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Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

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A Long Way Gone speaks of a child soldier who follows the idea of the word resume. Ishmael Beah's life went through a pause when he found himself surrounded by war. His book speaks of this pause in his life and how he resumed it. As a child in Sierra Leone, Beah had to face much more hardship than most anyone, but life can make anyone lose their way and put who they are on pause. However, Life may have a pause button, but it doesn’t rewind. Beah and others who have lost who they are had to search for that lost piece to bring back the life they wanted to experience. The Pause will forever be a part of them too; as they will never be able to deny their doings whilst they were lost. Beah’s experience as a child soldier caused him to lose himself …show more content…

When Beah first became a soldier, he had already faced immense suffering. He had seen people from both the army and the rebels destroy families and towns. He had lost his brother and friends along his journey. However, he lost the most important thing when he himself became that monster. He had paused his humanity. Beah states in the book how far he had gone with these words: “I grabbed the man’s head and slit his throat in one fluid motion…. His eyes rolled up and looked me straight in the eye before they suddenly stopped in a frightful glance, as if caught by surprise. The prisoner leaned his weight on me as he gave his final breath. I dropped him on the ground and wiped my bayonet on him. I reported to the corporal, who was holding a timer…. I was proclaimed the winner, and Kanei came second. The boys and the other soldiers who were the audience clapped as if I had fulfilled one of life’s greatest

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BOOK REPORT A Long Way Gone Part I: Summary A Long Way Gone is a memoir by Ishmael Beah about his experiences as a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War. The book begins with Beah's childhood in Sierra Leone, where he has a relatively peaceful life with his family until the war reaches his village.

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1585 Words | 7 Pages

When he was twelve, Beah was separated from his family when the rebels attacked his village. Beah’s journey to escape the rebel forces led him through areas where he witnessed the horrors of war and it led him to war as a child soldier. Life as a child soldier left a deep impact on Ishmael Beah. Although, he recovered physically and mentally as children often do, Beah’s writing shows his difficulty in expressing his emotions.

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1413 Words | 6 Pages

Ishmael Beah feared becoming a child soldier again when Sierra Leone’s government was overthrown by the rebels, he gets haunted by the memories of the past and what has happened throughout his life back in Sierra Leone. Back when he was a child soldier in Sierra Leone all he did in his free time was take in drugs and watched war movies which got him use to the blood and violence that he experienced while he was part of the war. He committed crimes that nobody would normally do, like torturing others in cruel ways, but he was brainwashed and didn’t know anything else besides war. He was trained to kill and that’s all there was to it for his life back then. But that changed once he got rehabilitated and was able to live among normal civilians.

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296 Words | 2 Pages

A long way gone, a story written and lived by Ishmael Beah, reveals the incredibly burdensome life lived by child soldiers. Throughout the story, these kids soldiers encounter countless obstacles that, in most cases, kids could never do. Without a sense of some form family, Ishmael, like most other refugees and child soldiers, wouldn’t have been able to make it past childhood. When Ishmael first left to do the talent show and came back to see his village devastated, the mere thought of seeing his family again helped him move forward; along with the presence of his brother Junior and their friend Talloi. The quote “ We must go back and see if we can find our families before it’s too late,” shows how much they cared for their families.

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1092 Words | 5 Pages

Beah was exposed to and committed many offenses such as killing, stealing, and many forms of trauma. After a few long years, sixteen-year-old Beah is taken out of the war by UNICEF and sent to a rehabilitation center. Eventually, Beah is helped to find

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183 Words | 1 Pages

and his group had become under the influence of drugs. After being rescued by the U.N.I.C.E.F, Beah describes his transformation from an emotionless killer, to a New Yorker, speaking in front of the United Nations. “These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which

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731 Words | 3 Pages

Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, summarizes his experiences as a child soldier. He supports this by using descriptive word choice, which creates this mostly dark tone throughout the book. His purpose was to assert that being involved with the war as a child was difficult, and that children can lose their innocence from the war, in order to get the readers to see the war from a child’s point of view. He establishes a that dark tone with his readers of the book, with people of all ages.

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648 Words | 3 Pages

This is by drugs and brainwashing from his superiors, but also by missing his family and wanting revenge. Beah went into the army with bad intentions but found the truth in retrospect saying, “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...”(Beah 199). Beah loves his family so much that he will kill to avenge them. His love of family, even if this is not morally right, makes him want to stay alive and kill everyone that is relatively related to the deaths of his family. Even though killing people isn't the best way to go about revenge, it shows how far

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160 Words | 1 Pages

Ishmael Beah has experienced more violence than most ever will. The bone-chilling fact that he became a veteran in his adolescence shows this clearly. All of this is shown in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. The gruesomely-described violence in the novel causes many reactions in those who read of his suffering, myself included. Beah wrote this story about his life to show the world a hidden truth.

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Not experiencing war is a luxury many people unfortunately do not get; however, Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, lives and survives the war, though not without heartache. With war there is always fear, death, and hell. Ishmael Beah proves war is hell through the killing of civilians, the distrust, and the after effects of the war. Ishmael proves war is hell through the killing of civilians. Many innocent bystanders of the war are forced out of their homes, made to run for their lives.

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736 Words | 3 Pages

In some cases, those who return from war experience post traumatic stress disorder; those with PTSD may seek counseling or silently agonoize. In Ishmael Beah’s memoir , A Long Way Gone, he explained his own experience in war as a child, and readers could see both physical and emotional changes. War changes people and it affects people differently. Some are not affected, while some have a hard time recuperating. Ishmael was just a young boy when he was taken into war, which made his worldliness worse.

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1109 Words | 5 Pages

That night we were so hungry that we stole people’s food while they slept. It was the only way to get through the night” (29). Correspondingly, Beah and his friends did what they had to do to survive at least through that night. Beah knew that by taking the food he was enabling the survival of others, but in that moment, the only worry on his mind was his own survival; that later on turns into a day-to-day situation. Furthermore, with the war and trying to survive, Beah was not able to

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841 Words | 4 Pages

Here, as Beah is coming off withdraws from his drug addiction, and is receiving help from Esther, memories of the violent war begins creeping back into his mind. He begins to realize how awful the things he had done to survive were and he cannot sleep without having nightmares of them. This internal conflict is still very much relevant today. Especially those who deal with post traumatic stress, mostly from being in a war of some sort or a troubled childhood. Furthermore, as Beah is sharing his war stories with Esther, she explains to him the acts he committed were not his fault, and Beah thinks, “Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member – and frankly I had always hated it – I began that day to believe it.

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498 Words | 2 Pages

The way Beah explained what happened to him, he did it in a sad way. My response to the writer is that I feel sorry for him. I cannot relate to him in any way since I have never been exposed to war and even been a soldier fighting in it. He was strong through the hardest part of his life; the actual war itself, rehabilitation, and ultimately escaping Freetown, Sierra Leone to eventually fly over to New York and start a new life. Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, replays a part of Beah’s life that will always be very vivid to him.

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946 Words | 4 Pages

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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