Symbolism In A Long Way Gone By Ishmael
Symbolism is used to help you not only understand the characters but also helps develop a coherent theme. In the long way gone the symbol used to help explain Ishmael’s struggles comes straight from his own pocket in the form of a beat-up cassette. It follows him along on the journey and with its demise you also see the tragic end of the childhood it has represented.
When the fighting and violence started to occur brought by rebels and soldiers Beah and his friends still had the cassettes to enjoy and dance around with allowing them to still have an essence of childhood. Running from village to village the cassette remains in Ishmael’s pocket, like a reminder of his innocence and where he came from. The cassette is one of the only things that remains intact from Ishmael’s previous life back in Mogbwemo; his home town.
There is much violence that Ishmael faces in this story and you wouldn’t think a cassette would be an ideal weapon but other saving him from peril, it saves him from completely loosing himself. Ishmael carries on through his tuff journey holding on to his little piece of home, he holds
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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) 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 167), after losing the only piece of his childhood, he has lost it
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318 Words | 2 PagesIn 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.
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986 Words | 4 PagesBefore this low point in life there was one thing that influenced his life more than anything else; music. The impact it had on him showed on what he wore, the way he acted, and the things he did, such as signing up for contests he could perform in. Rap was the major genre that Ishmael took an interest
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822 Words | 4 PagesTowards the beginning, Ishmael was always on the run. He was running and hiding to survive. On page 69 Ishmael says, “...I was starting over and over. I was always on the move, always going somewhere.” If Ishmael wanted to survive, he had to keep moving.
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533 Words | 3 PagesThe symbols in A Long Way Gone help the reader create connections to Beah’s life during the events of the book. These symbols illustrate his emotions and his view on life. Beah uses the symbol of his rap cassette to depict his childhood. In chapter one, we learn how Beah and his friends were introduced to rap music and how much it impacted them. “The four of us sat there mesmerized by the song … After that, we can to the quarters every other weekend to study that kind of music on television.”
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1572 Words | 7 PagesAt 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.
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