Examples Of Loss Of Innocence In A Long Way Gone

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On Saturday, March 23 the Sierra Leone army came under attack from rebel forces from within the country called the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a ruthless group of soldiers led by a former army Sierra Leone corporal, Foday Sankoh. They would do anything to gain control of the country including the enlistment of child soldiers, and they had the upper hand until the army followed their strategy and drafted children themselves (Fyfe and Davidson). Many of the child soldiers suffered a lot of physical and psychological trauma from the war including a young boy named Ishmael Beah. In A Long Way Gone, Beah’s recounting of his experiences in the war, portrays the loss of innocence and hope in child soldiers due to the effects of war.
Throughout the course of the novel, Ishmael portrays the loss of innocence in himself and the kids around him. Before the war, Ishmael was an optimistic young boy with a passion for …show more content…

“Before I shot each man, I looked at him and saw how his eyes gave up hope and steadied before I pulled the trigger. I found their somber eyes irritating” (Beah 192). Most children would not have to face the possibility of killing a person, Ishmael used to be an optimistic young boy with a passion for rap music before the war. However, the child soldiers eventually grew accustomed to the horrors of war and some even grew to enjoy the task of killing others. One young boy stated, "I didn’t have the mind to kill someone initially…but later on I enjoyed the wicked acts…I was responsible for killing anybody that was assigned to die" (Myriam 795). The children soon saw ambushing villages as a game, where the person that killed the most was considered a hero. They

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