Not experiencing war is a luxury many people unfortunately do not get; however, Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, lives and survives the war, though not without heartache. With war there is always fear, death, and hell. Ishmael Beah proves war is hell through the killing of civilians, the distrust, and the after effects of the war.
Ishmael proves war is hell through the killing of civilians. Many innocent bystanders of the war are forced out of their homes, made to run for their lives. Ishmael witnesses many of these killings. For example, Ishmael watches a mother carrying her dead child whom “...had been shot dead as she ran for her life” (Beah 13). This mother is forced out of her home and loses her child due to the war. The
…show more content…
Ishmael has a flashback of his life in the war. In his dream he encounters a body wrapped in white bed sheets, and as he unwraps it he realizes it is his own face he is looking at. He then awakens, sweating and on the ground. He says, “I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories” (Beah 19). Even being in a different country cannot take away the hell that Ishmael has been through. His memories of war will haunt him forever. Another example of this can be seen when Ishmael is at the UNICEF rehabilitation center. Ishmael is able to sleep without the use drugs now, but does not stay asleep. He dreams of the man who almost slit his throat. He wakes up, sweating and punching the air, and runs outside. He tries to think of his childhood but is unable to do so. “The war memories had formed a barrier” (Beah 149). Ishmael is unable to think of his life before being in hell, and his only memories are of war now. These memories of hell destroyed the memory of his family. Another effect of the war is the numbness to violence. Ishmael is at the rehabilitation center with other boys who were in the war. He discovers some of the boys are fighting for the rebels side, and with partisan views, a huge fight starts. The boys are throwing punches and stabbing each other. Ishmael began kicking a boy that went after him, and then Alhaji stabs him in the back. They both “...continued kicking the boy until he stopped moving”. Ishmael says, “I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care” (Beah 135). Ishmael is no longer in the war, yet the violence and numbness to it continues. The hell from war made its way into a normal life for Ishmael. He will never be the same Ishmael from before the war. Even though war is over for Ishmael, it has lasting effects on him forever. Hell changed him, and Ishmael can not even capitulate these
Ishmael became a victim of the war the moment he became a boy soldier. He was only a young teen at the time, where substances took over his life, as he states, “In the daytime, instead of playing soccer in the village square,
Later on in the memoir, they named Ishmael the “killing machine” because he was so into violence and killing. The bad group he was with brainwashed him about his family and loved ones. He became addicted to cocaine, marijuana and brown brown which give him courage to fight and kill people without knowing it is wrong. Ishmael stayed with this bad group for a while; but later on his lieutenant gives Ishmael to the UNICEF.
I put the book down and cried. This war has broken Ishmael so much, that he is no longer an innocent little boy. The war turned him into an emotionless killing machine. He abuses drugs so much for a 12-year-old and watches violent movies to satisfy his needs. Sadly, I thought that the military was better than the rebels, but they are just the same, except on different sides.
Ishmael was threatened and forced to join the army of Sierra Leone at the age of twelve. By that time he was a killing machine. Ishmael describes his experiences of
Ishmael also loses his sense of safety while at war. One example of how Ishmael loses his sense of safety during war was when Ishamel decided to leave a village he had been staying at with his only friend. As Ishmael began walking away from his only friend, he was completely alone. He felt more unsafe than ever. He was constantly in fear, and checking behind him on his long journey to find a new village.
Some of these ways are loss of self control and impulsiveness which both relate to Ishmael, because he had no feelings self-control and impulsiveness because he had no consideration of what could happen to him during the war or what he was doing to other people. The text says “Drugs are chemicals because of their chemical structures, can affect the body in many different ways. Some drugs can even change a person's body and brain in ways that last long after the person has stopped taking drugs”. This quote is important because it proves how drugs change and it tells the affects people. Now I will show how Ishmael was traumatised.
Ishmael has accept the fact that the war has ruined his enjoyment of meeting new people. Because of him going into villages and being chased out because they believed he was a rebel, Or having to go through other villages because he knew nobody there and he knew what was coming to their village and he did not want to stay had ruined the experience for him until later on in his life. Ishmael's experiences force him to deny his emotional side in order to survive. His flight from RUF attacks on the various villages in Sierra Leone requires him to let go of attachments to family and friends. Although he holds out hope to see his family, he has no choice but to close off himself to the world.
“Example” Lillian 2 The effects of the war were apparent in the boys, both physically and emotionally traumatized by the events that changed their lives. Ishmael states that he began to feel nothing: “Nothing happened in my head. It was void” The battle that occurred that day left him
Once Ishmael is in the rehabilitation center he opens up to Ester. “I feel as if there is nothing left for me to be alive for. I have no family, it is just me. No one will be able to tell me stories about my childhood” (Beah, 167). Family was important to Ishmael and the war tore it apart from
The human condition is full of paradoxes and double meanings. We can commit the most shocking and terrible acts, but we can complete the most virtuous and honorable feats. Ishmael Beah describes the appalling and violent behavior he and other children exhibited toward the human life during his time in the Sierra Leonean civil war in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. Beah also details the forgiveness and kindness of complete strangers that helped him become the man that fate meant him to be. Homo sapiens are complex creatures brimming with irony and surprises.
(1991-2002) Ishmael’s story solely focused on the years he was affected by the war. (1992-1997) The tale begins when with Beah, his brother, and a couple of his friends, heading to another village to put on a performance and while away, they catch wind that their village had been attacked by the RUF (Revolutionary United Front). The boys' having no home to go back to, wander from village to village looking for shelter and safety.
In the book “A Long Way Gone” Ishmael has to overcome his fears and desperation especially when he ends up in villages that dislike little kids because of the assumption that they are rebel soldiers. Sometimes he comes face to face with death like the time when some of the villagers who were suffering the civil war, capture Ishmael and his new accompanied friends they were saying ”We told him we were students and this was a big misunderstanding. The crowds shouted, drown the rebels”(Beah 38). When the village guards found a rap cassette in Ishmael's pocket they played the music and it pleased the chief and so they were excused from execution and as a result they were offered to also stay in the village for how long they wanted. This part in the story paves a path from Ishmael to talk and although that was one of his major obstacles pertaining to his life he succeeded and faced adversity by pleading that they were not rebels but
The Road to Becoming a Child Soldier “I am from Sierra Leone, and the problem that is affecting us children is the war that forces us to run away from our homes, lose our families, and aimlessly roam the forests” (Beah 199). The memoir called a long way gone written by Ishmael Beah, is about a boy who lives through the deadly civil war in Sierra Leone. At the start of his story, Ishmael was traveling to a town named Mattru Jong, when the war broke out at his home town. Him and six of his friends, one of them being his older brother, all fled Mattru Jong, in attempts to escape the fighting and death. After endless days of going through the motions of walking, searching for food, and running from gunshots, they were all separated; Ishmael being
”(Beah, 112). The corporal uses the rebels as a way to control the children 's emotions and use them for himself. He makes Ishmael’s desire start to transition towards creating destruction. Later, Ishmael and his friend’s enter into the battlefield. During this time, Ishmael kills his first victim and his desire completely turns into killing sprees.
The way Beah explained what happened to him, he did it in a sad way. My response to the writer is that I feel sorry for him. I cannot relate to him in any way since I have never been exposed to war and even been a soldier fighting in it. He was strong through the hardest part of his life; the actual war itself, rehabilitation, and ultimately escaping Freetown, Sierra Leone to eventually fly over to New York and start a new life. Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, replays a part of Beah’s life that will always be very vivid to him.