The Loss of Innocence
When one thinks of childhood, images of little league baseball games, soccer and carefree days spent with family come to mind with the only worries are whether their room is cleaned and their homework is done, not knowing whether they will make it through the night should be the last thing a child has to worry about. Ishmael Beah was a former child soldier forced to fight in Sierra Leone’s civil war that consumed his home country in the 1990’s. Beah explains his hardships as “ I am from Sierra Leone, and the problem that is affecting our children is the war that forces us to run away from our homes, lose our families, and aimlessly roam the forests (Beah 199)”. Ishmael Beah’s autobiography,
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He was forced to grow up quickly in his quest to find his family. During his journey he matured as he struggled for survival on a day to day basis. “ One evening we actually chased a little boy who was eating two boiled ears of corn by himself...we didn’t say a word or even look at each other ( Beah 30)”. While on the run from the war, he and his travel mates scavenged to find what little food was left by the Revolutionary United Front ( RUF). Beah’s text encompasses the perseverance he carries while facing a war that could take his life. Without the war changing his way of life, he would not have had to steal food to insure the next day. Another example of maturation is when Ishmael was forced to fight in the army. “ He took out the magazine and handed me the AK with two hands. I hesitated for a bit, but he pushed the gun against my chest, With trembling hands, I took the gun and saluted him...still holding the gun, but afraid to look at it (Beah 111)”.The normal 12 year old has never held a war gun let alone has shot one. The corporal who handed the children AK’s, forced them to become mature and act like adults by doing grown up actions. The weapon symbolizes his innocent day of childhood were over. He would now be expected to be a killer..Growing up is inevitable, but the death of family and friends cuts deeper wounds than letting go your younger …show more content…
Yet in Sierra Leone more than 10,000 fighter were children (Dumbuya,1). War in this third world country alted every inhabitant’s life and view on war because it was fought in their backyard. “ My uncle was sitting on the verandah, tears in his eyes...he embraced us for a long time and told us not to go to the city anymore (Beah 207)”. Everyday tasks like getting food from the city were changed because of the war.The fear of being hit by a stray bullet from the rebel was a part of everyday life. Due to all the chaos, there was no escaping the killing of blameless individuals. “The last causality that we saw that evening was a woman who carried her baby on her back, Blood was running down her dress and dripping behind her, making a trail. Her child had been shot as she ran for her life ( Bael 13)”. As Ishmael observes more grotesque event, he becomes jaded so tragedies don’t affect him. With the help of drugs the commanders gave Ishmael and the other boy’s, the gruesome tragedies became an everyday occurrence do not phase them as they once did.These incidences striped the boys of their purity that presents itself in undamaged
This desensitization is seen when Beah describes “cleaning the blood off our guns”, this is a very basic and casual scene for what it actually is. Especially coming from a child who had said they struggled not fainting at the sheer sight of the rebels. Beah sees violence as necessity and something to be proud of. The pride itself is seen first when Beah remarks that “i killed the owner of this gun in our last raid.” He now takes pride within violence, it is all he knows as his talent.
Now, as for Ishmael’s headaches and nightmares, I think it is PTSD. He went through so much as a 12-year-old, and it’s not fair. He keeps getting his hopes up, only to be destroyed. A 12-year-old should not have to worry about if they are going to survive, or if they are going to be captured, or if they are going to get killed. When the rebels surrounded the village and Ishmael had to join the fight to stay alive, I felt like crying.
Ishmael Beah feared becoming a child soldier again when Sierra Leone’s government was overthrown by the rebels, he gets haunted by the memories of the past and what has happened throughout his life back in Sierra Leone. Back when he was a child soldier in Sierra Leone all he did in his free time was take in drugs and watched war movies which got him use to the blood and violence that he experienced while he was part of the war. He committed crimes that nobody would normally do, like torturing others in cruel ways, but he was brainwashed and didn’t know anything else besides war. He was trained to kill and that’s all there was to it for his life back then. But that changed once he got rehabilitated and was able to live among normal civilians.
The mass amounts of imagination and passion that a child is able to grasp in their minds at such a young is something that, in most individuals, does not last forever. Children should be able to live carefree childhoods where their imagination is not being replaced by worry and hardships. Once imagination and passion is taken out of a child’s heart and mind, there is no getting that back. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah he writes about the emotional and mental changes of the children in his country that have been touched by the war and how he was affected personally as well. Beah recalls, “The children of these families [the refugees] wouldn’t look at us, and they jumped at the sound of chopping wood or as stones landed on roofs…”(5).
When he was twelve, Beah was separated from his family when the rebels attacked his village. Beah’s journey to escape the rebel forces led him through areas where he witnessed the horrors of war and it led him to war as a child soldier. Life as a child soldier left a deep impact on Ishmael Beah. Although, he recovered physically and mentally as children often do, Beah’s writing shows his difficulty in expressing his emotions.
Ishmael is now alone, before he knows it he is abducted by army soldiers. Ishmael is given two abstruse choices to pick from. He can either walk away, but risk the chance of getting shot. Or he can serve for the army and gain the privileges of shelter, food, and safety. On page 87, Ishmael describes himself feeling dejected and downgraded.
Day by day, children are facing acts of inhumanity that are occurring around the world. This causes these kids to become different people who change in negative ways. Such acts are being mentioned in the books Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Never Fall Down is about a boy named Arn who survives the Cambodian genocide, and A Long Way Gone is about the author’s experience as a child soldier fighting in the Sierra Leone Civil War for three years.
“We must strive to be like the moon” p.16 Why does suffering happen to the innocent? Maybe without suffering in war there wouldn’t be any compassion and love in the world. Ishmael Beah a boy soldier who lost his childhood and everything he loved, fought with his conscience as the years went by as he killed his memoirs. This book is memoirs of boy soldiers and war.
Two years of Ishmael’s life consisted of war. Ishmael Beah, unfortunately, experienced both sides of it: being a victim and a victimizer. During the civil war, Ishmael was the sufferer of numerous things. One day Ishmael and his friends wandered into a village when all of a sudden villagers, with weapons in their hands, jumped out of nowhere.
When the war unleashed in Sierra Leone, Beah and his friends have a difficult time finding villages with a food supply, and find themselves without money, so they decide to head back home in search of any money they had left hidden back home. The boys barely survived getting out of their village, only to find that no one in Mattru Jong was willing to sell their food, because they were saving it for themselves. This angered Beah for his time lost traveling back to his home village and risking his life for nothing, ultimately. Moreover, in that moment Beah realized that he had nothing left to do practice the survival tactics that everyone else was taking part in: “ Things changes rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one had nay control over anything. We had yet to learn these things and implement survival tactics, which was what it came down to.
The Damages of War “Mourning the dead wasn’t part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive.” (149) The mind of a child is a scary place, full of dangerous thoughts. There is no hope, and, in their minds, no need to hope. They get used to the environment, to the killing.
Child soldiers have been a major issue in countries all over the world for a very long time. For example, Afghanistan is recruiting children to become a part of the Taliban, one of the largest terrorist groups in the country. A theme presented by Ishmael Beah in the book A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier is that when all is lost, there is always hope. He went through brutal drugs and a dark childhood while he was in a civil war but he still was able to push through it and find happiness.
Ishmael is at the rehabilitation center with other boys who were in the war. He discovers some of the boys are fighting for the rebels side, and with partisan views, a huge fight starts. The boys are throwing punches and stabbing each other. Ishmael began kicking a boy that went after him, and then Alhaji stabs him in the back. They both “...continued kicking the boy until he stopped moving”.
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
Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.