ipl-logo

Summary Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

486 Words2 Pages

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. The attack separates the boys from their families. The group travels through the countryside, between villages, looking for food and shelter. They stay in the village of Kamator for a time until it too is assaulted by the rebels, separating Ishmael from his brother. Ishmael travels alone for a period until he encounters a group of boys also from Mogbwemo. After several weeks of traveling the boys locate the village where their families are, only to arrive as the village is being torched by the RUF. Following this they travel toward the coast until arriving in the government controlled safe zone in Yele.
Yele’s impending siege by the rebels, forces Ishmael’s and the other boy’s conscription into the government army. The child soldiers are fueled by their hatred toward the RUF for the deaths of their …show more content…

For Ishmael, rehabilitation was a long process where his hatred and rage slowly became replaced with the realization of his actions and the horrors he endured. After being rehabilitated Ishmael moved in with the only surviving family he had, his uncle. Ishmael’s unique experience and his success in rehabilitation was causation for him to be selected to represent Sierra Leone in the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s conference on children affected by war. During the conference in New York City Ishmael met Laura Simms, one of the facilitators for the

Show More
Related
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.

Read More
704 Words | 3 Pages

Ishmael has accept the fact that the war has ruined his enjoyment of meeting new people. Because of him going into villages and being chased out because they believed he was a rebel, Or having to go through other villages because he knew nobody there and he knew what was coming to their village and he did not want to stay had ruined the experience for him until later on in his life. Ishmael's experiences force him to deny his emotional side in order to survive. His flight from RUF attacks on the various villages in Sierra Leone requires him to let go of attachments to family and friends. Although he holds out hope to see his family, he has no choice but to close off himself to the world.

Read More
1404 Words | 6 Pages

Ishmael who was once a peaceful, innocent little boy, was transformed into a man killing machine like most children. The civil war in Sierra Leone had malformed many people’s lives, personality, and faith, bringing them to extreme measures. Families were torn apart by the war, everything had changed. Homes that used to once carry families and joyful memories were no longer there, everything was demolished. Like Ishmael many children were manipulated to join the war to avenge the deaths of their families, making the war more chaotic that it should have been.

Read More
714 Words | 3 Pages

First, the text mentions that around 17,000 young Sudanese boys fled from Sudan after being separated from their families when a civil war began, and survived a total of a 1,000-mile journey. The Lost Boys traveled a long, challenging route to safety.

Read More
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.

Read More
654 Words | 3 Pages

Ishmael hoped his family was safe and not heartbroken over Junior and him. At the time, Ishmael was traveling with six other boys. All of the boys stayed quiet all afraid to speak about their families. After this, the boys were their own little family. They would travel village to village just trying to get away from the rebels.

Read More
1834 Words | 8 Pages

This transformation from a playful child mind to savagery showcases humanity being detrimental to child soldiers. Lastly, Ishmael Beah’s post-war struggles of reintegrating into society showcase the permanent effects of the traumatic experiences he encountered, and that his innocence has vanished for good. During the last part of his memoir, Beah discusses the border, “I avoided eye contact, afraid that they might see in my eyes that I had once been a soldier in the war that I was now leaving behind” (Beah 219). This encapsulates the emotional turmoil that Ishamael must now go through as a result of his harsh experiences as a child soldier. Despite his newfound freedom, he still finds it difficult to grapple with the recent feelings of displacement in society, knowing that deep down he is a massively different person than he was prior.

Read More
1038 Words | 5 Pages

They see nothing wrong with what they do. In 2007, Ishmael Beah published a memoir called “A Long Way Gone” about his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. When he was twelve, the RUF (rebels) attacked his home village of Mogbwemo while he was in Mattru Jong with his older brother and their friends. The RUF then began to attack neighboring villages, sending Ishmael and his brother running.

Read More
1261 Words | 6 Pages

Another event that was probably his final turn before deciding to become a violent child soldier. In chapter 11, Ishmael has just lost his family and blames Gasemu and tries to kill him, “walked behind Gasemu and locked his neck under my arm. I squeezed him as hard as I could” (Beah 96). this quote demonstrates how Ishmael is willing to kill now for revenge as the quote did not show any hesitation from Ishmael. As shown in the article Child soldiers battle traumas in Congo rehab, it reads, “the children, they go back to their villages and they tell other children carrying a gun is not the way” (Nima).

Read More
694 Words | 3 Pages

His journey has been long, dangerous and terrifying. He was forced to kill innocents as a child soldier by the RUF. But, thankfully for him UNICEF came in and rescued him and many other children and taught the how to function in society again. Transition to child soldier: PHYSICAL. Ishmael Beah was forced to go without sleep, forced drugs, made to walk without shoes when he had deep cuts in his feet.

Read More
235 Words | 1 Pages

The same applies to the children of Sierra Leone, where they were separated from their families—however, these children will never end up finding their families, they will never have a happy life again, and will never remember how it felt to be loved or cared for by someone. The 1991 Sierra Leonean civil war split children from their families and forced them to survive on their own—without any supervision. Many children were either captured by the rebels or were forced to join the military and fight the rebels. Nearly all “strong” children forced to endure many painful situations and commit immoral acts. All children who were not recruited were killed because they were too “weak”.

Read More
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

Read More
1661 Words | 7 Pages

The anguish of losing his family and friends is compounded by the uncertainty each day brings. Although they attempt to find a safe haven, the boys know from bitter experience that no such place seems to exist in Sierra Leone. Each new village brings either hopelessness in the form of desolation and isolation or hostility on the part of the frightened inhabitants. Beah feels that there is no place for him to call "home" any longer, and fears that such a place may never exist in his future. He must start "over and over again" with each new day, keep moving so as to avoid both the rebels and their terrified victims.

Read More
498 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
1363 Words | 6 Pages

In Green Grass, Running Water, a postcolonial magic realist novel by Thomas King, various characters' narratives are combined to show the effects of colonialism in North America's past and the harm done to native populations by white supremacy. The novel alternates between chapters that detail native creation tales, a dam project on native land, and other characters' lives while continually following the native main character Lionel, who struggles to advance in life. King's novel examines the negative impact of colonial history in North America and enforced social norms and relationships by focusing on the lives of multiple Indian characters or the individuals involved in them. In fact, Green Grass, Running Water proposes that members of marginalized

Read More

More about Summary Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Related Topics

Open Document