ipl-logo

Themes Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

1181 Words5 Pages

The Hardship of a Child Soldier
Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23). A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah conveys his journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone, a country on the western coast of Africa, was in civil war. Throughout the country, bloodshed was bountiful as battles were being fought and lives were being lost. Ishmael Beah was introduced to war at a young age and had to learn how to survive the war stricken lands of Sierra Leone. Beah had to persistently look for food, face unimaginable dangers and run from the battle front. Eventually getting captured by the …show more content…

Beah went through war as a child soldier having to fight daily against the rebels. “I lay there with my gun pointed in front of me, unable to shoot… I felt as if the ground had turned upside down and I was going to fall off... I couldn't think, but I could hear the sounds of the guns far away in the distance and the cries of people dying in pain.” (Beah 117-118) Beah was going through something that was utterly horrible and terrifying. After going through war as a child soldier Beah went through rehabilitation to be able to live a somewhat normal life again.“... my migraines had returned with a vengeance. It was as if a blacksmith had an anvil in my head… I cringed and rolled around on the floor… No one paid any attention, as everyone was busy going through their own withdrawal stages.” (Beah 140) Beah had to go through withdrawals that was caused by being a soldier. However Beah was able to be rehabilitated and live with his uncle and integrate back into life. “When the day of my repatriation finally came, I packed my few belongings in a plastic bag. I had a pair of sneakers, four T-shirts, three shorts, toothpaste..” (Beah 180) Beah did not have much, only a couple of t-shirts and shorts. Beah’s journey through war and rehabilitation showed his will to survive and overcome even the most vigorous of

Show More
Related
577 Words | 3 Pages

The biography, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah, tells the story of a thirteen year old boy who spends his childhood being compelled to fight in the civil war in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah tries to avoid fighting for the rebels by running from town to town with his friends as the rebels advanced. Finally, his luck runs out and Ishmael Baeh is forced to serve in the civil war for the rebels. The story goes on to describe his horrific childhood as a soldier in Sierra Leone and his eventual rescue by Unicef and rehabilitation center. In this passage, Ishmael Beah created a mental image that allows us to visualize how disturbing and how unreal living in wartone Sierra Leone during the early 1980’s.

Read More
1585 Words | 7 Pages

The influence of war on his inner turmoil is exhibited when he encounters the wounded family in the van. This was his first real exposure to the casualties of war. He personifies the ground he stood on. He writes that he felt the ground moving beneath his feet (13). Beah feels as if he no longer stands on solid ground because the world he firmly knew has shifted, leaving him dazed and confused.

Read More
579 Words | 3 Pages

Ishmael Beah has experienced extreme hardships ever since he was a little boy. Growing up in Sierra Leone during war causes Ishmael’s life to revolve around such. In the nonfiction book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldiers, Ishmael Beah shares personal accounts of what it was like growing up in a period of violence and separation. Ishmael and his family live in a small village called Mattru Jong. When Ishmael is twelve-years-old, his village is attacked by rebels.

Read More
617 Words | 3 Pages

Now, back in his home village, he struggled to reconcile his experiences with the everyday life around him. One of the biggest challenges Beah faced was reconnecting with his family. He writes about the awkwardness and discomfort of trying to rebuild relationships that had been shattered by the war. He felt like a stranger in his own home and struggled to communicate with his parents and siblings.

Read More
183 Words | 1 Pages

In Ishmael Beah’s memoir ‘a long way gone’, Beah describes his experience as a child soldier. A deep message that Beah conveys is that “children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings if given the chance”. During Beah’s journey as a child soldier, he commits multiple graphic acts under the influence of drugs, such as demanding that prisoners dig their own graves, then burying them alive (151). This event shows how far gone mentally Beah

Read More
555 Words | 3 Pages

Beah becomes a pile of clay into the army’s hands thanks to his plight in life; he lost his family, friends and village because of the war, strangers everywhere he goes mistrust him and he has no basic human needs like water to drink and food to eat. Beah is angry, vulnerable and exhausted. The first stage of vulnerably he feels is the lack of basic human needs. While roaming the county, there is very little food and water in abundance and this causes many problems for Beah and his friends.

Read More
1751 Words | 8 Pages

“I still held my uncle in my arms, tears running down my face. My entire body had gone numb. I couldn’t move from where I sat,” (Beah 208). Beah loved his uncle so much since he was part of his family and was the one person that took him in. At the sight if his death he was deeply saddened unlike the times he was deaths during the war.

Read More
477 Words | 2 Pages

The rebels were obviously armed and dangerous, so Beah had to escape his town and leave his parents behind as a “sacrifice”. He had to live with other boys without the protection of his parents. This makes him wander off alone, trying to survive. He had to go through many problems without the aid and love of his parents.

Read More
452 Words | 2 Pages

In his novel, he describes the harrowing conditions he had to endure during the Sierra Leone War. In "The Long Way Gone," he exudes how childhood wartime experiences affected his life negatively. Childhood wartime experiences tormented Ishmael Beah through flashbacks. It would remind him of afflicting memories of the war. According to the author,

Read More
160 Words | 1 Pages

Ishmael Beah has experienced more violence than most ever will. The bone-chilling fact that he became a veteran in his adolescence shows this clearly. All of this is shown in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. The gruesomely-described violence in the novel causes many reactions in those who read of his suffering, myself included. Beah wrote this story about his life to show the world a hidden truth.

Read More
1110 Words | 5 Pages

Not experiencing war is a luxury many people unfortunately do not get; however, Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, lives and survives the war, though not without heartache. With war there is always fear, death, and hell. Ishmael Beah proves war is hell through the killing of civilians, the distrust, and the after effects of the war. Ishmael proves war is hell through the killing of civilians. Many innocent bystanders of the war are forced out of their homes, made to run for their lives.

Read More
339 Words | 2 Pages

The concept of family changes throughout Beah's experience in the war. At first, his family consists of his mother, father, and two brothers. This is when he is very young. His parents divorce, leaving him with his brother and his father, along with a stepmother. As the war begins to affect Beah, his father is left behind.

Read More
1118 Words | 5 Pages

How would you feel if you were forced into warfare at the young age of thirteen as a revenge to your entire family’s death? In Ishmael Beah’s novel A Long Way Gone, Beah tells the story of his life as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Army following Sierra Leones invasion by the Revolutionary United Front, as well as his long journey of rehabilitation following the war. Ultimately, the cruelty of the war in Sierra Leone causes Beah to obtain relationships with many symbols in his life, including his cassette tapes, the moon, as well as his dreams and nightmares.

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
396 Words | 2 Pages

In the book reveiw for Ishmael Beah’s memoir, “Babes in Arms” the author, William Boyd, outlines the difficulties Ishmael Beah had to go through as a child soldier. As a result of the war in Sierra Leone, the wartime experience Beah had to withstand as a child impacted his life. First of all, there were many obstacles Beah had to face as a child soldier, but one in specific was the separation of his family. This can best be explained in the following quote, “A 12- year- old is conscious only of immediate circumstances, and in Beah's case the arrival of the rebels in his small town meant sudden separation from his parents…”(Boyd.

Read More

More about Themes Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Related Topics

Open Document