The Hidden Struggles of Child Soldiers Ishmael Beah, now acknowledged as a bestselling author and human rights spokesperson, was once a child soldier. He was in the 1991 Civil War in Sierra Leone, where “Ishmael’s parents and two brothers were killed before he was forcibly recruited into the war at age thirteen” (Ishmael Beah 2007). After serving 2 years with the army, he was lucky enough to be removed by UNICEF and placed into a rehabilitation home, but for other children, they will never get the chance to freedom like Ishmael did. Unlike most child soldiers, Ishmael was fortunate enough to be saved and cared for after being trapped in the war for over 2 years. While in the war, he developed things like PTSD and violent behaviors, yet he was …show more content…
In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he was able to walk people through his point of view of being a child soldier, and the readers were able to see what it was like. In particular, Ishmael was able to show how violent and threatening the boys became after being forced to fight in the war for about 2 years. Despite the kindness and affection the boys were given by the workers, nurses, and cooks, the boys still resorted to their old, savage behaviors. In the book, Ishmael says, “We got more upset day by day and, as a result, resorted to violence. In the morning, we beat up people from the neighborhood who were on their way to fetch water at a nearby pump. If we couldn’t catch them, we threw stones at them” (Beah 139). Before the war, the boys were not violent to those helping them, or just giving them normal human care. Once they were rescued from being child soldiers and taken into care by UNICEF during the war, the boys brought back their violent behavior and nature they once had from the war onto the innocent people among them. They continuously wanted more violence and could not resist the urge to fight each other for no given
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.
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.
This psychological memoir is written from the eyes of Ishmael Beah and it describes his life through the war and through his recovery. War is one of the most horrific things that could ever happen to anyone. Unwilling young boy soldiers, innocent mothers and children are all affected. In most instances, the media or government does not show the horrific parts of war, instead they focus on the good things that happen to make the people happy and not cause political issues. In his book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah dispels the romanticism around war through the loss of childhood innocence, the long road of emotional recovery and the mental and physical effects of war.
I was in the grips of genocide, and there was nothing I could do. Operation No Living Thing was put into full effect (Savage 33). 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 people all over the world a glimpse into the horrors kids in Africa face 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 of what the war left them.
Capturing children and turning them into child soldiers is an increasing epidemic in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah, author of the memoir A Long Way Gone, speaks of his time as a child soldier. Beah was born in Sierra Leone and at only thirteen years old he was captured by the national army and turned into a “vicious soldier.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) During the time of Beah’s childhood, a civil war had erupted between a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front and the corrupt Sierra Leone government. It was during this time when the recruitment of child soldiers began in the war. Ishmael Beah recalls that when he was only twelve years old his parents and two brothers were killed by the rebel group and he fled his village. While he and his friends were on a journey for a period of months, Beah was captured by the Sierra Leonean Army. The army brainwashed him, as well as other children, with “various drugs that included amphetamines, marijuana, and brown brown.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) The child soldiers were taught to fight viciously and the effects of the drugs forced them to carry out kill orders. Beah was released from the army after three years of fighting and dozens of murders. Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier expresses the deep struggle between his survival and any gleam of hope for the future.
The war in Sierra Leone lasted eleven years and resulted in mass murder, destruction, and mainly, loss of innocence. This war impacted nearly everyone in the country, however its specific damage on the children of Sierra Leone is a tragedy that haunts the victims to this day. The Rebels killed and tortured thousands of innocent people and destroyed villages throughout the country. Boys as young as twelve were forced to form an army and fight against the rebels. Ishmael Beah, a young boy living amongst this war, tells his story in the book A Long Way Gone. He explains the gory and disturbing details of his life as a boy soldier. As the young boys were brainwashed into killing, the women and young girls of the country were being raped,
In war, most actions are motivated by survival. In the graphic memoir “A Long Way Gone” written by Ishmael Beah, survival and trust cause people to do what they consider necessary. Throughout the book, the reality of survival and trust in war is constantly explored. In the duration of the war, Ishmael struggles to come into the presence of new people without being threatened and chooses to be alone to survive. This suggests that trust is a foreign idea that is replaced by the need for survival.
The lack of parenting during the civil war in Sierra Leone is a major cause that leads to the use of child soldiers during the war. The outbreak of the war in Sierra Leone caused everyone to run for their lives, leaving behind loved ones. Due to the sudden outbreak, many children were split apart from their parents leaving them abandoned. Wen the war began “fathers had come running from their workplaces, only to stand in front of their empty houses with no indication of where their families had gone. Mothers wept as they ran towards schools, rivers and water taps to look for their children. Children ran home to look for their parents who were wandering the streets in search of them. As the gunfire intensified, people gave up looking for their loved ones and ran out of town” (Beah 9). Ishmael realizes that he will be alone without his family and begins to feel as if a part of his is lost. As for the separation of families, the children in Sierra Leone were forced to make their own sensible decisions in order to stay alive during that time. Young children who lost their families were brainwashed into believing that fighting in the war was the right thing to do. Correspondingly, the lack of parenting during this difficult...
This is of course true with the impact of societal morals, being a driving factor in Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone. Similar in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, Ishmael and other child soldiers like himself have their morals completely shaped by their society, further supporting the idea of moral malleability. In the first half of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael has the morality that would be considered “good” by normal society; he is a mild-mannered and innocent boy who would not willingly hurt anybody. However, it can be easily seen in the second half of the book that his morals were significantly changed by the--“evil” by normal standards--society of the army with which he served. In the later part of the book, his nurse Esther tells him “This isn’t your fault, you know. It really isn’t.” (Beah, I, pg 151), referring to how the army’s society changed him. Ishmael's good morals remained intact for a short period after being recruited, but after his first killings and being told by his army that killing is good, his conscious took a complete turn-around, finding it easy to willingly hurt, kill, and torture. In both the song and the book they are taught that killing is alright by society. Furthermore, Ishmael's perception of good and evil is changed once more by his rehabilitation, showing the wide subjectivity and malleability of
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...
Clearly, the Sierra Leone army knows what strategies in order to recruit children into becoming soldiers through manipulations. For example, a long way gone, written by Ishmael Beah shows the process of a boy being manipulated into the Sierra Leone army, but the world has been corrupted for any years, and needless to say, enough is enough. Ishmael's decision have shown the importance of Maslow’s Hierarchy, and the ability to live life without manipulations and eventually reach the final goal a person
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.
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.
Taylor, Rupert. “The Plight of Child Soldiers.” Suite 101. Media Inc., 11 May 2009. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. .
Wells, Karen C.. "Children and youth at war." Childhood in a global perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. 152. Print.