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Long Way Gone Quotes

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Baseline Essay: Influence of Beliefs in A Long Way Gone
“It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it. I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child” (239). The memoir A Long Way Gone follows Ishmael in war-torn Sierra Leone. Ishmael’s hometown is attacked by rebels, leading him to embark on a long journey across the country. His journey comes to a stop when he is indoctrinated as a boy soldier and forced to experience the horrors of war from the perspective of a fighter. His journey ends with rehabilitation and a newfound duty to represent the boy soldiers of Sierra Leone. Throughout Ishmael’s journey his perception of the world shifts analogously with his experiences and overall …show more content…

As a soldier, Ishmael’s mental state is severely affected due to the various drugs he is on: “Smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more up of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them” (121). Explanation. The drugs cause harsh side effects such as agitation and erratic decisions that lead Ishmael to view the world differently than he would when sober: “But after several doses of these drugs, all I felt was numbness to everything and so much energy that I couldn’t sleep for weeks.” (148) Not only are boy soldiers affected by drugs, trauma too plays a role. In rehabilitation, many of the boy soldiers don’t know how to interpret the world due to the trauma they have experienced: “Boys sometimes ran out of the hall screaming, “The rebels are coming.” Other times, the younger boys sat by rocks weeping and telling us that the rocks were their dead families. Then there were those instances when we would ambush the staff members, tie them up, and interrogate them about the whereabouts of their squad, where they got their supplies of arms and ammunition, drugs, and food” (175). The trauma from the war sticks with the boys and causes them to have an altered perspective on their

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Examples Of Hope In A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

564 Words | 3 Pages

A Long Way Gone is Ishmael Beah’s memoir. It retracts all of the tragic events Ishmeal endured while the Sierra Leone civil war occurred. Ishmael was a child who lived an ordinary life until rebels infiltrated his village which left him and others with no choice, but to flee. He was then forced to become a child soldier. This book shows the physical and mental torture Beah had to go through while has was a child soldier.

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Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

1585 Words | 7 Pages

When he was twelve, Beah was separated from his family when the rebels attacked his village. Beah’s journey to escape the rebel forces led him through areas where he witnessed the horrors of war and it led him to war as a child soldier. Life as a child soldier left a deep impact on Ishmael Beah. Although, he recovered physically and mentally as children often do, Beah’s writing shows his difficulty in expressing his emotions.

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Attachment In Ishmael's Benin Home

704 Words | 3 Pages

Ultimately, there is a disconnect from reality when the addiction takes hold. Without the drugs, as in Benin Home, Ishmael becomes aggressive and the boys resort to raiding the hospital to quell their hunger. When the drugs begin to wear off, Ishmael's headaches return - as do images of slaughter. Violent movies, like the drugs, help to create a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere for the boy soldiers. They would often go on attacks in the middle of films like Rambo or Commando, sometimes acting out techniques seen in the movies on the battlefield, and then pick up where they left off when returning to base.

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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier

1294 Words | 6 Pages

6 PG. 37) Also another main focus could be, just because something you been through was bad, doesn’t mean that effect would be negative. Meaning, Ishmael didn’t know what to expect once becoming a boy soldier. However he was given drugs at a young age, to let nothing bother him and stopping him from doing his duties.

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Similarities Between Night And A Long Way Gone By Elie Wiesel

787 Words | 4 Pages

He undergoes many difficult situations that he either has to live with, or die. He changed from a young, innocent boy to a careless soldier, to a rehabilitated adult due to his war ravaged country. During the war, Ishmael was separated from his family. He had hope throughout the story that one day he would be reunited with his family, this sliver of hope pushed him to keep walking and not give up. Ishmael later witnessed the attack of the village his family was supposedly in and finally found out his family was dead (Beah, 117).

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A Long Way Gone Quotes

131 Words | 1 Pages

A Long Way Gone: inaugurates a world where young men, like Ishmael Beah, are forced to participate in the civil war of Sierra Leone causing them to lose their families. This book definitely outlines the importance of family through Ishmael’s experiences of adaptation, i s o l a t i o n , a n d m e m o r i e s o f h i s p a s t . A L o n g W a y G o n e t e a c h e s u s a l e s s o n t o a p p r e c i a t e t h e family we have, compared to the loneliness Ishmael once felt as a young

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Examples Of War In A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

816 Words | 4 Pages

Ishmael woke up in the middle of the night firing his gun when the lieutenant and corporal “threw water on [his] face and gave [him] a few more of the white capsules” (120). Ishmael has had nightmares before but this is the first time it has happened when he’s a soldier. The white capsules are speed or the proper name for them is methamphetamine. These drugs were given to child soldiers to keep them alert and awake. This causes addiction to speed which is terrible for kids.

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Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

832 Words | 4 Pages

He wanted us to not only fully understand what war was all about, but also understand the personal side effects it set on all the soldiers. The physical, the emotional, and the mental side effects that many of us do not take into consideration. Beah wants to show us that war can totally change a man’s foundation. It can twist your views and your rule of judgement; things you never would once ever think of doing now seem okay because of all the repercussions of war. To give you a better understanding of what i mean, after being forced into military combat and put on many different drugs, Ishmael takes place in a throat

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Examples Of Resilience In A Long Way Gone

498 Words | 2 Pages

"We were all scared, but there was nothing we could do. We had to walk forward, we had to fight, we had to survive” (Beah Pg 42). This illustrates the tenacity Ishmael had to show to endure as a young soldier in Sierra Leone. Despite his fear and uncertainty, Ishmael knows he must move forward and fight for his life. Ishmael is a prime example of the resilience that can be enforced in the face of even the most traumatic situations, due to his ability to adapt and his dedication to surviving.

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A Long Way Gone Analysis

1110 Words | 5 Pages

Ishmael has a flashback of his life in the war. In his dream he encounters a body wrapped in white bed sheets, and as he unwraps it he realizes it is his own face he is looking at. He then awakens, sweating and on the ground. He says, “I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories” (Beah 19). Even being in a different country cannot take away the hell that Ishmael has been through.

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A Long Way Gone Conflict Analysis

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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A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

1513 Words | 7 Pages

In the memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, Beah writes about his childhood to teen years being an unwilling child soldier in Sierra Leone and living through times of great tragedy and war. Ishmael was born in Sierra Leone in 1980 and he moved to the United States in 1998 where he finished high school at the United Nations International School in New York. Ishmael went to Oberlin College. He is also a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Watch Rights Division Advisory Committee. He has spoken in front of the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO), and many other NGO panels on how children are affected by war.

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A Long Way Gone Character Analysis

1035 Words | 5 Pages

Later, UNICEF came and decided to take Ishmael out of the war and put him in a rehabilitation center. In this part of the novel, the reader can see how his desire for killing has controlled him completely. By fighting and killing rebel members in the rehabilitation center and beating up the guards to force them into doing what the children wants to do, the reader can see that the war has changed their ways of life and thoughts. The army was able to change Ishmael 's desires and from that, he became a deadly

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Comparison Of The Holocaust And Armenian Genocide

703 Words | 3 Pages

In the book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael becomes a child soldier at the age of 12 for the governmental team the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, in order to fight the Revolutionary United Front. Ishmael goes from being a regular kid who liked to spend time with his friends

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A Long Way Gone Theme Essay

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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