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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“Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters” (Beah 55).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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260 Words | 2 Pages

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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579 Words | 3 Pages

Ishmael Beah has experienced extreme hardships ever since he was a little boy. Growing up in Sierra Leone during war causes Ishmael’s life to revolve around such. In the nonfiction book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldiers, Ishmael Beah shares personal accounts of what it was like growing up in a period of violence and separation. Ishmael and his family live in a small village called Mattru Jong. When Ishmael is twelve-years-old, his village is attacked by rebels.

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617 Words | 3 Pages

Beah describes the difficulty of readjusting to normal life and the struggle to find a sense of belonging and purpose. Beah begins his essay by describing the surreal experience of returning to his village after the war. He writes, "Everything seemed so normal, and yet it was all so surreal." Beah had spent years as a child soldier, forced to commit acts of violence and witness unspeakable atrocities.

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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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290 Words | 2 Pages

Children are like sponges, they soak up everything they see or hear. If children see nothing but war and violence it becomes a part of them. Consequently, Babes in Arms by William Boyd discusses about Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, and his life as a child warrior. Since Beah was only 12 when the Sierra Leone War had entered his life his mind was very influenced by bloodshed and brutality.

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565 Words | 3 Pages

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was a perfect example of the loss of innocence. Innocence is such a pure thing, yet can be injured or destroyed through being around bad things. Pure means many things, but the best definition is being without contamination. Throughout this anecdote the case of Tom Robinson and the introduction to social classes and evil was shown not only to the children, but the adults too. The knowledge shared with them through this story.

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1181 Words | 5 Pages

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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1572 Words | 7 Pages

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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947 Words | 4 Pages

Innocence in To Kill a Mockingbird Throughout life, people go through varying stages of innocence. Babies are born innocent and, despite any intermittent questioning, by the end of one’s life he comes full circle and die with an innocence recovered within him. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, the plot revolves around individuals’ representations of that characteristic. The ideas that are introduced in Lee’s novel are not only revolutionary to her time period but still relevant today. The protagonist of this story is Scout Finch, a tomboy growing up in a prejudiced, Southern town.

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912 Words | 4 Pages

Fighting Ignorance and Demons According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, innocence is “the lack of experience with the world and with the bad things that happen in life”. Which people in society are too inexperienced to be evil? Children have not been on this earth long enough, have not had the chance to learn cruelty. Pearl Prynne from The Scarlet Letter is the perfect example of innocence.

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729 Words | 3 Pages

The loss of innocence in turn caused the attainment of compassion for

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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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1183 Words | 5 Pages

For instance, Marjane’s loss of innocence changes her perspective from when she was a child to when she grows older. This photo of spoiled milk represents loss of innocence because a person will, as a child, be innocent and well-behaved. When a loss of innocence takes place, a person can turn into a rebel. They aren 't as innocent as they used to be. Loss of innocence is a crucial idea when Marjane grows older.

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562 Words | 3 Pages

Innocence is not a strong enough force to combat the corruption from the evils of the world. Innocence can cause one to make bad decisions as they simply know no better. Furthermore, innocence can cause one to commit bad choices in the face of unfamiliar situations. Both All Quiet On The Western Front by Eric Remarque and The Quiet American by Graham Greene explore the concept that when one loses their innocence, it is swiftly replaced by wickedness. Both Remarque and Greene use their protagonists, Baumer and Fowler respectively, to exemplify the vulnerability of innocence and how leads to poor decision-making.

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1017 Words | 5 Pages

However, innocence does not often last forever and it could change or disappear completely due to the naive nature of it. Paz illustrates that innocence can cause grief, which can ultimately cause the change from innocence to experience through foreshadowing of the incoming danger the innocent visitor experiences during his visit to a town in Mexico. When the visitor experiences his life-changing event, he willingly or unwillingly transitions from being an innocent individual to an experienced one. Innocence can be perceived as one’s naive perception of the world. The visitor in the short story has many positive visions of the universe.

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