Ishmael Beah Developmental Analysis

The story of Ishmael Beah is absolutely heartbreaking. By the age of 15, there was no way count of how many lives he, personally, had taken in a war that destroyed his home, took his family and friends away from him and turned him from a young boy into a terrifying warrior, all under the guise of freedom, liberty, and revenge. He had seen more murders and deaths in his first decade of life than most people see in a lifetime. Beah was a child soldier in Sierra Leone, West Africa during the civil wars of the 1990’s. It can be assumed that Beah did not experience an average childhood because he was primarily focused on survival, but there were still some childlike things that Beah did throughout his trials that remind one that he is still young,

In this adolescent stage of development, children and teens begin to ponder more abstract concepts and relationships such as justice and fairness. At this stage in cognitive development, students also have the ability to think more logically, using symbols to define abstract concepts such as algebraic formulas or scientific equations. According to Piaget, the formal operation stage is the final stage of cognitive development, making it one of the most crucial periods in a child’s mental development. Because Beah saw the most violence at this stage of cognitive development, it is the most interesting time to

There was no time for him to be a teenager because he was living in complete survival mode, for example, as a young adolescent, it is uncommon to go days or weeks without sleeping or a filling, healthy meal, but for Ishmael Beah, it was not uncommon, in fact, having a full meal and a good night’s sleep for more than two or three days in a row was a rare blessing that was rarely a reality. He would travel from village to village with his constantly changing companions, and would stay for about a week, eating and sleeping, then he would be up and moving again, often without much warning. Through everything, there are still things that Beah did that remind the reader throughout the story that deep inside, he is still a boy, for example, his rap music was very important to him, it was the only personal possession that he kept track of during the years that he was in combat. At one point, he lost his rap tapes. This time was a time where he was more violent and angry than ever. It was only when he got second set of cassette tapes that he began to calm down and regain his composure. When asked why he was fighting, Beah would say that he was fighting to avenge his family’s murder, giving proof that he had grown into the formal operational stage of cognitive development,