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Analysis Of Ishmael Beah In A Long Way Gone: The Hero's Journey

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John Green once said, “For me the hero’s journey is not the voyage from weakness to strength. The true hero’s journey is the voyage from strength to weakness.” Ishmael Beah went from feeling like he was on top of the world to feeling like he didn’t belong in this crazy world. Beah follows Campbell’s idea of the hero's journey. It appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization.In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah wrote about his life experience before he came to America and what he had to go through as a kid. With losing his family, then becoming a child …show more content…

When he finally gets out and is with at least someone he is blood related to, then his uncle ends up dying and he runs away to try and get to America. A Long way Gone follows the pattern of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, The Hero’s Journey.
The Hero’s Journey of Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone starts off with the separation stage of the journey. This stage is about the separation of the hero from the normal world. “The separation of our parents left marks on us that were visible to the youngest child in our town. We became the evening gossip.” (Beah 42) In the ordinary world we judge people based

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The book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir about himself involved in war as a child. War began happening in Ishmael’s hometown in Sierra Leone, which was Mogbwemo, so everyone broke apart and he lost his family, except for his brother. He had to start running away from the war to stay alive, so he went with some of his friends and his brother into different provinces of Sierra Leone. They went from village to village looking for food, shelter and safety. Ishmael was caught many times by the army and he thought he was stuck with them forever, but he escaped many different ways.

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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is the true story of Ishmael Beah’s, the author and narrator, experience leading into and eventually becoming a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s military during the Sierra Leonean Civil War. The story begins with Beah, then a twelve year old child, leaving his home village of Mattru Jong to attend a talent show where he and other boys, including his brother Junior, would hip-hop dance to their favorite music genre, rap. On his way he encounters his grandmother’s village where she convinces the boys to stay the night, in the morning he is stunned to learn that Mattru Jong was attacked by the Royal United Front (RUF) and that the people who were in the village were now dead or refugees. After this, Ishmael

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A long way home by Ishmael Beah. Ishmale Beah was born the 23 of November 1980 at Mogbwemo,Bonthe District, Sierra leone. the reason why he wrote Along Way Gone cause he is talking about as a child soldier during sierra Leones decade-long civil war from 1991 to 2002. this memoir, or collection of Beahs memories of that time, choronicles the attack on Beahs village, his subsequent confusion as he wanders the area looking for food and shelter, his indoctrination or brainwashing as an unwilling child soldier, and the period after his. The reason why escape from his home country to his arrival in the United States cause his place had got attacked by some soldiers.

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In Ishmael Beah’s personal memoir, A Long Way Gone, music courses through the story quite often. Music is first seen in Ishmael’s peaceful childhood. He and his friends enjoy singing and dancing along to music, in particular, Rap Music. As the story progresses, and the war becomes more prevalent in the young boys lives, rap continues to play a substantial role in their lives, just in a different way. At the end of Ishmael’s life story, there is yet another role that music plays.

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The book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” is an autobiography about a boy named Ishmael who went through so much at a young age. This book should be read because it’s a story you could relate to and give you a perspective of how society is today than it was before and how it has affected people across the world. On the (front cover of the book) Carolyn See from the Washington Post says “Everyone in the world should read this book… We should read It to learn about the world and about what it means to be human.” She’s right, reading this book will provide you with facts you never known and could change the way you see things today.

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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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Memories “Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose”(Arnold). In the book a long way gone a boy named Ishmael beah tells his story. In this novel Ishmael’s village is eventually raided and he becomes on his own. Through being on his own he thinks of the past and memories of a better life. These memories that he thinks of can hinder him and help him along the way through his journey.

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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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At the age of 13 till the age of 16 the author, Ishmael Beah, pulls himself through many terrible conflicts in Sierra Leone. The author uses conflict to show his readers the realism of his story. By using conflict in many different ways, it allows readers to gain an understanding of how Ishmael struggles changed his life for worse and for better. By using person vs person, person vs society, person vs self, and person vs nature conflict the author is opening doors allowing readers to get a full understanding of Ishmael 's challenges of a life in war. The most commonly seen conflict in ‘A Long Way Gone’ is person vs society.

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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 relationship with fear, how he deals with trauma, and his character in general which significantly share resemblances in each of the two mentioned lifestyles.

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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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