4 Different Aspects of New York and Sierra Leone Discussed in A Long Way gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah presents a sharp comparison between the life in New York and Sierra Leone in his book A Long Way gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. These differences are based on his own personal experiences as a native of Sierra Leone and a resident in New York. Beah was a teenage soldier in his native town during the civil war that his country faced during the 1990’s. He participated in that war as a teenage soldier representing his government against the rebel fighters. Overall, Beah’s remarks throughout the book about the different social and law and order situations in New York and Sierra Leone show great examples of different aspects of New York in comparison with Sierra Leone. These examples of contrast are based on social life-style, law and order, social attitude, weather, city attractions in the case of New York, value of human life, and life of teenagers in New York in comparison with Sierra Leone.
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As he talks about the social life in New York, Beah says that in this city he was surprise to see that people walked on the sidewalks without any fear of bullets or death. The reason that he thinks was responsible for this was the face that there was no civil war in the city. This was very much unlike in Sierra Leone. In New York, boys, and even adults, were not allowed to carry around weapons whereas in Sierra Leone, it was common for teenagers, let along adults, to have their own weapons and move around with them. This situation presents a sharp contract between New York and Beah’s native town for the
The American Revolution marked the history of many heroic events that immaculately stand as true inspirations for the generations to come in the United States. Even today, the gallantry of a few soldiers that won independence for the country is not only kept in the hearts of the people but run in the American blood to demonstrate acts of valor at times of war and hardships. One such story recorded in the history dates back to 1776, about a sixteen-year old juvenile, Joseph Plumb Martin, joined the Rebel Infantry and recorded his tribulations about forty-seven years in a memoir titled as “A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier”. The book mainly focuses on the sufferings through the tough situation he went through.
Author's Context Anthony Hill Anthony Hill was born in Melbourne on the 24th of May 1942. Anthony Hill has written eighteen books over his twenty nine years as a dedicated full time author. Hill attended Box Hill Grammar School (Pages From A Writer's Life 2017) and Melbourne University for 3 years (Net Industries 2017) After finishing University he worked as a cadet reporter for the Melbourne Herald in 1959. Prior to becoming an author he also worked as, a political journalist, television reporter and a speechwriter for the governor general, Bill Hayden.
In the book ‘The Bite of the Mango’ by Mariatu Kamara and Susan Mcclelland, a group of individuals in Sierra Leone that call themselves the revolutionary united front (RUF) started a civil war to get back at the president of sierra leone. The RUF raped, murdered, and torchered innocent sierra leone people. ‘The Bite of the Mango’ is about a fourteen year old sierra leonean girls life during the civil war. Kamara describes the horrors the RUF put her and others through. Without the help of other countries she would have stayed in an unsafe environment and could have died.
Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, and the other boys of Sierra Leone that were enlisted to fight in the country’s civil war had their lives changed forever. The boys in the village of Yele that were recruited by the army aspired to be vengeful spirits, killing the soldiers of the rebel army that had killed their families and was the cause of their misfortune. Lieutenant Jabati and his men helped the boys to realize their suppressed rage and gave them the training that they needed to fight the rebels. Lieutenant Jabati was a figure of authority for the boys in a time of turmoil and he, along with the more senior soldiers under his command, pushed the boy soldiers to their limit, but he was not harsh with his encouragement. It must be said though, that if the boys were not recruited by the Lieutenant
A Long Way Gone is about a 12 year old boy soldier who struggles to overcome the Sierra Leone Civil War and get his normal life back after he enlists into the army because his village was starting to get attacked by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and that was the only way someone could survive. Due to being a child soldier, he was exposed to many bad situations for kids his age. One of those situations were drugs. When he was age 16, a group of men by the organization of UNICEF rescued some boys, whom one of them was Ishmael. Ishmael and the rest were taken to a rehabilitation center where they ended up causing a lot of trouble to the staff.
Memoirs of a Boy Soldier ★★★★ I rated this book 4 stars because I really enjoyed reading this book and learning about what goes on with the children(mainly boys) out in Sierra Leone. It was interesting knowing that these are the kind of things that happen in the third-world countries and the children are forced to live through it. 2. Page Number: 33 Short passage: “He kept screaming, ‘My head! My brains!’
In comparison, a memoir written by Ismael Beah is about a boy soldier and his traumatic experiences when war breaks out in his home country Sierra Leone. The loss of innocence is apparent as Ishmael experienced his first battle as a soldier. The life-altering, painful events that both young soldiers experience are emotionally
The 6-year war in Sierra Leone captured 10,000 to 14,000 child soldiers and left them displaced after the war with no family and no childhood left. A long way gone by Ishmael Beah gives us a unique perspective of what child soldiers have to go through and what they have survived. Resourcefulness was one of the various skills that Ishmael used to survive well being part of the Sierra Leone war. Ishmael's resourcefulness helped him in many ways to survive well in war. The first piece of evidence that supports that Ishmael is resourceful is, "I learned about this grass during one of the summers when I visited my grandmother.
A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier, Some of the Adventures, Dangers, Sufferings by Joseph Plumb Martin, is a collection of tales starting from when he was just a young boy at the age of seven and quickly goes through his childhood on the farm with his grandparents on his mother's side. Mr. Martin describes his memories from a much later stage in his life at the age of 70 in the year 1830. This is the tales of the crippling weather conditions, terrible living conditions and war stories told by a young enlisted soldier during the war. Mr. Martin was born to a preacher and his wife in 1760 in western Massachusetts. The story begins when he was just a young boy who was sent to live with his grandparents on a farm.
In Soldier from the War Returning, Thomas Childers writes that “a curious silence lingers over what for many was the last great battle of the war.” This final battle was the soldier’s return home. After World War II, veterans came back to the United States and struggled with stigmatized mental illnesses as well as financial and social issues. During the war, many soldiers struggled with mental health issues that persisted after they came home.
The Unbeatable Souls The Lost Battalion is based totally on a real story of an American battalion that was sent out to battle during the World War I. Major Charles Whittlesey, a New York lawyer, who ends up in the trenches of France having under his command mostly young, unexperienced men. When Whittlesey and his battalion of five hundred men are ordered to advance into the Argonne Forest they find themselves surrounded by Germans troops when the other battalions instantly withdrew, leaving Whittlesey’s battalion on his own. Confined behind enemy lines, Whittlesey’s battalion turned into the only force in the German army’s plans to move forward. Trapped and with no other way to rescue, Whittlesey is given an opportunity to surrender, but chose to continue fighting and keep his men together.
In the book, Soldier Boys, by Dean Hughes two boys who are on opposite sides of the war tell their struggles and stories of battle in the War and how their two different lives collide together. The author of the book, Dean Hughes, has spent 7 years doing research on World War II and finding information about the war. Dean Hughes has interviewed war veterans, studied newspapers that were written in the time of World War II, and read hundreds of books like, “The Burden of Hitler 's Legacy” by Alfons Hecks to help his understanding of this time period and events. With all this information and facts he collected, he wrote the book, Soldier Boys. The years that World War II took place was in between 1939 to 1945 and around those years the holocaust
What really touched me about when they went to Sierra Leone was the work of the Rainbow Centre and the Family Services Unit at their local police department. The Rainbow Centre did counseling for rape and domestic violence victims and their families. Amie, who works with the International Rescue Committee, is the founder of the Rainbow Centre. When at the Family Services Unit, one girl (Fulamatu) and her mother was kicked out of the home when the little girl was raped by her uncle. Even though the uncle was not a blood relative, it was still a big deal that she was raped.
Geoffrey Canada does an excellent job of bringing his readers to the streets of the South Bronx and making them understand the culture and code of growing up in a poor, New York City neighborhood in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In his book, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, Canada details, through his own childhood experiences, the progression of violence in poverty plagued neighborhoods across America over the last 50 years. From learning to be “brave” by being forced to fight his best friend on a sidewalk at six-years-old, to staring down an enraged, knife wielding, “outsider” with nothing to defend himself but nerve, Canada explains the nightmare of fear that tens of thousands of children live through every day growing up in poor neighborhoods. The book
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.