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Examples Of Innocence In A Long Way Gone

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Surrendering Innocence These days, innocence is recklessly thrown around and taken for granted. Innocence is the purity embedded in a young person. Being robbed of one’s purity is an unforgivable crime. In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah’s innocence is taken away when is forced into becoming a child soldier. In The Bite of the Mango, innocence is involuntarily taken from Mariatu Kamara through the amputation of her hands and the incidence of rape. Loss of innocence is a pivotal and life changing necessity because of the transformation encountered and the independence gained. Transformations, both mental and physical, can alter the innocence of a being. Beah experiences a mental transformation through being a child soldier. “In other cases, they join because there is …show more content…

“Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters” (Beah 55). Beah, along with the other child soldiers, was being groomed into having thoughts of carnage on his mind all day and night and it soon becomes easy and emotionless for him. His second transformation was trying to reverse the damage done. After fighting for the army for approximately three years, he is saved by UNICEF and rehabilitated at Benin Home. With the help of counselors and trusted friends, he eventually learns that the people he killed could never bring back his family. His innocence is returned to him when he is sent to live with this uncle and integrated back to society. On the other hand, Mariatu’s transformation is both mental and physical. At the age of 12, she had both of her hands chopped off by the rebels. “It took the boy two attempts to cut off my right hand… He brought the machete down again in a different spot, higher up on my arm” (Kamara 40-41). From that day on, she learns to adapt to her life. Another physical and mental transformation she experiences is pregnancy due to a rape. “Only women have babies, not girls” (Kamara 67). Her mindset is forced to shift from taking care of

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As people age, their innocence begins to fade. This happens progressively, as you further venture into your life, and all aspects of it. Like, witnessing death, or anything significant as such, you may feel a sense of loss, hatred, and even disgust. In the short story, “The Novitiate written by Jean Howarth”, the main character loses her innocence of a child, after realizing her brother slaughtering a gopher, in return for some cash . Her heart had shattered, as did her child-like mentality.

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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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A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah conveys his journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone, a country on the western coast of Africa, was in civil war. Throughout the country, bloodshed was bountiful as battles were being fought and lives were being lost. Ishmael Beah was introduced to war at a young age and had to learn how to survive the war stricken lands of Sierra Leone.

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