A Long Way Gone is a true story based on the life of a young boy name Ishmael Beah, who became a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Ishmael fought for almost 3 years before he was rescued by UNICEF. There are many themes throughout this entire book but I focus on survival and family in this essay because it seems to intertwine with other themes like hope and emotional damage. When Ishmael became a child soldier he didn’t have anything to really live for but the next day. His family was killed and he was hollow inside. He had to hide his emotions not only from the people around him but also from himself in order to focus on his daily goal of surviving another day. That’s not how it has always been for him though. In the beginning his survival mechanism was …show more content…
What made him change his survival tack ticks was when he first killed a man. What I found interesting while reading this book was that when he finally talked about joining the army, he really didn’t do any flashbacks. So in the book he talks about how he doesn’t want to recall his memories and I thought him not including them while being the author, you can still see the affects of what he has been through. Ishmael endured a lot while being a child soldier, whether it was hunger, the loneliness or violence. Family is very important to Ishmael, whether they are biological or he met them along the way. In the beginning of the book Ishmael is separated from his family but was very close with reuniting with them in a new village. He has this hope that he will be reunited with his family and that his parents will revive their relationship. Sadly, his hopes are shattered when he hears them being murdered. In the book he says “I wanted to see my family, even if
Throughout the book the audience has seen Ishmael go through adventure and sorrow. In the novel Ishmael is forced to go to war at age thirteen, but what keeps him going were his grandmother's wise words. His grandmother was the one who told him powerful lessons that he could use in real life. These lesson that Ishmael is keeping him grounded is not only from his grandmother but also from his friends. Lessons that were seen by the readers are “wild pigs”, “Bra Spider”, and the story about the moon.
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
It is hard to remain innocent during a time of war. Ishmael was an innocent 12 year old boy when the war broke out and the RUF took over his village. He was chased and shot at by the RUF. As a young boy he had to endure seeing people gunned down in front of him and murdered in the most gruesome ways as illustrated by the author when he said, “I had seen heads cut off by machetes, smashed by cement bricks, and rivers filled with so much blood that the water ceased flowing.”
A prominent theme in A Long Way Gone is about the loss of innocence from the involvement in the war. A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a young boy, Ishmael Beah, wanders in Sierra Leone who struggles for survival. Hoping to survive, he ended up raiding villages from the rebels and killing everyone. One theme in A long Way Gone is that war give innocent people the lust for revenge, destroys childhood and war became part of their daily life.
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
In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah deals with his loss of innocence as he is forced to join the children army of Sierra Leone in the country's civil war after being conscripted to the army that once destroyed his town in order for Ishmael to survive. His memoir acts as a voice to show the many difficulties that the members of Sierra Leone's child army had to suffer through and their day to day struggle to survive in the worst of conditions. In order to escape the perils and trials of war, Ishmael loses his innocence as he transitions from a child who liked to rap with his friends to a cold blooded solider in the army during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Through his transition, Ishmael is forced to resort to the addiction of drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and “brown-brown” just so that he, along with the other members of the child army can have the courage to be able to kill their fellow countrymen and slaughter entire towns who stand in their paths. In order to portray his struggles in the army, Ishmael uses the dramatic elements of memories explained using flashback, dialogue, and first-person narration in order to establish the theme of the memoir being how war causes for a child to lose its innocence. The transition shown in the memoir illustrates how the title of the novel, A Long Way Gone, was chosen because it demonstrates how he is a long way gone psychologically, emotionally, and physically, from the child that he was when the memoir begins to the soldier that he is forced to become.
Ishmael’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
In addition to him having to overcome difficult odds in order to survive for himself, he also had to care for his weakening father. A similar situation occurs in A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, however, Ishmael accepts the situation and is able to defend himself. While they differ in their ability to defend themselves, they both relate in that they need to fight, both mentally and physically, in order to survive. not only because of the hardships they faced, but also because of what they had to do in order to survive. “‘I have never spoken about the Holocaust except in one book.’”
At nature, a gentle young boy, he was accomplished of really dreadful deeds. Few days later on the rampage he is unrestricted by military and referred to a UNICEF rehabilitation centre, he wriggled to re-claim his humankind and to re-enter the biosphere of non-combatants, who seen him with terror and distrust. This is a story of revitalisation and hopefulness. CHRONOLIGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF EVENTS THAT LEAD TO CONFLICTS A long way gone is the factual story of Ishmael Beah, who turns out to be an unenthusiastic boy warrior throughout 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.
The book “A Long Way From Chicago” is an adventurous and funny story. The story takes place at Joey Dowdel’s Grandmothers farm house in the country. Joey and his sister Mary Alice were sent to their Grandma’s house during the summer because their parents had to go to Canada for their work. At first, Joey felt uncomfortable with his Grandmother because he had never met her before but eventually he got to know her and they became close friends.
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.
In “A Long Way Gone”, we follow a twelve-year-old African boy, Ishmael Beah, who was in the midst, let alone survived a civil war in Sierra Leone, that turned his world upside down. Ishmael was a kind and innocent boy, who lived in a village where everybody knew each other and happiness was clearly vibrant amongst all the villagers. Throughout the novel, he describes the horrific scenes he encounters that would seem unreal and traumatizing to any reader. The main key to his survival is family, who swap out from being related to becoming non-blood related people who he journeys with and meets along his journey by chance.
Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?