What is change? Change is making something different. Change makes the world a better place. At least that is what they usually say. Change can be beneficial or harmful, and it can even be dangerous, but often, change means hard work. Change is a theme shown in the novel Radiance of Tomorrow, by Ishmael Beah. In this heartbreaking yet eye-opening novel, Beah meticulously describes the after effects of the Sierra Leone civil war on society, of the village named Imperi. During this time, when the people of Sierra Leone were in the midst of rebuilding society as they knew it before the bloodbath of the war, there were many obstacles that came in their way. Obstacles such as foreign men, an inequitable government and leaders who treated people …show more content…
unfairly, contribute to the hardships that the survivors of the war faced while recovering. The author, Ishmael Beah, effectively integrates this historical time period to develop the conflict of his novel, Radiance of Tomorrow by successfully describing the aftermath of a war that happened in Sierra Leone in the 90’s, and by disclosing the emotion and thoughts that the victims of this war possessed. Ishmael Beah uses the historical time period to convey and advance the plot of the story by describing the little events and problems that the people Imperi come across while trying to repair their society. In this novel, the author uses historical aspects of the Sierra Leone civil war, which happened in 1991-2002. He makes the novel set in the period after the war, during a period when a change is needed in society, because a civil war destroys the village. Beah focuses on the major obstacles that the Imperi people went through during the time of their rehabilitation. “Several artificial dams had been created for the mining of rutile, but the dams were overflowing, spilling into and destroying the roads the company needed for its vehicles. So, the company had begun draining excess water directly into the river, thereby contaminating it.” (Beah 110). In this excerpt from Beah’s novel, he tries to emphasize the plight of the people of Imperi, like when the white men who were hired to drill for rutile invaded their village. These men directly affect the lives of the villagers. Beah makes sure to describe every detail in this village, like this one, to move the conflict along. By providing the reader with every aspect and perspective of the problems in Imperi, he shows how much hate is produced of the white men in the village. This moves the conflict along, making the tension between the white foreign men and the villagers a problem. In this quote, Beah presents significant diction when he says that the company contaminates the river. When the author uses this word, Beah puts emphasis on such an impactful word because he wanted to emphasize predicament of the villagers, because the white men came into the village and started to directly impact the lives of the people, by pouring dirt and oil into the river, which is their only water source. Likewise, he displays symbolism in this passage, where the white men symbolize the only thing that stands in the way of the villagers’ way to achieve change in their society. As stated in another source, “And he hopes to offer the same support to today’s child soldiers as Nurse Esther and the staff at the Freetown rehab center offered him.” (Barnett 3). This quote shows us many things about the author, and about his novel as well. It also reveals to us that he uses the real people to influence the characters in his novel, like his Nurse, Esther. She is in the novel, and she plays an important role in it as well. In the book, Esther is a nurse who helps the recovery of many child and adult survivors, acting as a guardian, and in some cases, a mentor. In real life, Esther is the nurse who worked at the rehabilitation center that Ishmael Beah stayed at while he was recovering from traumatic experiences in war. He nursed him back to health, and he even guided him generally, in terms of life. Beah looks up to her as a compelling mentor, just like many of the people in the book did. In this excerpt, Beah chose to use the word support because of the meaning it has on his past experience, and on his recovery. Nurse Esther not only nursed him back to health in a medical perspective, but she also made him what he is today. To Beah, Nurse Esther is the support that Ishmael Beah used to be as successful as he is today. Ishmael Beah expresses the emotions and thoughts that the victims and survivors of the war possess during this time through his novel.
Not only does Beah show the different events and obstacles that the people of Imperi go through, but he also reveals the impact of these events on these people, and their emotions/thoughts on the events. Beah uses historical evidence and influences the book by using his own past thoughts and emotions during that time. Since he was in the war and had to recover from it, he uses some of his own and his peers’ thoughts about the war. The author’s motivation to write this novel came from his experience, and his desire to share his experience with people all around the world, and to give the Sierra Leone civil war a different perspective than people know. “During the Sierra Leone war, there was a lot of amputation going on where people were mutilated in different parts of your body. So, if you haven’t seen someone for many many years… he refused to look at his friend and when he finally found the courage to lift his head he was checking to make sure if she was intact. And if she wasn’t intact, if he was ready to take this burden of what she make look like - into his memory.” (NPR staff 2). In this quote taken from an interview with Ishmael Beah, Beah does not only show how there was a lot of mutilation in the war, but he also shows how after the war, that this emotionally affected the victim of the amputations and his/her friends. People had to decide whether or not they want to look at their friends, because if they do, the repugnant image cannot be removed from their friend’s brain. Emotions move the conflict along by using history and how people felt during this historical event, and the author did this successfully, making emotions an internal conflict. Due to this and many other crises that happened during this war, it was even harder to recover from it. This quote shows significant diction when it says the word burden, because it
emphasizes the impact that mortality and injuries have on peers, and it shows the long term impact that this image of their peer being hurt has on them. In another excerpt from the book, Beah shows the perspective of the war from a mother and a sister. “ ‘Why are you doing this my brothers? You are supposed to be protecting us… would you let this happen if it was your brother who died? Or your child?’ A group of men shielded those carrying the coffin, batons hitting their backs, so that…” (Beah 89). In this quote, Ishmael Beah shows the audience a different perspective, of a sister and a mother. He reveals the fact that during this time period, the survivors were in deep emotional states, and they did not know what to do. They suffered from emotional pain, because they were constantly reminded of the war, and the people they lost. These men in the quote who hit the coffin-bearers with batons, symbolize the hardships that the Imperi citizens have to go through in order to reach their ambition, which is to be a better society, and become better. Furthermore, Beah demonstrates a form of details in this quote from the novel by analyzing the emotions of the mother in this situation, and how her son’s death has a great impact on her. Through his past experiences in the recovery of the Sierra Leone civil war, the author integrates the feelings of people during this time to not only explain to his audience about the aftermath of the civil war, but also to appeal to the audience’s emotions and explain the impact of this event on the rest of the world. “He was taken to a rehab center in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, where he spent eight months learning about what happened to him and readjusting to life after the war. Child soldiers who found it difficult to adapt to their new surroundings frequently attacked those who worked at the rehab center in the early days.” (Barnett 3). The emotions and thoughts that the characters convey in the book show us, the audience, that Ishmael Beah not only wants to show the gruesome events that happened in the Sierra Leone war, but he also wants to show the us a different perspective of it. In conclusion, change is a theme seen in the novel Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah, as he incorporates events from after the Sierra Leone war into his book. Even though he explains the obstacles that the villagers had to overcome in order to reach their goal of change, Beah also describes the emotions and the impact that these obstacles have on the citizens, and on the community as a whole, which eventually helped move the conflict along.
In the Lilies of the Field by William E. Barrett, Homer and Mother Maria both display straightforward, hardworking, and stubborn character traits. Firstly, Homer and Mother Maria both display a straightforward personality by being brutally honest about their opinions. For example, when Mother Maria asks Homer to build a chapel, Homer speaks his mind by telling her he does not want to build it. Mother Maria shows her straightforward behavior during Homer’s stay at the convent. One morning, when Homer sleeps in late, Mother to becomes extremely upset and is not afraid to show how she feels about him. Secondly, both Homer and Mother Maria display a hardworking spirit. Homer is a hardworking man because after finally agreeing to build the chapel,
“The thing I hate about space is that you can feel how big and empty it is… ”
People change everyday, whether it is from good to bad or for the better. People often say to themselves, maybe, if I didn't do “blank” this wouldn't have happened. However, the reality is, it happened, and there is no way to change that. Why go around throwing maybe’s around if you cannot change it? Authors purposefully make readers ask those questions. Authors love to create complex characters, characters that go through change. In Ellen Hopkins’ book, Crank, is the perfect example. Ellen Hopkins writes from her own daughter's perspective, Kristina, on how “the monster” changed her own life and her family's life.
The Changeable nature of life affects us all somehow. Whether it be moving to a new city, having children, or losing people that we love, it can affect people in many different ways. For example, in the novel, the main character Taylor Greer changes her name from Marietta and moves...
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
Characters: The main character in The Sign of the Beaver is Matt. Matt’s character traits are responsibility, brave, sense of humor, respectful, smart, and curious. Attean is another main character and his character traits are responsibly, brave, serious, bold, mysterious, smart, resourceful, and light on his feet. Saknis is another character; his character traits are kindness, trustworthiness, fair, respectful, and brave. Next is Attean’s grandmother. His grandmother was stubborn, strict, hateful and prejudice, she hated white people. The final character is Matt’s father his character traits are to be loving, caring, honest, and faithful.
People can change their ways overtime in a positive way. Everyone has experienced change once in their life. Some people have acknowledged change over the course of life in a positive way or a negative way. Throughout the novel “The First Stone” by Don Aker, the main character Reef alters his ways a lot positively. Reef is a teenager who changes his lifestyle and makes a huge impact in his life after he meets Leeza. This novel develops the fact that people can change in a beneficial way, no matter what situation they are in.
In Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, Beah’s imagery represents the struggle and misery of the Sierra Leone people are going through with the rebels invading. To begin, after Beah spends two days straight walking he arrives at a village that has already been condemned by the rebels. In the village Beah sees dead bodies everywhere, which fills his mind with the gruesome ways of death the men and woman suffered through: “I had seen heads cut off by machetes; smashed by cement bricks, and rivers filled with so much blood that the water ceased flowing… my body twitched with fear”(49). During this event Beah could not get these gruesome images out of his mind. Beah tries closing his eyes trying to hide away his vision to help the thoughts leave.
music starts off in a minor key and in a slow but simple rhythm. This
Change is something you are probably familiar with. In “Beneath the Smooth Skin of America,” Scott R. Sanders talks about many changes in his life. The author starts the story looking throw the eyes of himself as a child. As a child he remembers that all that was in his sight was all he could see. The author’s best example of this is he says, ”Neighbors often appeared…where they came from I could not imagine” (27). As the author begins to see more by leaving the area he was around so often he starts to see more and more things. He started moving around to different places and started seeing the things that he had not see before. The author points out many things that he began to see like the stores around the town and the different colors of places. The smell of the certain area over the one smell he was used to. In his travels to the south he noticed the bathrooms signs in the south read, “Colored” and “White.” All these different changes made his world seen bigger and bigger.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
The play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry has many interesting characters. In my opinion, the most fascinating character is Ruth because of her many emotions and captivating personality. She goes through extreme emotions in the play such as happiness, sadness, anger, stress, and confusion. Ruth is very independent, firm, kind, witty, and loving.
The war was worsened by the wealthy minerals in the ground and the influence of the mineral was strengthened by the fear and displacement the war caused. The intertwining of these two destructive forces is seen in the story Salima is told by a man who bought her. In this he tells of a man who stuffed”...the coltan into his mouth to keep the soldiers from stealing his hard work, and they split his belly open with a machete”(31). Not only does this story show the harsh conditions the men are exposed to in war, but also it further demonstrates the hold coltan has on the minds of those who live in the Congo. The want for coltan leads to the destruction of the community and individual identities of those involved as it perpetuates a cycle of war that damages men, induces violence against women, and ultimately creates a cycle of lost identity.
No one knows what will happen in his or her life whether it is a trivial family dispute or a civil war. Ishmael Beah and Mariatu Kamara are both child victims of war with extremely different life stories. Both of them are authors who have written about their first-hand experience of the truth of the war in order to voice out to the world to be aware of what is happening. Beah wrote A Long Way Gone while Kamara wrote The Bite of the Mango. However, their autobiographies give different information to their readers because of different points of view. Since the overall story of Ishmael Beah includes many psychological and physical aspects of war, his book is more influential and informative to the world than Kamara’s book.
Noah is the one of the main characters of The Notebook. He is the hero of this novel. Noah represents true love and true loyalty. In a way, The Notebook is similar to every modern day romance movie, and Noah represents the “dream man” that all the girls always imagine of having. The characters in movies are used to symbolize ideas, and in this novel, Noah represents true, faithful, committed love. Noah remains loyal to Allie even in the situation where he is unsure whether they will ever meet again or not.