. ()
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.
Additional Activity 1 In the book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, the reader can gather certain information about the story he told. The point of view of his story truly affects the reader’s understanding. Also, Beah included details that defined his experience and changed his life. He also wrote his memoir with an emotion that drove the story.
Ishmael was away from his family when the rebels (one side of the war) started to attack his home. Ishmael then had traveled city to city with groups of boys to avoid the rebels, and search for his family. The only thing that was getting Ishmael through the war was that he would see his family again. He couldn’t handle not knowing what had happened to his family so, “[he] decided to just ignore every thought that came to [his] head, because it brought too much sadness… [he] spent most of [his] time fighting [himself] mentally in order to avoid thinking about what [he] had seen or wondering where [his] life was going, where [his] family and friends were.
Memories “Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose”(Arnold). In the book a long way gone a boy named Ishmael beah tells his story. In this novel Ishmael’s village is eventually raided and he becomes on his own. Through being on his own he thinks of the past and memories of a better life. These memories that he thinks of can hinder him and help him along the way through his journey.
With the last reminder of his home town and youth gone, part of Ishmael is gone too and even in the later future he is never the same. Ishmael later reviles “I feel as if there is nothing left for me to be alive for. I have no family, it is just me. No one will be able to tell me stories about my childhood. ”(Beah
If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die” (54). The words of Ishmael 's father help galvanize Beah to continue on his journey although it is harsh and unbearable. Beah is struggling with depression and isolation, but the words of his father give him a sense of hope and light at the end of the tunnel that he will survive. The war was harsh, and the cruel and unjust treatment of the soldiers causes Ishmael Beah to live his childhood in fear and discomfort. He exclaims that “we were always either at the front lines, watching a war movie, or doing drugs.
The human condition is full of paradoxes and double meanings. We can commit the most shocking and terrible acts, but we can complete the most virtuous and honorable feats. Ishmael Beah describes the appalling and violent behavior he and other children exhibited toward the human life during his time in the Sierra Leonean civil war in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. Beah also details the forgiveness and kindness of complete strangers that helped him become the man that fate meant him to be. Homo sapiens are complex creatures brimming with irony and surprises.
Later, UNICEF came and decided to take Ishmael out of the war and put him in a rehabilitation center. In this part of the novel, the reader can see how his desire for killing has controlled him completely. By fighting and killing rebel members in the rehabilitation center and beating up the guards to force them into doing what the children wants to do, the reader can see that the war has changed their ways of life and thoughts. The army was able to change Ishmael 's desires and from that, he became a deadly