The biography, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah, tells the story of a thirteen year old boy who spends his childhood being compelled to fight in the civil war in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah tries to avoid fighting for the rebels by running from town to town with his friends as the rebels advanced. Finally, his luck runs out and Ishmael Baeh is forced to serve in the civil war for the rebels. The story goes on to describe his horrific childhood as a soldier in Sierra Leone and his eventual rescue by Unicef and rehabilitation center. In this passage, Ishmael Beah created a mental image that allows us to visualize how disturbing and how unreal living in wartone Sierra Leone during the early 1980’s.
Yafet Mebrahtu P.4 The author of A Long Way Gone is Ishmael Beah. This book is about his life in Sierra Leone during the civil war. He tells how he suffered from hunger and fear,eventually this lead him to becoming a killer and joining a group of people that kill anyone on sight called the rebels. The rebels are killers that burn villages,kill anyone in sight and recruit child soldiers.
A Long Way Gone, is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael was born in Sierra Leone and grew up during the civil war in Sierra Leone. In, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael tells the reader his experiences as a boy soldier and his experiences in rehabilitation in order to regain his humanity. The book begins with Ishmael answering questions to his high school friends, in New York, about his time in the war.
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is the painfully true biography of Ishmael, his elder brother Junior, their friends and their journey to out run a war that is occurring in their hometown, Sierra Leone. The majority of the story takes place in Sierra Leon in between the years of 1993 and 1998. Ishmael’s journey begins the January of 1993 when he is the age of twelve. Individuals have begun to revolt which takes everything a turn for the worse. The rebels have struck the country with fear and caused complete chaos by killing families and destroying what they once called home.
A Long Way Gone. Ishmael Beah. New York: Sarah Crichton, 2007. 218 pages. A Long Way Gone is a great book to read and it 's easy to emotionally connect to the events.
A Long Way Gone is a book about the life of a boy living in Sierra Leone who takes part in the war that has been happening around him his whole life. This is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah on his life. This book was written to show how wars today are fought by children and how traumatizing it can be to a child. The book starts out with Ishmael living in Mogbwemo with his mother and brothers.
Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone is appropriate for the Sterling High school English IV curriculum because of Beah’s knowledge that reveals real life events that have occurred in Sierra Leone. Also, the memoir makes the reader grateful for the life he or she has today. For instance, Beah illiterates that the rebels have no sympathy for innocent lives and did not care if they lived or died. Specifically, when the rebels captured Beah and his friends and threatened to kill innocent people in front of them; “We are going to initiate all of you by killing these people in front of you”(34).
shmael Beah’s Journey to Healing A Long Way Home, an autobiography written by Ishmael Beah describes an unthinkable trauma-filled journey of a young boy. From the beginning of the book, twelve-year-old Beah is faced with difficulties when he is forced to flee his small village in Sierra Leone. After which, he wanders the land which is now clouded by war and violence. By the age of thirteen, he was admitted into the government’s army and was made into a boy soldier that committed horrific deeds.
A Long Way Home is a story told from a boy soldier named Ishmael. Ishmael is put in isolation as the war in his homeland, Sierra Leone quickly ravages through the country. His journey sets him deeper and deeper into the destruction and violence of the war. Ishmael struggles with internal and external battles that would set the tone for him keeping his hope and sanity. Ishmael’s story is one filled with bloodshed, tragedy, and lost of innocence as the story progresses.
Within Ishmael Beah’s book A Long Way Gone we see the sierra leone civil war take over and consume a young boy’s life. During Ishmael’s life his settings change rapidly because of the war, this causes him to change with his surroundings. Throughout the book the 3 reoccurring themes has to be family, death and food.
He no longer feels as if he has control of his future. Right now he is compelled to do anything possible to survive. Like most children Ishmael is afraid to run away, he decides to join the army. When Ishmael first started off in the war as a solider he felt traumatized, disgusted, and horrified by his experiences. On page 100 Ishmael encounters several dead bodies, it was such a traumatizing experience for him; he felt like he was going to throw up.
Not experiencing war is a luxury many people unfortunately do not get; however, Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, lives and survives the war, though not without heartache. With war there is always fear, death, and hell. Ishmael Beah proves war is hell through the killing of civilians, the distrust, and the after effects of the war. Ishmael proves war is hell through the killing of civilians. Many innocent bystanders of the war are forced out of their homes, made to run for their lives.
In A Long Way Gone, “he writes one of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I was not sure when or where it was going to end. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again” (Beah, Ishmael 69). Beah's memoir sheds light on the multifaceted damage done by civil war and terrorism. As a victim of the violence, a young man who has lost his family and way of life and is in turn considered dangerous by most of the civilians he encounters, Beah suffers more than simiple physical pain.
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.
The way Beah explained what happened to him, he did it in a sad way. My response to the writer is that I feel sorry for him. I cannot relate to him in any way since I have never been exposed to war and even been a soldier fighting in it. He was strong through the hardest part of his life; the actual war itself, rehabilitation, and ultimately escaping Freetown, Sierra Leone to eventually fly over to New York and start a new life. Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, replays a part of Beah’s life that will always be very vivid to him.