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A long way gone ishmael beah summary in your own words
A long way gone ishmael beah summary in your own words
Essay on a long way gone ishmael beah
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In his memoir A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah’s imagery is usually affiliated with nature and the world around him. Many times, connections can be made between Beah’s emotional state and the condition of Sierra Leone during its civil war. These vivid descriptions easily reflect on the Beah and his surroundings equally. Silence throughout chaos is a common theme in war, when all is dead in the surroundings and yet, life continues. Beah illustrates a moment while passing through a town on his journey to freedom, “The silence in the village was too scary…Not even a lizard dared to crawl through the village. I could hear my heartbeat louder than my footsteps” (46). Beah uses the non-existing ambience of the village to show how empty war leaves
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
No earth, no air, no light-” (page 61) Stories told about how beautiful life was before the war, beautiful towns people once called home now remain as empty plains of rubble after the bombs have destroyed them. ‘“ If the old bell had been hanging in the steeple it would have rung to announce midnight, twelve solemn iron kongs which would have woken the villagers from their sleep and startled any small creature new to the village and unaccustomed to the noise. But the bell had fallen from its height weeks ago, and now lay buried in silence beneath rubble;”’ (page 7) The damage to a once beautiful place was caused quite simply by greed, greed for something that was not theirs. The wolf’s wise words were correct “ When a wolf clan battles another, it’s usually over territory, Probably this is the reason for your warring,” (page 59), this war was over territory, people wanting to take what was not theirs and having the power to destroy anything that got in their way, leaving everyone and everything caught up in an unpleasant mess.
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.
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.
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...
When growing up, family is always there for one another with unconditional love. They will do anything for each other, and throughout their lives they look to family for support and advice. This is not said for Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone. He was never in an idealistic “picture perfect” family because of his parents living in different villages through most of his life. The feeling of loneliness and independence was not new to him. Contrasting Beah, Mariatu Kamara, from A Bite of the Mango, has a very healthy and intimate relationship with everyone in her village. “It was common in my country for children in the rural areas to be raised by people other than their birth parents” (Kamara 13). They all act as if they were in her immediate family and furthermore she depends on them immensely. Beah and Mariatu were both children heavily involved in the war, being forced to face their countries problems that were not theirs to begin with. “The war in Sierra Leone has its origins in a long history of corrupt and predatory civilian and military governments that set the stage for a decade-long insurrection, destroyed state institutions, and left the country vulnerable to external manipulation” (Rice 1). While fighting the emotional and physical struggles throughout the war, Mariatu is firmly attached to her family indefinitely, while Beah has the advantage of independence; this is more fit for survival.
During the war, people struggle to differentiate their enemies from friends causing people to act on fear. Survival is paramount and trusting someone can lead to the deaths of an entire village. Beah wrote,”Many times during our journey were surrounded by muscular men with machetes who almost killed us before realizing we were children just running away from war.” (Page 72, Chapter 8). War causes people to be on edge and trust is no longer a connection but a reason that could end a person's life. The major theme in “A Long Way Gone” is survival and acting based on an emotional concept can cost atrocities.
In the short story “Chickamauga”, the author Ambrose Bierce uses a young boy to connect to his audience with what is the disillusions of war, then leads them into the actuality and brutalities of war. Bierce uses a six year old boy as his instrument to relate to his readers the spirits of men going into combat, then transferring them into the actual terrors of war.
Quinn gains a unique perspective on humanity through the main character of the novel, Ishmael. Ishmael is a gorilla. And Ishmael is a teacher who communicates with humans telepathically. On the surface, this hardly seems to be a character who would appear in a serious book; more likely a children's story, a fable, or perhaps a bad science fiction novel. Yet Ishmael is none of these, and Ishmael is a strong character, with a powerful intellect and a serious purpose. The character of Ishmael needs to be non-human in order to be effective. Looking in on civilization from the outside gives him a perspective from which to criticize humanity without hypocrisy. To hear the oppressor repent is not nearly so effective as to hear the voice of the oppressed demand freedom and restitution.
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...
Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war. This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through. The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.
In the story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, imagery is created to support the author’s use of tone to show his perspectives on the idea and moral points of war. Tim used imagery in describing a pig factory, his experience on a shore, and time spent with a man named Elroy to create the overall tone of longing for clarity and despair in his story. All of these examples that create imagery are shown to the reader, which helps to express the author’s tone about his views and beliefs on war.
After reading “Ishmael”, Daniel Quinn, who is the author of the book, made me think of the world a little different, than before. I believe, the main point of this book is “how the world became to be.” Still pondering on this idea, I ask myself, “why is the world the way it is”, and “why are humans the way we are”? Since reading this book further, I have read and absorbed that the human race is heading into a chaotic ending (destruction of earth). But, before reading this book, I thought humans were making a small dangerous impact on Earth, but really, I have learned that we are doing more damage than I expected, from reading this book and personal experience. My essay will explore how the human race became to be and how we are destroying
Everyone has their own personal opinion about war. Some may think it is horrible while others believe it is a great way to solve an issue. People, also, either take war seriously or as if it were a game. In this case, one particular person has his or her own idea about war. In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway portrays the horrible events that take place in a war zone by using repetition and imagery to express the theme the dangers of a war zone are nothing to be naive about.
“Eye-opening and confronting, this book was a shock, an honest adventure and the epitome of emotion. Kaur 's poetic writing was mind-blowing, truthful and descriptive to the point where I was physically wrought with pain, burning with anger, drowning in helplessness, and falling into depths of despair.” Milk and Honey, a book of poetry by Rupi Kaur made me feel vulnerable and raw. Never in my life have I felt this type of heart-wrenching pain and enlightening knowledge that opened not only my eyes but my heart with deep emotions. I will review the book based on its writing style and tone, its illustrations, and its successful use of imagery.