Ishmael Beah Tribulations

“When I was seven I had an answer to this question that made sense to me. I never discussed it with anyone, though, for fear of how my mother would feel. I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.” , (Beah 380). I don’t know why I waited until the end of the book to find a quote to start this off with, but it seems to be the best one to better understand what this book was about. This memoir is about the trial tribulations of a child soldier in a Civil War torn country during the 1990’s. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that there are countries outside of the one I live in, and how some go through wars I haven’t even thought about, but reading this book actually made me see how horrible even the government can’t be trusted, that’s why I believe you should read this book.

Ishmael Beah, the author and main character of this book can be seen going through life from a young twelve year old innocent and hip hop loving child to an adult who has been through a war and just wants to get out of all the violence. I feel that this book was written to tell people

He went from,” During holidays, he bought me cassettes and taught my friends and me how to dance to what we came to know as hip-hop. I loved the dance, and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics, because they were poetic and it improved my vocabulary.” (Beah, 13) to “We were so hungry that it hurt to drink water and we felt cramps in our guts. It was as though something were eating the ‘s things insides of our stomachs.” (Beah, 53) in a short couple of months. It’s things like this that give me a better understanding of what he was going through without going overboard with