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A Long Way Gone Ishmael's Transformation

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I have recently read A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, a well written story about his transformation from a young boy to a child soldier. He was taken when he was just a little boy, still enjoying his childhood and forced to fight and murder people. This isn’t the only transformation that I have seen when reading this amazing story. I see his transformation from a child to a soldier and a soldier to a civilized adult, something he struggles with a lot. In this essay, I will be telling you about the transformations I seen while I was reading this novel.
I think Ishmael changed a lot once he became a child soldier both physically and mentally. He stopped feeling pain completely and pushed away his thoughts and feelings. He got really hurt as a child soldier, but was trained not to show weakness. He did just that because he never talked about how much pain he was in or even screamed when he was shot in his foot.() …show more content…

They brainwashed Ishmael and made him believe that he was doing good by joining their army. They made him do drugs and watch violent movies to alter his mind. He didn’t feel compassion for anyone including his victims and himself. () He didn’t even think about what he was doing when he killed people, he just thought that he was doing what he was supposed to do. Ishmael wouldn’t have done any of those things before they changed him and made him into a child soldier.
Ishmael went through a lot of terrible episodes once he was rescued by UNICEF. The first issue he had was that he still had the urges to hurt people. He would try and hurt people at the organization even if they didn’t do anything to him. Of course, that wasn’t his fault because it was what he was used to and all that he knew. He also went through withdrawals from the drugs that he was used to taking everyday. He wasn’t aloud to have any drugs which would make him short-tempered and have random

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