...Ishmael Beah All around the world, children have no choice but to fight in war in order to stay alive. Ishmael Beah, once one of these children, now acts for those who think they have no choice but to fight. Being the author of a book titled A Long Way Gone provides a platform that allows Beah to provide a better life for those in combat during their youth. This motivational memoir is about Beah’s time as a child soldier himself. Ishmael Beah has used his firsthand experiences of war and death to gain an education as well as a place in the world of advocates and entrepreneurs. Ishmael Beah had a pretty normal childhood. Well, about as normal as a childhood could be for one living in the midst of a civil war. Born November 23, 1980, Beah grew up in Sierra Leone. When he was 12 years old his country was...
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...A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah illustrates Beah’s childhood under Sierra Leone's Civil war in the 1990s. The book recounts Beah’s experience as a 12 year old boy struggling to find his family. Although this book mainly follows Beah, it also gives a lot of insight on the instability in African countries like Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah was a normal child before the Civil war in Sierra Leone, which is what the beginning of the book illustrates. In the early chapters, Beah talks about his childhood, which seemed to be very normal (Beah, 6). However, his childhood would take a drastic turn for the worse. When visiting his friends in Mattru Jong, Beah runs into swarms of people talking of rebellion. One passerby warned...
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...The autobiography untitled A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah explores his time as a child soldier for the Sierra Leone Armed Forces during the country’s civil war. During the course of the book, Beah recounts his time of being brainwashed into being a child soldier after his family and entire town is brutally murdered by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), while Beah is away with friends to attend a talent show. After years of committing violent crimes with the rebel army, and abusing various drugs such as “brown-brown” during his teenage years, Beah is removed from the rebel army by UNICEF and taken to a rehabilitation center where he heals from his time in the army and begins to opens up to others and learns to forgives himself and the people...
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...to” (Ishmael Beah, 29). At the age of twelve, Ishmael Beah’s world was turned upside-down, in the shock of the first few months’ experience with the civil war, he was not yet ready to change with the mercurial situations he finds himself in. The civilization he once knew as “home” was being rendered by attacking rebels, the land was unrecognizable by complete and utter violence. Former priorities were set aside in favor of mere survival. This specific quote captivates and sheds light on the multifaceted damage done by civil war and terrorism. As a victim of the violence, he was a young man who had lost his family and his way of life and was in turn considered dangerous by most civilians he encountered. Beah suffered from more than just simple physical pain. The anguish of losing his family and friends was compounded by the uncertainty each day brought. Beah explains, “One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end. I didn’t know what I...
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...From the child on the television in their living room whose ribs protrude from her skin and whose lips are cracked from lack of water, they turn away. From the frail, homeless veteran less than a mile from their front door, holding out his trembling hands and pleading with eyes full of pain, they turn away. People turn away and ignore the most excruciating truths of the world to avoid the discomfort and responsibility that comes with acknowledging reality. Whether it is used by individuals and villages as coping mechanisms or by countries that remain negligent to their neighbors’ problems, ignorance can be a deadly vice. Although Ishmael Beah’s survival in the war was dependent on withdrawing from reality and losing himself, both his and Mariatu Kamara’s memoirs prove that willful ignorance is a temporary solution to a...
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...A Long Way Gone is a memoir of Ishmael Beah. At the age of twelve years old his life was changed completely when he was first touched by war when the rebels first attacked his home town, Mogbwemo in Sierra Leone. This book shows the hardships, loneliness, violence and cruelty Ishmael went through. With Ishmael's courage he manages to get through the hard times he faces during his childhood while having lost his innocence. This book is moving and uplifting even with the unimaginable brutality against other humans, Ishmaels unexpected acts of kindness touch your soul. While fleeing the rebels Ishmael and his friends walked from village to village finding a safe place far from the war. At villages they were given food and water and it gave them a sense of happiness even though they know it isn't for long. They knew that their happiness is only temporary and that harder times were coming their way. Ishmael's goal in life was just to survive each passing day. Not every village they came across were they offered food and water, some villages believed they were rebels and men would confront them with spears and axes. Saidu, one of the boys traveling with Beah had lost all hope, “Every time people come at...
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...involved without much thought to the consequence of naming such disorders or what the diagnosis entail, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. While Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has remained, by and large, an accompanying evil byproduct of war it is not solely reserved for the soldiers who fight in battle; PTSD can be observed condition in any human being that has ever experienced disturbing events like those seen during war and armed conflict. In the books A Long Way Gone, Novel Without a Name, and Slaughter House Five there are clear undertones and powerful warning sign of post-traumatic stress disorder revealed in the characters during the course of the novels even if the condition was unnamed. In the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, the principal character in a story and author of this novel clearly pronounces his own battles with post-traumatic stress disorder. Beah speaks of the war violating the peaceful and happy ways of life in his home, Sierra Leone while he was only 10 years old and of how he was force onto an expedition to find his family that morphed into bloody fighting and a retribution for their deaths and of pure survival. Beah is witness to death, despair, murder, rape, and theft and is later forced into the ranks of the army to battle back again the rebels that were ripping his homeland apart. Beah finds himself using various drugs along the way that only enhances his...
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