Themes Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beal

A Long Way Gone, written by Ishmael Beal and published on February 13, 2007, is a novel that depicts the account of a child soldier. The novel takes place in the west African Country Sierra Leone, during the time of a merciless Civil War. The novel has many different themes in it such as loss, love, death, pain, destruction, and hope, all of these themes help show the readers the impact that the war had on the country and its people. The novel contains many graphic scenes involving death and blood all to experienced by a child. A Lone Way Gone depicts the inconceivable injustice towards the people of Sierra Leone through the eyes of a child, making the injustices even more momentous to the readers. A Long Way Gone contains many terms and

Troops were deployed to defend against the Liberian rebels known as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). When Sierra Leone troops came under attack they were ambushed by not only the NPFL but also the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The RUF was led by the former Sierra Leone army corporal Fonday Sankoh, who collaborated with the NPFL. This attack was the beginning of a devastating 11-year civil war.

The politics of Sierra Leone is one of the many causes for the civil war. Since the independence, the politics in Sierra Leone became corrupt, and marked by political assassination, and mismanagement. The corrupt government is also responsible for the exploitation of Sierra Leones resources, in particularly the diamond resource. The unstable government would later use the diamonds as a source of funding for the civil war, these diamonds would later be known as “blood

They are also recognized as spiritual aids amongst members of other denominations of Christianity. The Corporal works of Mercy are considered to be the right way to behave, these works include; feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, bury the dead. Many of these corporal works can be applied to A Long Way Gone in many ways. Feed the hungry has a connection to the novel because many people went without food for long periods of time and even resorted to killing others for their food. Sheltering the homeless also applies to the novel, because to the war many people lost their homes, there villages were taken over by rebels or their homes were burned to the ground. Bury the dead also applies because so many peopled died because of the war that it is very difficult to believe that all of the bodies received a proper burial. All of these Corporal works are a result of the Civil War and it is an injustice if they are not