Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Keratoconus is a disease on the eye that doesn 't allow the patient to see beyond six inches. These patients only have the ability to see throughout one eye. This creates a one-sided perspective on the world, a one-sided view on humanity. A one-sided perspective could have a dangerous effect on a person 's mindset. Keratoconus is only apparent in about three in every two thousand people, although we continue to place ourselves in the same position. Only hearing one side of the story is equivalent to only seeing one side of the world. A single story is the idea of just hearing one side, just listening to the prosecution, just hearing one side of an argument. A single story brings the dangers of a discriminatory perspective upon the world.

The civil war in Sierra Leone amplifies the tremendous danger of a single story because one may see the rebellion as an act of justice, where another may see it as just another bloody rebellion. The civil war in Sierra Leone broke out on March 23, 1991. The book A Long Way Gone is an autobiography of a child soldier 's life throughout the war. Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, experienced the civil war in Sierra Leone firsthand. Sadly, while he was there, he had not uncovered the other side of the story. The army, loyalists, had manipulated the soldiers as well. “Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible to everything that has happened to you.”(Beah) The army had manipulated his mind to think that all soldiers were responsible for the death of his family. He had only heard this story, he had only known this to be the truth, so he believed every word. The other single story regarding the civil war in Sierra Leone is the cause of the war. The RUF, or the Revolutionary United Front, fought for “justice”. They killed millions of innocent civilians, and then the government army began to do the same. However, the soldiers did need money for the ammunition and firearms. The funding was coming from diamonds, blood diamonds. Clearly, the RUF soldiers weren’t fighting for “justice” because they were killing thousands of people, they were fighting for the diamonds, they were fighting for the money. The Blood Diamond Documentary explains how this secret was kept from most citizens of Sierra Leone. Those who knew, mined. In the Blood Diamond Documentary, Usman Conteh remembers: “We were in a motor car, in a truck, more than a hundred of us. I thought that since we had been captured, they were going to kill us. They brought us here to suffer, they told us to mine… It was day and night,... they would kill us if you tried to rest.” (Blood Diamond) Usman Conteh was just one of several soldiers who didn’t know what was