A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

1199 Words3 Pages

Book Summary In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war(1991- 2002) with the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), provides an extraordinary and heartbreaking account of the war, his experience as a child soldier and his days at a rehabilitation center. At the age of twelve, when the RUF rebels attack his village named Mogbwemo in Sierro Leone, while he is away with his brother and some friends, his life takes a major twist. While seeking news of his family, Beah and his friends find themselves constantly running and hiding as they desperately strive to survive in a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. During this time, he loses his dear ones and left alone in the wilderness, is forced to face many physical and psychological dangers. By thirteen, he has been picked up by the government army, and is conditioned to fight in the war by being provided with as many drugs as he could consume (cocaine and marijuana), rudimentary training, and an AK-47. In the next two years, Beah goes on a mind-bending killing spree to avenge the death of his dear ones. At sixteen, he was picked up by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at the rehabilitation center, he learns to forgive himself and to regain his humanity. Document Analysis During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o... ... middle of paper ... ...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt. Works Cited http://observer.com/2008/02/ithe-australiani-continues-assault-on-ishmael-beahs-credibility-citing-school-records/ http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/a-long-way-gone/ http://chrisblattman.com/2008/03/05/credibility-a-long-way-gone/ http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2008/03/the_fog_of_memoir.html http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/contextwhosereality/Downloads/ishmaelbeah.pdf

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
1691 Words | 4 Pages
Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, narrates the story of Ishmael’s life as a child soldier in the Sierra Leonean civil war. Ishmael chronicles his journey from a scared, adrift child who lost his family in the war to a brutal child soldier who mercilessly killed many individuals to a guilt stricken rehabilitated teen who slowly learns to overcome his remorse from his past actions. Ishmael’s life as a child soldier first started when the Sierra Leonean army took him and his friends with them to the village, Yele, occupied by army officials and seemingly safe from the rebels. Unfortunately, within a few weeks of their stay, the rebels attacked Yele, and Ishmael and his friends decided to make the choice of becoming a child soldier in order to sustain their slim chances of staying alive. Ishmael’s interaction with violence was very different as a child soldier compared to as a civilian: while he witnessed violent actions before, as a child soldier he was committing them. As his life as a soldier demanded more violence from him, Ishmael sank deeper into the process of dehumanization with his main driving point being the revenge that he sought from the rebels for the deaths of his family and friends. After a few months as a child soldier, Ishmael was brought to the Benin home by UNICEF officials who hoped to rehabilitate the completely dehumanized child soldiers. With the help of Esther, a compassionate nurse, and other staff members in the center, Ishmael was able to ultimately reverse the effects of the war on him. By forgiving himself and the rebels who took away his close ones from him, Ishmael was able to restore his emotion of empathy and become rehabilitated.
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Similarities Between 'And A Perfect Day For Bananafish'
1932 Words | 4 Pages
Therefore through evaluating and comparing each author’s work we will see how each is utilizing this intermingling effect between conflict and innocence to reveal how the horrors of war can affect individuals mentally. To relate how the authors accomplish this effect we will observe how each utilizes specific devices such as scenarios and specific language to engage the reader into viewing a character as more than a construct but rather a multifaceted complex individual that has flaws and mental issues much like many of us.
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A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
1026 Words | 3 Pages
Hope enables people to move on by providing the thought that maybe tomorrow’s events will be better than today’s. Hope is a theme that remains constant in every part of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael begins the novel optimistic, believing he will find his family again. This optimism is later lost when Ishmael is recruited by the army to fight against the rebels, causing him to become addicted to drugs and the thrill of killing. Three years after his recruitment, Ishmael is rescued by UNICEF-a group dedicated to rehabilitating child soldiers. During his rehabilitation, Ishmael discovers hope once more by relearning how to trust, love, and have the will to survive. The presence of hope throughout A Long Way Gone enables Ishmael to have an ability to move on and a will to survive that he lacks when he loses hope.
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Compare and Contrast A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango
879 Words | 2 Pages
The R.U.F., however, was not alone in servicing children as their own messengers of evil, the military group countering their acts of violence also had children fighting their battles. A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango are eye-opening books because they give various people all over the world a glimpse into the horrors kids in Africa were facing on a daily basis. However different Mariatu Kamara and Ishmael Beah’s experiences were regarding their journeys and disabilities, they both exhibited the same extraordinary resilience in the end to better themselves, create futures they could be proud of, and make the best with what the war left them.
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Disillusualism In Chickamauga
783 Words | 2 Pages
In the short story “Chickamauga”, the author Ambrose Bierce uses a young boy to connect to his audience with what is the disillusions of war, then leads them into the actuality and brutalities of war. Bierce uses a six year old boy as his instrument to relate to his readers the spirits of men going into combat, then transferring them into the actual terrors of war.
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Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
1020 Words | 3 Pages
A long way gone is the factual story of Ishmael Beah who turn out to be an unenthusiastic boy warrior throughout a civil warfare in Sierra Leone. In Chapter 1, at twelve years of age, January 1993 Beah’s town is attacked while he is gone performing in a rap group with accomplice’s. Since they planned to come back the following day, they didn’t farewell or communicate with anyone wherever they were going, little they knew that they will certainly not come back to their families. It all started when Gibrilla and Kaloko came home early after school and they brought with them grief-stricken update for the eruption of warfare at the mining area. Amongst the mix-up, viciousness and vagueness of the warfare, Ishmael, Junior and his friends roam from settlem...
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Book Review Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
723 Words | 2 Pages
This is a book review of a novel called A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. The book was published on February 13th, 2007 by Douglas McIntyre and it has got 229 pages. The genre of this book is what is called a memoir which is basically a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private that took place in the author's life. A Long Way Gone is the true story of Ishmael Beah, who becomes an unwilling boy soldier during a civil war in Sierra Leone. My recommendation of this book is that it’s so fascinating and unique; rather than portraying one side in a positive light, it shows that there is no right side. Since the book is told from the point of view of a child soldier, you can tell what his real beliefs were at the time instead of the beliefs we assume they have.
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AQWF
877 Words | 2 Pages
War deprives soldiers of so much that there is nothing more to take. No longer afraid, they give up inside waiting for the peace that will come with death. War not only takes adolescence, but plasters life with images of death and destruction. Seeger and Remarque demonstrate the theme of a lost generation of men in war through diction, repetition, and personification to relate to their readers that though inevitable and unpredictable, death is not something to be feared, but to calmly be accepted and perhaps anticipated. The men who fight in wars are cast out from society, due to a misunderstanding of the impact of such a dark experience in the formative years of a man’s life, thus being known as the lost generation.
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Western Culture and Child Soldiers
763 Words | 2 Pages
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.
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A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah
284 Words | 1 Pages
“Perhaps it was necessary that he cling to false hopes,since they kept him running away from harm.” The book Long Way Gone was written as a memoir by Ishmael Beah, the main character. This is his story about a civil war in Sierra Leone running away from a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front or (RUF) for short.
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Child Soldiers In The Civil War Essay
782 Words | 2 Pages
The civil war of Sierra Leone lasted from 1991 to 2002. In this civil war approximately fifteen thousand kids were forced to become soldiers. Either by being kidnapped or by having their lives threatened. The situation was an extremely sad one. They had no choice weather they wanted to be soldiers or not. Like Ishmael said in A Long Way Gone, “It was either kill or be killed.” This situation is one where most people would not even be able to imagine themselves in. Ishmael Beah was a boy who suffered, because of the civil war. His family was killed and he was forced to become a soldier for the military. He eventually was rescued by UNICEF and eventually moved to the United States. For a decade, there has been a war between Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican government. There have been an unacceptable number of kids that have been used as soldiers in this war. Approximately, thirty thousand youngsters have been forced into becoming soldiers. In contrast to Sierra Leone, the soldiers here are only for the drug cartels, but in Sierra Leone even the government made the children become soldiers too. Just like the children of Sierra Leone, the children of Mexico are also kidnapped or threatened into becoming soldiers. Once captured, they are transformed into belligerent
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Analysis Of Ruined By Lynn Nottage
958 Words | 2 Pages
The war was worsened by the wealthy minerals in the ground and the influence of the mineral was strengthened by the fear and displacement the war caused. The intertwining of these two destructive forces is seen in the story Salima is told by a man who bought her. In this he tells of a man who stuffed”...the coltan into his mouth to keep the soldiers from stealing his hard work, and they split his belly open with a machete”(31). Not only does this story show the harsh conditions the men are exposed to in war, but also it further demonstrates the hold coltan has on the minds of those who live in the Congo. The want for coltan leads to the destruction of the community and individual identities of those involved as it perpetuates a cycle of war that damages men, induces violence against women, and ultimately creates a cycle of lost identity.
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Examples Of Imagery In A Long Way Gone
1057 Words | 3 Pages
Imagine yourself in the shoes of a twelve year old boy who vigorously fought through blood and death, seeking for survival and hope during a Civil War in Sierra Leone. The novel, A Long Way Gone, tells the story of, Ishmael Beah, a young boy who experienced the mental and physical battle of reluctantly becoming a soldier. Today, majority of us can relate to Ishmael’s unfortunate circumstances through his life because it is something that we have all been affected by individually in areas all across the world. Beah’s memoirs as a boy soldier instantly caught my attention from beginning to end because of his clear, apprehensible voice and ability to draw readers into the action. Throughout this book, Ishmael focused most on very descriptive details
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Child Soldiers
2240 Words | 5 Pages
Miller, Sarah Rose. “Child Soldiers.” Humanist 1 July 2002: 1-4. eLibrary. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
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Analysis Of A Long Way Gone
1220 Words | 3 Pages
“A Long Way Gone” is a novel written in first person point of view about the author, Ishmael Beah’s memoirs as a child soldier. The novel has realistic descriptions of the civil war including the bloody environment, the losses of family and friends, and Beah’s mind. The inclusion of Beah’s thoughts allows you to see Beah’s perspective of the civil war. The novel demonstrates a combination of styles and a great plot with many details, making the story very enjoyable. It displays how much courage, power, and dignity a person needs to get over warfare.
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A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah