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A Long Way Gone Response Essay

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A Long Way Gone Response While reading A Long Way Gone, I noticed that family is an important subject throughout the book. In the beginning, Ishmael has a mother, father, older brother named Junior, and a younger brother. Ishmael and Junior were very close. When Junior would come home from school, he would bring Ishmael rap cassettes;they would memorize the lyrics and dance to the beat. Ishmael had a rough relationship with his father because of all the stepmothers who had destroyed it. Ishmael’s mother was always happy to see her sons when they came to visit. Ishmael’s grandmother had a huge influence on Ishmael. She told him that she tried to be like the moon, and after telling him that Ishmael tried to do the same. One day, Ishmael and …show more content…

Ishmael hoped his family was safe and not heartbroken over Junior and him. At the time, Ishmael was traveling with six other boys. All of the boys stayed quiet all afraid to speak about their families. After this, the boys were their own little family. They would travel village to village just trying to get away from the rebels. These were rough times for Ishmael and the boys;they would go without food for a couple of days. Ishmael explains that they were so hungry that it hurt to drink water. The attack in Kamator was the last time that Ishmael saw Junior. Ishmael was now all alone. This was very hard on Ishmael. When Ishmael was in the forest, he thought about how his grandfather, Junior, and him would take walks on the paths around the coffee grounds. During the visits, their grandfather would give them a special medicine that supposedly made you smarter. Ishmael would take it before every test. Every single time that Ishmael’s memories of his family come up, it brings him strength and the perseverance to find them. In one village, Ishmael ran into some boys that he knew. From then on, he started traveling with those seven boys. They were like a family;they were the only people that Ishmael had. One

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Hiba Shaqra A Long Way Gone: Typed Reading Log Key Quote Insightful Comment Discussion Question “Perhaps it was necessary he This quote depicts Ishmael’s first Does Ishmael end up cling to false hopes, since they war experience. A child, clearly using this tactic, this had kept him running away dead, had lain in front of him.

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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.

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In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael's idea of home is crucial because he connects family to home and belonging. It continues to be relevant because Ishmael, although he does not have an actual place to call home, his home is his stability and his common ground which he stays sane throughout the book. Beah illuminates the idea of home to the idea of hope, and combines them forming an concept that home is hope to Ishmael throughout the book. Home is significant to Ishmael seeing that it

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In the beginning of this story Ishmael started as a boy who loved dancing and rap music, but then soon

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In hard times family should be there for one another; but not in his case. He was all alone. When his uncle came to take him back to his house to live, Beah was unsure and did not want to believe his uncles identity. His uncle then began crying and Ishmael was assured his uncle was telling the truth. In this case if they had read the whole memoir they would understand losing family would not be cool, nor would they want to experience that

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As a young child, Ishmael “had no trust or any kind of normality”(2) in his life, Ishmael wanted to have a normal childhood; he wanted to have a place to call home and live with a family who was willing to take care of him, so ismael moved to new york while moving to new york ishmael met his new adoptive mother and now ishamel relizes he has to step into normality here in new york, what was not so normal for ishmael was that he never had a report card, and ishmael needed a report

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How does one react to facing adversity, well that answer can be found in the book as Ishmael Beah progresses and get older and his actions and thoughts start to gradually change as he gets acclimated to the life of a boy soldier. The actions that Ishmael take throughout the story shape the person who he becomes who overtakes adversity itself. Ishmael and his friends traveled long roads and rivers but along

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Through transitions from dark, disconnecting thoughts to hopeful, ambitious thoughts, characters from A Long Way Gone, The Joy Luck Club, and The Alchemist, all show perseverance through trying times by looking deeper within themselves and into their inner power, which reveals how much strength each survivor hides underneath. Amid journeys and hardships, Ishmael and An-Mei find themselves lost or disconnected from their families, which can be heavy and unmanageable to them. After Ishmael loses his family, he instantly goes into a dark place. Ishmael’s anger is underlying pain, and he took it out on Gasemu before he even had time to think: “If we hadn’t stopped to rest on the hill, if we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family,

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Through this quote you are able to see just how much memories of his life have affected his journey through it and how he thinks tom his family for guidance and help in the hard and sad times of his life. In conclusion you see how memories both hindered and helped Ishmael on his journey of life by himself. In that some of them made him more sad and distracted him from what 's happening in his life now. And others helped him stay motivated and kept him on his journey.

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When Ishmael is going through rehabilitation, he meets a nurse named Esther who tries to become his friend by giving him a gift that contained a Walkman and cassette. “When I unwrapped it, I jumped up and hugged her” (Beah 154), Beah says. When Ishmael realizes that he is once again able to listen to music he is overcome with a joy he has not felt in a long time. Esther takes advantage of this and creates a friendship with Ishmael, who originally comes to see her to listen to music but eventually forms an actual relationship with the UNICEF worker. Esther also recreates Ishmael’s childhood by bringing back the things he loved before the war.

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The major theme in the story A Long Way Gone is that with family and love a person can make it through anything. Overall Ishmael’s story is a very powerful, eye opening read; it informs people on a subject that some know little to nothing about, the civil war in Sierra Leone. Beah uses the theme of family and love, along with the use of symbolism and other literary devices, to inform a larger audience of the issues that he and others had to face while trying to survive in a war zone. A Long Way Gone, an autobiographical memoir, written by Ishmael Beah, takes place in Sierra Leone during the time of their civil war.

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