Ishmael Beah

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.

The most consistent, overwhelming difficulty of ishmael's journey is hunger. Because Ishmael was constantly traveling, and villages were constantly being raided, finding food was a difficult endeavour. Ishmael's first encounter with hunger occurs on page 27 when he is traveling with a group of 6 friends. Ishmael remembers: “We got hungrier day after day, to the point that our stomachs were hurting and our visions were blurred.” In this passage, Ishmael struggles to continue walking such extreme distances on an

Ishmael’s first encounter with being alone begins on page 49 when Ishmael is walking on his own now. Ishmael remembers “I walked for two days without sleeping… Often my shadow would scare me and cause me to run for miles.” In this passage, Ishmael struggles to survive and stay sane on his own. This struggle reveals that even though Ishmael was alone for nearly a month straight with no idea of his whereabouts, he kept pushing forward. Another example can also be found on pages 50-51 when Ishmael is lost looking for something to eat. “Along the spring there were several trees with ripe fruit that i had never seen… I decided to try some of it, since it was the edible thing around. Again we see Ishmael trying his hardest to survive. In order to overcome this difficulty, Ishmael had to eat whatever he could and travel onward to find civilization. Ultimately, this difficulty is significant because it shows how much courage Ishmael had to leave his friends and wander out into the middle of