The bully Barry Bagsley used nasty words to hurt Ishmael, James Scobie used well-constructed sentences to defend himself, and Orazio used humour to make people laugh and Ishmael described events which took place in the book well. This proves that the statement made in the thesis that the characters in the book Don’t Call me Ishmael demonstrate the power of language and how it can build someone up, tear them down, give them confidence or leave them broken, is true using the information
Ishmael Beah had grown up in Mogbwemo, Sierra Leone, a tight knit community where he was always surrounded by people who cared about him. Sierra Leone was always pleasant place to live until the chaos of the Civil War attacked the village. “The first time that [Ishmael] was touched by the war [he] was twelve… [He] left home with Junior, [his] older brother, and [their] friend Talloi… to go to the town of Mattru Jong to participate in [their] friends’ talent show” (Beah, 6). The war hit Mogbwemo very unexpectedly, “Since [Ishmael and his friends] intended to return the next day, [they] didn’t say goodbye or tell anyone where [they] were going.
The Struggles During Wartime The sierra Leone child soldier survivor Ishmael Beah. He had to deal with the separation of his family at twelve-years old, exposure to guns, violence and starvation,but, the worst of all was when he had to become a killer. One of the many struggles Beah had to deal with when he was a little kid was the exposure to gun and violence.
Many times, others view unknown situations or topics as “cool”. Many times, they fail to realize the hardships others face. In “A Long Way Gone”, Beah’s friends had thought his experiences were cool but they would not feel the same way if they had read the memoir and understood the emotions and situations he had faced. Ishmael Beah’s memoir goes on to explain all the reasons why his experiences were not nearly cool.
Since the invention of guns, they have brought chaos, war, and fear to the world. Guns give people power, and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, gives great examples of this. In the reading, children and villages are afraid of ongoing war and fear armed rebels terrorizing villages.
The novella Generals Die in Bed was written by Charles Yale Harrison who was born in Philadelphia and raised in Montreal. Harrison fought in World War 1 with the Canadian army and later became a writer in New York City. Generals Die in Bed is a fictional novella based on Harrison’s personal experience with the army that mostly takes place in France from the early part of the war until 1918. The story follows a private throughout his time on active duty that offers a brutally honest depiction of the war trenches during World War 1. As the novella progresses, we gradually see the narrator’s growing hatred for war.
War is a haunting time that affects all humans in one way or another at some point in their lives, and this is explicitly shown in Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone. This book was written from the point of view of Ishmael himself, whose life experiences are almost unimaginably daunting, telling his story as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Civil War. The whole candor of the story is surprising, as Beah goes into much detail about some of the horrible things he did whilst fighting, and how this has affected him in his adolescence and adulthood. His purpose for writing is not very clear, as he published it a number of years after the war had already ended officially, which is understandable given the things he went through, which leads
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (rpt. in Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 11th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2012] 278-285) is quite ironic in its presentation. The nameless narrator in the story leads the reader into making an observation that supports the title; however, the story ends up in a turmoil that baffles the reader; leading to a change in ideas that were developed earlier. The story gives a false sense of harmony by its setting and how Jackson describes the preparation for the lottery, this leads to a misconception that the tradition is jovial.
Ishmael is at the rehabilitation center with other boys who were in the war. He discovers some of the boys are fighting for the rebels side, and with partisan views, a huge fight starts. The boys are throwing punches and stabbing each other. Ishmael began kicking a boy that went after him, and then Alhaji stabs him in the back. They both “...continued kicking the boy until he stopped moving”.
Ishmael Beah, recalls his time as an orphaned child soldier, in Sierra leone, in his memoir A long way gone. Amongst those who were moved by the memorable piece of literature, there are those who quarrel with the idea that it is a completely factual account of the events that took place in Sierra Leone and the details regarding the physical wounds he obtained. While some of the claims made against its accuracy made are valid, It does not diminish the merit of the memoir. Beah’s escapade as a child soldier, his rehabilitation and the universal themes contribute to the immense worth of the novel, and allow the reader to walk away enlightened.
To Live Another Day Fear of the unknown drives all selfish decisions. In times of fear and danger, people must decide to save their own skin or to sacrifice their safety to help those around them. Throughout the war, Beah struggles with doing what is right while Kamara follows her instincts to save herself. With death happening all around Beah and Kamara, the two children dreamed of safety, yet that was taken away from them because of the deceptions from the RUF.
The human condition is full of paradoxes and double meanings. We can commit the most shocking and terrible acts, but we can complete the most virtuous and honorable feats. Ishmael Beah describes the appalling and violent behavior he and other children exhibited toward the human life during his time in the Sierra Leonean civil war in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. Beah also details the forgiveness and kindness of complete strangers that helped him become the man that fate meant him to be. Homo sapiens are complex creatures brimming with irony and surprises.
The message is unmistakable yet is revealed in a silent eloquence. One cannot help but to imagine the morning sky as the sun peaks above the horizon, or the blasts of purple and orange shooting across as the sun goes to rest.
Work: A Long Way Gone Thematic Subject: Survival In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah presents the idea that the way to survival can be a long and rigorous journey of living each day to the next. Ishmael’s only way of getting through the war was to keep that mind set at such a desperate time. This is shown when Ishmael leaves Kaloko along with the others because he became “frustrated with living in fear” (Beah, 46). He leaves them, taking as many oranges as possible; like it’s his last.
That morning and evening was the third day of God re-creating the Earth. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the galaxies of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, which we call the S_ N, and the lesser light to rule the night, which we call the M_ _ N and he made all the other stars in the sky too. So God set the Sun and the Moon in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness:
