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Essay about children soldiers
A short essay about child soldiers
Essay about children soldiers
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Children who are poor are often at a disadvantage and have limited access to the basic necessities or luxuries that others have. Thus, they become victims to violence on a physical, emotional and political level, especially because the government has the power, wealth, resources and authority to implicate and enforce change. But sometimes the very system that is put in place to protect is the very cause of the destruction of the people it governs. Essentially governments acknowledge that life is a basic right but survival is a privilege. This is shown within Ishmael Beah’s “A Long Way Gone” and Susanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games”, in that both books display the many aspects of violence which children are subjected to, causing the main characters to become children soldiers, combatting everyday struggles of poverty, hunger and brutality. Fiction and Nonfiction …show more content…
“I became frustrated with living in fear. I felt as if I was always waiting for death to come to me” (Beah, 46). He began questioning if he was actually alive or he was just living. He lacked enthusiasm and his spirit began to diminish. “If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person he or she will die” (Beah, 54). Beah remembers those words of his father and changes his mind to not show emotion but hide emotion and basically become stoic and disconnect himself from the world.
Both “The Hunger Games” and “A Long Way Gone” are intertwined in that they both tell stories that shed light on the horrors of children soldiers as well as the effects of violence on children. Collins use of the “hunger games” is a literary technique and it actually means war. Thus, the main characters are both children soldiers who fight in a civil war in order to survive. They became distant and detached themselves in order to remain unaffected by the violence that took place and only when it was over could they truly absorb the realities that they’ve
A common theme that’s developed in The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is that people need their rights and freedoms. In both texts the citizens have no power nor rights. In The Giver, if people make honest mistakes they are released, a nicer term for being killed, not to mention they have no trail, and this is only one right the citizens don’t have. The receiver of memory is the only person in the community that sees what is wrong, because they have the memories of the past. One receiver, Rosemary, kills herself so the memories would go to the citizens, and influence them to rebel. Although she failed because she did not have enough memories to give the people, she influenced the next receiver, Jonas, to give
The R.U.F., however, was not alone in servicing children as their own messengers of evil, the military group countering their acts of violence also had children fighting their battles. A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango are eye-opening books because they give various people all over the world a glimpse into the horrors kids in Africa were facing on a daily basis. However different Mariatu Kamara and Ishmael Beah’s experiences were regarding their journeys and disabilities, they both exhibited the same extraordinary resilience in the end to better themselves, create futures they could be proud of, and make the best with what the war left them.
The Hunger Games and Fahrenheit 451 are both great examples of dystopian fiction. A dystopia is a fictional world that takes place in the future that is supposed to be perceived as a perfect society, but it’s actually the opposite. Other things that a dystopian society might display are citizens both living in a dehumanized state and feeling like they’re constantly watched by a higher power. Dystopias are places where society is backwards or unfair, and they are usually are controlled by the government, technology, or a particular religion. The Hunger Games and Fahrenheit 451 are both in the dystopian fiction genre because the societies within them show the traits of a dystopia. Both of them also have characters that go against the flow of the normal world.
Children exposed to violence within their communities are left with emotions of hopelessness, insecurity, and doubt. Historical events such as the war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tragic events of September 11th have had a detrimental effect on the entire nation, including the children. Although every child is not directly affected by the effects of war, it somehow has an emotional effect on all. The involvement of a nation in war affects every individual differently, whether it is out of fear, anger, doubt, hope, or love. In the short novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he narrates the story by telling his own involvement in the Civil War in Sierra Leone as a young boy and the many issues he faces while living in horror.
In the essay “Spare Change”, the author, Teresa Zsuaffa, illustrates how the wealthy don’t treat people facing poverty with kindness and generosity, but in turn pass demeaning glares and degrading gestures, when not busy avoiding eye contact. She does so by writing an emotional experience, using imagery and personification whenever possible to get to the reader’s heart. Quite similarly, Nick Saul writes, in the essay “The Hunger Game”, about how the wealthy and people of social and political power such as “[the community’s] elected representatives” (Saul, 2013, p. 357) leave the problem of hunger on the shoulders of the foodbanks because they believe “feeding the hungry is already checked off [the government’s] collective to-do list” (Saul,
The Hunger Games, a film based off of a novel written by Susan Collins, was released in March of 2012. The film, and the book it was based on, chronicles the struggles of a girl named Katniss Everdeen, a girl who lives in a poverty stricken province or “District”, until untimely circumstances forces her to play in the Hunger Games, a gladiatorial like contest where children between the ages of 12 and 18 are forced to fight to the death. A contest that was set up by an oppressive and authoritarian government, and has thus far been sustained via the forced obedience of the rebellious Districts, the brainwashing and conditioning of Districts 1 and 2, and the conditioning of the residents of its Capitol. The movie has a variety of messages, most especially in regards toward social control and social conditioning. With these ideas in mind, a case could very well be made that The Hunger Games, throughout its two hour long run time, shows a very realistic look at a socially conditioned society and what humanity can become with the right amount of conditioning and control by an authoritarian force.
Throughout time humans have struggled with the unknown, with the fear that once life is over nothing remains, that the only thing awaiting them is oblivion. To combat these fears we create various religions, belief systems, and faiths to reassure ourselves that we are not shouting into the void, that something will come out of our existence. Prime examples of these belief systems are Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism which emphasize a spiritual world. In dystopian novels, characters are often placed in situations without faith or religion such as The Giver by Lois Lowry, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the removal of faith forces characters to rely solely on themselves and helps depict the hopelessness in their world. The erasure of faith leads one to believe that it is a selling point of our society and should be kept intact, which is why Octavia Butler’s use of religion is odd in the genre. In Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower the narrator Lauren Oya Olamina creates a new religion called Earthseed and aims to offer her society hope for the future while they suffer the corruption and disintegration of the only world they know. Parable of the Sower states the function of religion, and specifically Earthseed, is to unite people in a single hope as the world goes to hell.
Ishmael Beah first spoke of the horrors he had witnessed at the “1996 United Nations presentation of the Machel Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” (“Advocate for Children,” Par. 3). This presentation focused on the devastating effects that war imparts on the children involved. Today, Beah continues to advocate and represent change for the countless number of children still involved in wars around the
Imagine living in the most undesirable society, a society filled with poverty, disease, and filth, where the government watches, monitors and controls everything you do, a society in which you have no individual choice. A society where anything you think or do against the government can be punishable by isolation, torture, or death. Freedom is inexistent, and personal thought is prohibited. A society where your career and social status are pre-determined and you cannot alter it. And imagine that the government of this society did everything in its power to make you believe that this was the most ideal living situation for you. This is a dystopian society. Citizens in a dystopian society are often brainwashed or too scared to speak up against their government. Many books and novels were compiled with dystopian themes or dystopian societies in mind, and many of these books were inspired by actual facts and individuals. Now this brings up the question; does the dystopian genre reflect real world problems? The way I will be formulating the structure of my statement will be with three different books; Hunger Games, The Giver and 1984. Every single one of these books is set in the future, in which society has drastically changed and the way of life is extremely dreaded.
In both books they share some traits, even though they may not look anything alike they are. both of these novels are dystopian novels and many characters share similarity’s.
The Hero’s journey in The Hunger Games, Star Wars, and A Wrinkle in Time have numerous similarities and a couple of different differences that are key to the stories/movies. With these different points, the best to work through, with some of the best correspondence and comparison between the three would be, the ordinary world, call to adventure, and mentor helper.
In the novel, “A Long Way Gone”, a war is beginning. Villages are being attacked by the Rebels. People are being raped, murdered, or forced to join the war. Children are separated from their parents, some never seeing them again.
One of the biggest debates for book and movie lovers is “the book was better than the movie” or “the movie was better than the book.” I’m a movie and book lover and I often find myself having this debate.It’s a debate that can go either way and it often ends in a disagreement between the fans discussing the book or movie. The book is better than the movie and there are plenty of films from the past ten years that exhibit this.
Both of the authors in 1984 and The Hunger Games present their ideas of dystopia to their readers similarly in many ways however there are some differences. As Tennessee Williams once said “caged birds accept each other but freedom is what they long for,” this quote represents both novels as the citizens of Panem and Oceania live under a terrifying dictatorship whereby they are constantly under surveillance without freedom, liberty or anything to enjoy within the society. 1984 and The Hunger Games are based in locations where the citizen are psychologically controlled as the governments are both oppressive and invasive through totalitarianism, societal inequality and with the help of technology.
Machel, Graca & Sebastian Salgado. The Impact of War on Children. London: C. Hurst, 2001.