What is it about African wars that is so disturbing? Ishmael Beah’s memoir “A Long Way Gone” can help you come to an understanding of what it means to be human living under those type conditions. Beah’s childhood was gone. His experiences in the war stripped him of his humanity. When Beah was at the conferences far away from war, he felt like his life finally had meaning again.
Beah’s “A Long Way Gone” tells an important story of unwilling boy soldier, Ishmael Beah during a civil war in Sierra Leone. He finally becomes the person he feared, a killing machine capable of cruel and horrible things. This is an important book because during the tough times of the civil war Ishmael was taken to a rehabilitation center where he did struggle to understand his past or even imagine a future. The love from his foster family and real family got him to
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For example to be human, certain qualities we may have are courage, trust, and or detachment. People like Beah had courage because he fought through all of the horrible and cruel violence and still fought to go on and keep trying to find his family. Or any family at all. Courage to create the life you know that you deserve to live. He had trust when he had to rely only on other young boys and himself for survival and food. Also trust that you are never given more than you can handle. Another quality of what makes a person human is detachment. Detachment is the feeling that you have of not being personally involved in something or of having no emotional interest in it. This word relates to a quality Ishmael has because he has no emotional interest in the war or violence. It is the thing he is scared of the most. There are too many negative human emotions for us to ever be perfect. Hate, greed, jealousy and lust all mar human nature. In addition, perfection is a subjective term. What may be perfection to somebody is not perfection to