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Hip hop subculture
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Essay on Sierra Leone civil war
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A long way gone by Ishmael Beah. The main characters name is Ishmael and he was very lucky in this story. Ishmael and his friends escaped from the RUF, He survived every place that he went to, Ishmael was caught by other people and was able to get away from them, and he was saved and brought to a doctor for help at the end of the story. Through the whole book Ishmael talks about the RUF, which is the revolutionary united front.
ALWG Imagery Feeling weary and distraught, Ishmael Beah, in his memoir A Long Way Gone, struggles to deal with the newly unprincipled, barbarous country of Sierra Leone, which causes him to feel despondent; this is depicted through natural imagery. To emphasize, Beah speaks about his last visit to Kamator and what he witnessed: “Dogs were feasting on the burnt remains if the imam. One dog had his arm and the other his leg. Above, vultures circled” (46).
Ishmael Beah was born in the village of Mogbwemo in Sierra Leone in 1980. The Civil War in Sierra Leone displaced Ishmael and resulted in him becoming a child soldier for the Sierra Leonean Armed Forces. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier chronicles the physical and psychological horrors of war and Ishmael’s subsequent return to society. While visiting a neighboring village with his brother and a group of friends, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) pillaged Mogbwemo.
In the memoir, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, as the war progresses, the absence of the moon becomes a symbol of the lack of protection and peace in the boys’ world. For instance, Ishmael is so wrapped up in the war he does not take a moment to relax or be at peace in the war. When Ishmael is in the war he does not see the moon as we see in this quote, “Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them”(Beah pg.80). Ishmael is recalling the memories of the war. He recalls that the moon is a sign of hope and peace in this world but during the war he does not see the moon.
A long way gone is a memoir about a young boy named Ishmael Beah whose village was overturned by refugees and had to experience the civil war first hand. A statement that caught my attention on an opininair was “Children have the right to a carefree childhood”. This statement is true because growing up in the United States, most children have fairly common childhoods, school, sports, maybe work but nothing to major. Beah and his friends went through many obstacles to try and avoid the refugees without any lessons or training on how to do so alone. They overcame things that many adults aren’t physically or mentally prepared for.
In Ishmael Beah's enthralling memoir "A Long Way Gone," the intricacies and conflicting viewpoints of war and terrorism, along with their profound impacts on Sierra Leone, are effectively conveyed through various literary devices, including vivid imagery, syntax, and diction. Ishmael's arrival at the village of Kamator after receiving news of his aunt's well-being from villagers is a particularly striking example of his use of sensory imagery. The evocative descriptions of "dew coming down every morning" and "the odor of soaked soil" encapsulate his longing to relish the captivating landscape and the transient moments of hopefulness and normalcy amidst the chaos of warfare (Beah 40). Nevertheless, Ishmael's use of short, fragmented sentences
Summery The book A Long Way Gone was written by Ishmael Beah the protagonist of the story, moved to america and graduated from Oberlin College in 2004 and written A Long Way Gone in 2007. Then later 2014 he write another book called Radiance of Tomorrow. The setting of the book was 1992-1998 Sierra Leone,Africa. Then in chapter 20 and at the end of ch.21 where Ishmael was in new york.
Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone is appropriate for the Sterling High school English IV curriculum because of Beah’s knowledge that reveals real life events that have occurred in Sierra Leone. Also, the memoir makes the reader grateful for the life he or she has today. For instance, Beah illiterates that the rebels have no sympathy for innocent lives and did not care if they lived or died. Specifically, when the rebels captured Beah and his friends and threatened to kill innocent people in front of them; “We are going to initiate all of you by killing these people in front of you”(34).
There are many reasons English teachers should select material to teach important concepts. English is a much more loosely structured class than Calculus or Physics, so there is a great deal of controversy when choosing books for students. While some titles can hold topics that resemble taboos, the experiences of the protagonists in stories of violence, poverty, and extreme struggle can encourage growth of students as learners, thinkers, and human beings. Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone is appropriate for the Sterling High School English IV curriculum because it contains honest and detailed imagery, and because it sparks a reader’s awareness of tragedies that are being forced upon their peers across the globe.
A Long Way Gone is a memoir of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, who struggles to keep his humanity. Ishmael Beah, the author, achieved success once he went off to speak at the United Nations conference and when he realized that he could not go back to the war. Beah achieved success when he went off to New York and spoke at the United Nations conference. As Beah sat around the conference listening to all the other children that represented their country, Beah sat proudly “behind the Sierra Leone name plaque..
In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah decides to write about his time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone. When he made the decision to publish his story, Beah was trying to tell three main messages to his readers. He was first attempting to get the message out to the world that conflict in Sierra Leone was a serious issue, given that at the time that he wrote his book, most Americans couldn’t even locate Sierra Leone on a map; he also tried to show how human nature can cause people to do uncharacteristically terrible things in desperate situations. Finally, Beah was also trying to portray the message that despite the immense, grief, guilt, anger, and pain that people can feel after being affected by a violent situation, a person can always be healed, if enough work is put into helping them, no matter how damaged that
Ishmael Beah’s Memoir, A Long Way Gone is appropriate for Sterling High School’s English IV curriculum because the memoir makes connections to the real world and readers can relate to the content of the story. A big part of teaching is making students aware of what is going on in the world around them. A Long Way Gone introduces students to a glimpse of what it is like surviving in a war during teenage years. Many readers have not been through war and don’t believe it is happening unless it is right in front of their faces.
In A Long Way Gone the author, Ishmael Beah, finds himself in a struggle to stay alive after the Sierra Leonean Civil War kills his family, and he is forced to become a child soldier. Throughout the memoir, music plays an integral role in Ishmael’s life. It keeps him out of trouble as a child, before he is affected by the civil war, and it saves his life, giving him hope during his quest to survive.
The way Beah explained what happened to him, he did it in a sad way. My response to the writer is that I feel sorry for him. I cannot relate to him in any way since I have never been exposed to war and even been a soldier fighting in it. He was strong through the hardest part of his life; the actual war itself, rehabilitation, and ultimately escaping Freetown, Sierra Leone to eventually fly over to New York and start a new life. Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, replays a part of Beah’s life that will always be very vivid to him.
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.