Ishmael Beah Fair Age Quotes

To a child in a country of war, life can change “rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one [has] any control over anything. [They have] yet to...implement survival tactics, which [is] what it came down to” (Beah 29). Children who become soldiers are given hardly any choice because their families are usually dead, and without the army they have no family or way to survive during the war. The book “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah tells the story of how Ishmael became a child soldier in Sierra Leone during the war. The title “A Long Way Gone” can be taken in three different ways. The first being that it could mean his family is away from him, the second is him losing his humanity as a child soldier, and the third is after being saved, and not

In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Beah is an adolescent whose innocence is stripped away at the hands of war. At the age of 13, Beah is forced to fight in the war in order to survive, or give up his battle and die. As a result, Beah ultimately decides to join the war. The harsh violence that Beah is exposed to strips him of his innocence and leaves him helpless and alone with his mind keeping him awake at night trying to unsee the cruelness he has been exposed to. Beah utilizes flashbacks, symbolism, and nature motifs in order to address the loss of his innocence throughout the novel.

The first time Ishmael was ever touched by war was at age 12. At 13, he was picked by the Government Army and brought to a vicious and brutal world. He woke up everyday with fear of dying. He tried his best to look the toughest and satisfy the rebels by fulfilling their demands. Ishmael took a dose of drugs daily to keep him energized and to keep him awake. There are hundreds of young boys like Ishmael, recruited and refined to exceed the leaders’ commands. Nice normal boys are modified and turned into murderous drug addicting killers who no longer know what’s right from wrong. These child soldiers are forced into a world of ominous leaders and commanders who don’t have an alternative. If child soldiers do try and escape they are killed on

They brainwashed Ishmael and made him believe that he was doing good by joining their army. They made him do drugs and watch violent movies to alter his mind. He didn’t feel compassion for anyone including his victims and himself. () He didn’t even think about what he was doing when he killed people, he just thought that he was doing what he was supposed to do. Ishmael wouldn’t have done any of those things before they changed him and made him into a child soldier.

Also, rhetorical devices were not incorporated lightly. On page 108, Ishmael said, “[h]e smiled at us, lifted his gun, and fired several rounds toward the sky. We dropped to the ground, and he laughed at us as he went back inside.” Irony became common in this book when the war broke out. Lives were turned around, and people were not being themselves; Ishmael, at the age of twelve, became addicted to cocaine, marijuana, and brown-brown (a mix of cocaine and gunpowder).

This is an important moment in the memoir because this is the main story in the book and one of the reasons why it was written. One quote from the book that epitomizes this aspect of the book is “Over and over in our training he would say the same sentence: Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you.” This quote is important because it shows the reader how Ishmael and a bunch of other children were trained and brainwashed into fighting. In conclusion, Ishmael’s training into becoming a soldier was difficult as he was fed with the ideas of killing the rebels that killed the people he loved and cared

6 PG. 37) Also another main focus could be, just because something you been through was bad, doesn’t mean that effect would be negative. Meaning, Ishmael didn’t know what to expect once becoming a boy soldier. However he was given drugs at a young age, to let nothing bother him and stopping him from doing his duties.

A Long Way Gone: War and Rehabilitation Following the life of Ishmael Beah in his autobiography, A Long Way Gone, readers experience how a young boy adjusted to drastic changes in lifestyles. The first- and perhaps more marked- change in lifestyle was when he became a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Army. The second was when he was taken away to be rehabilitated by UNICEF. Although there are several important components in both Ishmael’s life at war and his life during rehabilitation, it is his relationship with fear, how he deals with trauma, and his character in general which significantly share resemblances in each of the two mentioned lifestyles.

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

(1991-2002) Ishmael’s story solely focused on the years he was affected by the war. (1992-1997) The tale begins when with Beah, his brother, and a couple of his friends, heading to another village to put on a performance and while away, they catch wind that their village had been attacked by the RUF (Revolutionary United Front). The boys' having no home to go back to, wander from village to village looking for shelter and safety.

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

When the cassette tapes were “killed” in a fire by soldiers they were not the only thing lost. This turn of events represents the loss of childhood and innocence that the cassettes once represented. It is this moment that Ishmael turns from a childish boy to a blood thirsty soldier of war. Later on even saying “My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed. ”(Beah 116)

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.

He idea (false hope), to from harm (Page 13)”. attempts to understand the push through the reasoning behind why one war? If so… how? pretends all is well, even though the opposite is true. Ishmael had not yet been introduced to the tragedies that would come with war.

Kush Garg Matthew Soucy H-English/AP-World History September 26, 2015 Ishmael: Change is Impossible After reading the book Ishmael, my mind has been expanding on the main topic of the book which is why we can’t change society because whenever we try to advance change just adds onto the destruction we are causing to our world. While I was reading this book, I began to learn more about how we are destroying our world even more. When humans lived in a simple manner, believing that they lived in the “hands of the gods,” evolution was destined to happen because humans had to adapt to their environment. This evolution sparked the problems that would come later in history, like deforestation, social inequality and pollution.