Literary Devices In A Long Way Gone

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Teenagers who are about to enter the real world need to find material that challenge or connect to them so they can understand life. In Ishmael Beah’s Memoir, A Long Way Gone, his memoir is not rigorous or relative enough to produce curriculum necessary for the SHS English IV department. Beah’s writing is easy to comprehend because the text does not give enough complexity for the students. Not to mention, Beah does not connect to a SHS Student because Beah was a child soldier from Africa, while most SHS students are from United States that have cognitive problems that stem from home. Even though the memoir gives an understanding of the world problems the memoir does not offer SHS students enough rigor to be appropriate for English IV

The text gives very few literary devices, which does not allow the student to analyze the text with greater thought. For instance, when Beah was wondering around the forest to escape the terror of the civil war he had “found [himself] in the middle of a thick forest, standing beneath huge trees whose leaves and branches made it difficult to see the sky”(49-50). Ironically Beah’s imagery often, throughout the book, to get his view across but no further understanding then a child going through his or her hardships. SHS English IV students read books about coming of age all the time but they need text where they have to analyze with deep thought so he or she can have a higher comprehension level when entering the reality. Coincidentally in the same memoir, Beah uses imagery to allow the readers to view his side but not any other literary devices. As Beah looks in “the street [, which] before had been filled with banners and noise was now a silent graveyard full of restless souls fighting to reconcile their sudden deaths” (205). Beah’s usages of imagery to describe people that are dead or dying are easy to understand. An Average SHS English IV student can understand Beah’s text without thinking and this is not acceptable because these young adults need to analyze with complexity for the hardships their of