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Imagine being a 12 year old kid, and forced to use a gun in order to survive during a war. In the novel, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, the main character as well as the author, experienced such things as a reality. Ishmael had faced many challenges including running away from rebels that would capture him, scavenging for food and water, fighting in war, and losing his family. Through these experiences, he had exhibited different traits showing how he had grown throughout the novel. Ishmael Beah changes from being scared, to being aggressive, to being mature. In the beginning of the novel, Ishmael Beah is a scared boy. Ishmael had felt very scared when he was alone. In fact, he felt very unsafe because the air seemed to want to hurt him and …show more content…
After going through rehabilitation for being traumatized by war, he had gone to a United Nations’ conference to share his thoughts about children in war. Ishmael comments, “I began by saying, “I am from Sierra Leone, and the problem that is affecting us children is the war that forces us to run away from our homes, lose our families, and aimlessly roam the forests” (Beah 199). By the way Ishmael is able to logically explain his thoughts to others shows how he had matured, otherwise an immature person would have not had the opportunity to do such a thing. As the time got closer to the day that Ishmael would be released from the rehabilitation center to live with his uncle and his family, he did a lot of thinking about how he would be able to live with an actual family again and control his now usual distancing personality (Beah 179). Ishmael had gotten used to taking care of himself, and the way he is concerned about being with his family shows how he had grown as a person and matured through his experiences in a way. Other boys would take longer to be able to be released from the rehabilitation center, or if they did get released then they would not think as far as how to deal with a family again. Ishmael had matured towards the end of his story through his experiences and the process of being in the rehabilitation
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.
...g that throughout the book, Ishmael is in constant need of a friend to help him in situations like the main plot I mentioned earlier. He is very lucky and makes many of those friends he needs by the end of the book.
Ishmael was taken from Africa at a young age and was sold to a zoo then a traveling carnival. Ishmael was bought by Walter Sokolow, a Jewish man whom had lost his family during the Holocaust. Not long after being purchased Ishmael learned to telepathically communicate with Walter. Mr. Sokolow brought Ishmael many books so he would be able to educate himself. Ishmael’s studies began with captivity but soon he became more interested in human nature. Upon Mr. Sokolow’s death Ishmael lived mostly independently in the city, with the help of the late Mr. Sokolow’s butler, Mr. Partridge. After all Ishmael has learned through his readings he seeks out students to help spread his knowledge. (Quinn, 1995)
Ishmael was taken from the wild and held captive in a zoo, a circus, and a gazebo. During his time in various types of captivity, Ishmael was able to develop a sense of self and a better understanding of the world around him. Ishmael states that the narrator and those who share the same culture are “captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order live” (Quinn, 15). He goes to explain that releasing humanity from captivity is crucial for survival, but humans are unable to see the bars of the cage. Using the cage as a metaphor, Quinn is referring to human culture and how they do not see the harm it’s causing. As the novel progresses, it elaborates on how culture came about and why certain people inherit certain cultures. Ishmael refers to a story as the explanation of the relationship between humans, the world and the gods. He defines to enact is to live as if the story is a reality. Ishmael suggest that humans are captives of story, comparing them to the people of Nazi Germany who were held captive by Hitler’s
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 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...
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
...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.
This is at core a pitiful story which encompasses of ruthlessness and miseries endured by Ishmael Beah. All the trials in this story are chronologically prescribed and heart sobbing, in which a person who reads can in time weep while interpreting.
His perspective in life has changed he does not understand how people can act and live so freely and foolishly anymore, he stays up at night and is affected from the loss of his arm, he can not move on and start a relationship. Coming back from his time in the marines Ishmael started to see life differently, Guterson writes, “People appeared enormously foolish to. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids. He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people. He knew, for instance, what brains looked like spilling out of somebody's head. In the context of this, much of what went on in normal life seemed wholly and disturbingly ridiculous. (Gutereson 35).” With Ishmael's PTSD he has continuous flashbacks that stop him from moving on in life and changing his morbid perspective and outlook on it. From continuously feeling like people do not understand life or the way they could go on like nothing when others can not. Ishmael’s change and outlook on life something clearly seen in many veterans, but while others tried to continue with their life Ishmael did not know how to, Guterson states, “ I can't really understand… but you - you went numb, Ishmael. And you’ve stayed numb all these
O’Brien has many characters in his book, some change throughout the book and others +are introduced briefly and change dramatically during their time in war and the transition to back home after the war. The way the characters change emphasises the effect of war on the body and the mind. The things the boys have to do in the act of war and “the things men did or felt they had to do” 24 conflict with their morals burning the meaning of their morals with the duties they to carry out blindly. The war tears away the young’s innocence, “where a boy in a man 's body is forced to become an adult” before he is ready; with abrupt definiteness that no one could even comprehend and to fully recover from that is impossible.
If Beah did not go through certain events in his life, this would have changed the whole outcome of him living or dying. When Beah first experienced a woman with a baby who was bleeding almost to death, this prepared him for the horrors he and his friends would see in the war. Without this experience he would have been traumatized by the war. Before Beah had seen the true horrors of war he saw a child that, “gave a loud screech and sat next to a tree” and Beah felt as if, “the child’s yelp was still echoing in [his] head” (Beah 94). Ishmael needed to experience this trauma throughout the war because it was what kept him from getting too emotional during it. If Ishmael did not experience this event he probably would be dead because his emotions
Ishmael Beah is a young teen boy surviving during the time of war in Sierra Leone. He journeys from village to village after he is separated from his family when the rebels attack. He is a strong soldier and is given more opportunities than he had before when he is asked to be a speaker to represent the country in a national meeting in New York. He experiences new things everyday and is given help by many in his
A Long way gone is an emotional book about a boy who lives in a village in Africa when there is suddenly a rumor of an attack by rebels near them. They get back to there village seeing it in panic; They are now on the run trying to survive. A Long Way Gone is a true and sad story, showing that people will turn on others for their own agenda. The book tells the story of Ishmael Beah, who lived in Sierra Leone along with his family and friends before it was attacked. He then goes on to walk hundreds of miles with his friends, then loses them in two ways (death and not being able to find them). Ishmael’s story is one of true inspiration, determination, perseverance, faith, hope, defeat, sadness, pain, happiness, and luck.
Imagine living in your neighborhood, when suddenly, a group of armed children with assault rifles begin destroying buildings and killing innocent people. This is the story of Ishmael Beah. The three most difficult aspects of ishmael’s journey was the constant hunger, use of drugs, and death. Ishmael's story begins in the war torn African country known as Sierra Leone.