Imagine being a twelve year old boy deciding whether to kill or be killed. A young child named Ishmael Beah faced this challenge during the Sierra Leone Civil War. He later wrote about his journey in his memoir A Long Way Gone. Caught in the middle of a deadly war, Ishmael was forced to become a child soldier. While acting as a soldier, he was obligated to eliminate everyone in sight, as required by the government. Two years of Ishmael’s life consisted of war. He, unfortunately, experienced both parts of it: being a victim and the individual who is torturing the victim. 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 jumped out of nowhere with weapons in their hands. As a punishment for disrupting their village, the villagers stole the boys shoes and scared them off. After walking all day on the burning sand, the boys sat down and took a look at their feet, “Peeled flesh hung down and congealed blocks of blood and …show more content…
With villages being attacked, it was almost impossible for anyone to get food. It did not matter if you had money or not because all of the stores were closed. Ishmael and his friends were slowly, but surely starving. While sitting down with his friends, Ishmael says,“We were so hungry that it hurt to drink water and we felt cramps in our guts. It was as though something were eating the insides of our stomachs” (Beah 30). Not being able to eat for days on end is brutal punishment. The conflict between the soldiers and rebels has lead to a lack of needed resources. Ishmael, sadly, was a victim of this mess. He had to scavenge for food almost everyday. The war had a negative outcome on Ishmael’s life, he was affected not only physically but mentally as well. Although it may seem like Ishmael was an innocent little boy caught in the middle of the war he was
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...
As a child, Ishmael Beah seemed like he was playful, curious, and adventurous. He had a family that loved him, and he had friends that supported him. Before the war, Ishmael had a childhood that was similar to most of the children in the United States. Unfortunately, the love and support Ishmael grew accustom to quickly vanished. His childhood and his innocence abruptly ended when he was forced to grow up due to the Sierra Leone Civil War. In 1991, Ishmael thought about survival rather than trivial things. Where was he going to go? What was he going to eat? Was he going to make it out of the war alive? The former questions were the thoughts that occupied Ishmaels mind. Despite his efforts, Ishmael became an unwilling participant in the war. At the age of thirteen, he became a
Ishmael was a normal 12 year old boy in a small village in Sierra Leone when his life took a dramatic turn and he was forced into a war. War has very serious side effects for all involved and definitely affected the way Ishmael views the world today. He endured and saw stuff that most people will never see in a lifetime let alone as a young child. Ishmael was shaped between the forced use of drugs, the long road to recovery and the loss of innocence of his
Ishmael Beah’s first transition on his approach to family began with a strong sense of hope. Consequently, after the separation of his mother, father, and older brother his life completely changed. When he began to take his journey Beah hoped to find his family and survive the war together. In his memoir, Beah demonstrated the idea of hope when he came across a childhood memory that impacted his life. As he walked alone in the forest Beah remembered his father’s significant words of advice that motivated him to find hope and purpose. With this idea in mind, his father once said, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen” (2007, P. 54). For Ishmael, his father, mother, and
Ishmael kills people without it being a big problem or deal. He was forced and threatened. If not then he would be killed. First, he was terrified to see people being killed. In the book, Ishmael quotes “My hand began trembling uncontrollably…” This shows that Ishmael is being aware of his surroundings and of himself. This is important because it shows how Ishmael feels before he and his
Ishmael starts his journey with a will to escape and survive the civil war of Sierra Leone in order to reunite with his mom, dad, and younger siblings, who fled their home when his village was attacked by rebels. Having only his older brother, who he escaped with, and a few friends by his side Ishmael is scared, but hopeful. When the brothers are captured by rebels, Ishmael’s belief in survival is small, as indicated by his fallible survival tactics when he “could hear the gunshots coming closer…[and] began to crawl farther into the bushes” (Beah 35). Ishmael wants to survive, but has little faith that he can. He is attempting to survive by hiding wherever he can- even where the rebels can easily find him. After escaping, Ishmael runs into a villager from his home tells him news on the whereabouts of his family. His optimism is high when the villager, Gasemu, tells Ishmael, “Your parents and brothers wil...
Most people who Ishmael came in contact with and himself, had a conflict between trust and survival. This conflict became an effect of the war in which many people suffered because they chose to live over a possible death. Beah retells his traumatic experience that gives countless situations where survival is picked over trust. In a world without war trust and survival can be
Ishmael’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
...ys, they are seized by soldiers and taken to a village engrossed by the military fighting back at the rebels. The fellow children soldiers became Ishmael’s only family at the time, and each of them were supplemented with a white pill, “The corporal said it will boost your energy” says a young soldier. (116) Little did Ishmael and the others know that the tablet was an illicit drug given to them to fight their fatigue and anxiety for a short term to better them in combat with the rebels. Beah unknowingly alters into a blood-craving animal, who kills with numbness and no emotion. “I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them.” (119) Ishmael now relies and is addicted to drugs to get through his day-to-day life, including smoking marijuana, and constantly snorting “brown brown” (121) which is a mixture of gunpowder and cocaine.
Children exposed to violence within their communities are left with emotions of hopelessness, insecurity, and doubt. Historical events such as the war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tragic events of September 11th have had a detrimental effect on the entire nation, including the children. Although every child is not directly affected by the effects of war, it somehow has an emotional effect on all. The involvement of a nation in war affects every individual differently, whether it is out of fear, anger, doubt, hope, or love. In the short novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he narrates the story by telling his own involvement in the Civil War in Sierra Leone as a young boy and the many issues he faces while living in horror.
Usually when someone is murdered, people expect the murderer to feel culpable. This though, is not the case in war. When in war, a soldier is taught that the enemy deserves to die, for no other reason than that they are the nation’s enemy. When Tim O’Brien kills a man during the Vietnam War, he is shocked that the man is not the buff, wicked, and terrifying enemy he was expecting. This realization overwhelms him in guilt. O’Brien’s guilt has him so fixated on the life of his victim that his own presence in the story—as protagonist and narrator—fades to the black. Since he doesn’t use the first person to explain his guilt and confusion, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy—by imagining an entire life for his victim, from his boyhood and his family to his feeling about the war and about the Americans. In The Man I Killed, Tim O’Brien explores the truth of The Vietnam War by vividly describing the dead body and the imagined life of the man he has killed to question the morality of killing in a war that seems to have no point to him.
Child soldier is a worldwide issue, but it became most critical in the Africa. Child soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by some rebel groups and used as fighters, cooks, messengers, human shields and suicide bombers, some of them even under the aged 10 when they are forced to serve. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Most of them are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children feel that rebel groups become their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed by the war. Sometimes they even forced to commit atrocities against their own family (britjob p 4 ). The horrible and tragic fate of many unfortunate children is set on path of war murders and suffering, more nations should help to prevent these tragedies and to help stop the suffering of these poor, unfortunate an innocent children.
Miller, Sarah Rose. “Child Soldiers.” Humanist 1 July 2002: 1-4. eLibrary. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
Somewhere in the world, there’s a young innocent child stranded around a sea of dead corpses. This child hears babies cry over their dead mothers, and the women scream from rape of the enemies. Bullets fly everywhere, piercing the child’s family, and bombs destroying their home. After witnessing all of this, the child realizes that there’s no such thing as love and hope in this corrupted world. The reader believes that this situation truly seems impossible to exist, but that’s where the reader is absolutely wrong. Somewhere in Africa, a war similar has happened, and it’s considered atrocious because this foolish war costed the death of millions by hunger, diseases, and especially rape. It has also become ghastly because the very root of this
To add to this sense of terror, woman had more to fear from the barbaric soldiers who forced their way into homes. Rape and cruel acts did not only affect the woman but also their families and the community’s sense of security. Christoph Brandis tells a chilling tale of the humiliation of one family when their seventeen year old daughter is attacked by a quartered soldier.