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A Long Way Gone Analysis

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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. Ishmael witnesses many of these killings. For example, Ishmael watches a mother carrying her dead child whom “...had been shot dead as she ran for her life” (Beah 13). This mother is forced out of her home and loses her child due to the war. The …show more content…

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. His memories of war will haunt him forever. Another example of this can be seen when Ishmael is at the UNICEF rehabilitation center. Ishmael is able to sleep without the use drugs now, but does not stay asleep. He dreams of the man who almost slit his throat. He wakes up, sweating and punching the air, and runs outside. He tries to think of his childhood but is unable to do so. “The war memories had formed a barrier” (Beah 149). Ishmael is unable to think of his life before being in hell, and his only memories are of war now. These memories of hell destroyed the memory of his family. Another effect of the war is the numbness to violence. Ishmael is at the rehabilitation center with other boys who were in the war. He discovers some of the boys are fighting for the rebels side, and with partisan views, a huge fight starts. The boys are throwing punches and stabbing each other. Ishmael began kicking a boy that went after him, and then Alhaji stabs him in the back. They both “...continued kicking the boy until he stopped moving”. Ishmael says, “I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care” (Beah 135). Ishmael is no longer in the war, yet the violence and numbness to it continues. The hell from war made its way into a normal life for Ishmael. He will never be the same Ishmael from before the war. Even though war is over for Ishmael, it has lasting effects on him forever. Hell changed him, and Ishmael can not even capitulate these

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These three core topics stay the same yet, as Ishmael’s response changes we see how deeply the war is affecting him. As we make our final round back to the beginning, to see the young boy Ishmael was once again. Right before the war finally hits Beah’s village we see some refugees come into the village, trying the wreckage of the war. This is where Ishmael’s first opinion on war formulates, or at least shown. “At times I thought

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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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Some of these ways are loss of self control and impulsiveness which both relate to Ishmael, because he had no feelings self-control and impulsiveness because he had no consideration of what could happen to him during the war or what he was doing to other people. The text says “Drugs are chemicals because of their chemical structures, can affect the body in many different ways. Some drugs can even change a person's body and brain in ways that last long after the person has stopped taking drugs”. This quote is important because it proves how drugs change and it tells the affects people. Now I will show how Ishmael was traumatised.

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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.

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In the novel, “A Long Way Gone,” Ishmael Beah suffers from PTSD due to the exposure to war at such a young age and the rehabilitation process. Ishmael was exposed to guns, drugs and other types of violent acts due to the war at the age of 12. As time went by, Ishmael lost his family and slowly his friends too. Ishmael was traumatized from all the violence he experienced due to the war approaching his village. He had been forced by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces to serve as a child soldier during a civil war and “It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it.

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He was so close to finally seeing them again that when he lost that opportunity, it was like losing them all over again. This impacted him emotionally. Losing his family again made him angry and sad at the same time. He is filled with frustration and anger, and he later took his frustration out on Gasemu with violence. Ishmael lost many things during the war, the most impactful on his path was his family being lost.

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In the book “A Long Way Gone” Ishmael has to overcome his fears and desperation especially when he ends up in villages that dislike little kids because of the assumption that they are rebel soldiers. Sometimes he comes face to face with death like the time when some of the villagers who were suffering the civil war, capture Ishmael and his new accompanied friends they were saying ”We told him we were students and this was a big misunderstanding. The crowds shouted, drown the rebels”(Beah 38). When the village guards found a rap cassette in Ishmael's pocket they played the music and it pleased the chief and so they were excused from execution and as a result they were offered to also stay in the village for how long they wanted. This part in the story paves a path from Ishmael to talk and although that was one of his major obstacles pertaining to his life he succeeded and faced adversity by pleading that they were not rebels but

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“Example” Lillian 2 The effects of the war were apparent in the boys, both physically and emotionally traumatized by the events that changed their lives. Ishmael states that he began to feel nothing: “Nothing happened in my head. It was void” The battle that occurred that day left him

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I could hear gunshots and screams all around me... I ran for hours without stopping, my chest heaving with exhaustion” (Beah Pg. 29). This shows that even in the most trying situations, it is possible to persevere and triumph. Ishmael has displayed incredible resilience in the face of

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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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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.

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The human condition is full of paradoxes and double meanings. We can commit the most shocking and terrible acts, but we can complete the most virtuous and honorable feats. Ishmael Beah describes the appalling and violent behavior he and other children exhibited toward the human life during his time in the Sierra Leonean civil war in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. Beah also details the forgiveness and kindness of complete strangers that helped him become the man that fate meant him to be. Homo sapiens are complex creatures brimming with irony and surprises.

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(Beah, 105) During their first battle, Ishmael explains his experience as almost out of body, “I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacre I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head." (Beah, 119) Then, when Ishmael is in the process of being rehabilitated, he PTSD is the worst.

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Now, he compares himself from when he was a soldier to how he is doing in rehabilitation. In the book A Long Way Gone, the story follows Ishmael and his experience being a child soldier. For example, child soldiers experience things that mature them at a young

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(1991-2002) Ishmael’s story solely focused on the years he was affected by the war. (1992-1997) The tale begins when with Beah, his brother, and a couple of his friends, heading to another village to put on a performance and while away, they catch wind that their village had been attacked by the RUF (Revolutionary United Front). The boys' having no home to go back to, wander from village to village looking for shelter and safety.

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