“No one paid any attention, as everyone was busy going through their own withdrawal stages in different ways”(Beah 169). Ishamael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, shares his experience as a boy soldier using cocaine in the Sierra Leone War. As young soldiers, the boys were introduced to many different drugs and stimulants which quickly turned into their heavy dependence on them to be strong soldiers. Among these drugs were cocaine, “a stimulant drug that is derived from the South American coca plant”(Miller)

2015 7th Grade Summer Reading NON-FICTION ASSIGNMENT My first reaction to the topic of A Long Way Gone was shock. This book is about an African boy, named Ishmael Beah, having his family and friends slaughtered, home after home destroyed, and childhood taken by the civil war in Sierra Leone. I never could imagine having everything being taken away from me and running for my life for a year like Ishmael. He was my age when he, his brother, and four other boys were chased away from their home and

In his book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah retells the very intense and traumatic events of being forced into the Sierra Leone civil war at such a young age. As he wanders through the African wilderness, trying to escape the Rebels, Beah explains old memories of his past to the readers. These memories mostly consist of his family and old adages he was told by them. One of these adages is about the moon, which will act as comfort for Beah as he searches for his family. Another thing that comforts as

There are about 250,000 child soldiers today. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah we read about his personal experience as a child soldier. In this book we see the start of the civil war in Sierra Leone before he was a soldier but as the war spreads he becomes a soldier as he didn't have another option. We see him go through loss of family and friends, brainwashing, violence, drug addiction, withdrawal and PTSD. He goes through recovery and gets better through hard work and the help of others. In

Baseline Essay: Influence of Beliefs in A Long Way Gone “It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it. I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child” (239). The memoir A Long Way Gone follows Ishmael in war-torn Sierra Leone. Ishmael’s hometown is attacked by rebels, leading him to embark on a long journey across the country. His journey comes to a stop when he is indoctrinated as a boy soldier and forced to experience the horrors of

Throughout Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, themes of reconstruction of a lifestyle are explored as Beah learns to adapt to his current situations. The importance of reconstruction is displayed through Beah’s ability to rebuild his mindset and mannerisms over and over again after being placed into a new environment. This talent for being able to let go of the past and redefine himself is one of the key factors in Beah’s miraculous survival as those around him pass away. To start, one of Beah’s first

A Long Way Gone: War and Rehabilitation Following the life of Ishmael Beah in his autobiography, A Long Way Gone, readers experience how a young boy adjusted to drastic changes in lifestyles. The first- and perhaps more marked- change in lifestyle was when he became a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Army. The second was when he was taken away to be rehabilitated by UNICEF. Although there are several important components in both Ishmael’s life at war and his life during rehabilitation, it is his

The book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, the main character Ismael Beah tells a story of his first hand account of Sierra Leone’s civil war. Ismael Beah was a boy soldier who went from village to village with his brother and some friends in search of food and shelter. Beah was eventually brainwashed into thinking that what the group was doing would make up for his own family’s death. While his is fighting for the government he is heavily drugged to the point that he believes that what