Referring to the quote “the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people.” Ishmael says this after he is brushed off by a family he spotted in the water because they were scared he would harm them and suspected him of being a spy for the rebels. Ishmael then says “Even a twelve-year-old couldn’t be trusted anymore.” Circumstances such as the one told in the quote had happened several times throughout the book. As the war progressed, the concept of trust soon disappeared.…
The Twisting of the Branches: Corruption in House of the Scorpion Throughout all of history, there have been governments, and throughout all of government, there has been corruption. The similarity between all of these misled regimes is that they all had immense power, too much for one rule. The blackening of powered authorities is represented in Nancy Farmer’s dystopian fiction book, The House of the Scorpion. In The House of the Scorpion, Matt is a clone of the drug lord El Patron.…
Boss Politics: Hollywood and the Political Machine Hollywood’s representations of the urban political machine are depicted in the movies The Last Hurrah and The Great McGinty. Using a historical context and definitions of piolitical machines and boss’s make it easier to understand and comapare the meaning of these movies. The Last Hurrah (TLH) depicts the failing political machine of Frank Skeffington in a new England city.…
A mighty long way essay In the book a Mighty long Way it tells the story about a girl named Carlotta and her peers starting an all white school. When they first started they got picked on and they got yelled at and hit with spitballs. During this book we learned about the segregation and there journey about how Carlotta and her peers made it through the change. In the book Carlotta went through some hard times when she first started the school she had to be escorted in for almost 2 years because the students didn’t think it was right for them to go to the all white school.…
On April 9, 1865, the Civil War ended, the Confederates gave up their fight against the Union; thus beginning the reconstruction period in America. Much of the South was devastated over the loss of the Confederacy and they had nothing to rally behind or hope for. In 1866, Edward Pollard first coined the term, “The Lost Cause”, which helped many people who originated in the South cope with life after the Civil War and keep their faith belonging to the South. The “Lost Cause” left a glaring legacy and it was the most influential movement in the country after the Civil War because it united many Southern folks, helped the Reconstruction process, and it gave women an influential role in society.…
One Shot at Forever (A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season) was written by Chris Ballard, a Sports Illustrated writer. This novel was published during 2012 by Hachette Books and is a true story. It tells the story of an underdog baseball team (the Macon Ironmen) from a small-town high school within rural Illinois defying the odds stacked against it despite its amateur background. At the core of it all is the guidance of coach Lynn Sweet, an English teacher with no relevant coaching experience. Lynn and his baseball team push through obstacles to achieve great success, which serves as inspiration for readers.…
In wars, many humans often lose their humanity because of the fact that they lost someone close to them. People in time of desperations listen to their emotions more than reasoning which can cause them to do an action that goes against their own morals. Most People would go against their own beliefs and loyalties because they’re afraid to die. After the war, many people face challenges that affect their life substantially. War dehumanizes many people with traumas, from killing others to save themselves, and from the feelings that leave people with ultimate despair.…
In the novel A Long Way Gone written by Ishmael Beah, we are given a glimpse into the life of a child that is trying to make his way in life during a time of war. While Beah does lose his family, home and childhood, he also loses his sense of safety and belonging. During the war, people from different villages continue to flee from the rebels that are constantly conquering villages, slaughtering the villagers like cattle. As the villages are broken down and conquered, boys are taken from their families and are enlisted into the war by both the rebel forces and the army. These boys are then brainwashed and transformed into tools of destruction as they fight alongside the men that seek to kill the opposing force.…
Throughout history, there have been many different warlords and rebels, some good and some bad, fighting to gain control of their country and/or resources. Even though this may be a hard task to accomplish, many leaders reach their goals through unethical means, such as using violence and oppression against those that have conflicting views. These acts of violence by rebel leaders and warlords often lead to thousands of deaths, many of those are people that could not defend themselves but were killed solely based on their appearance or nationality. One of these warlords is known as Joseph Kony, who was born in August 1961, in the country of Uganda. Joseph Kony grew up as a member of the Acholi people, with a family that was strict and church oriented.…
When many people think of Africa they think of poor, dry, sunny, and disease. All these things are commonly thought of with the mention of Africa. While some of this may be true for certain parts of Africa it's not all true. For this book critique I will be assessing the novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he wrote this novel to share his story and inspire many who are going through tough times, to keep going, and keep hope. While the book was told in the third person from the person who experienced the Sierra Leone war first hand for himself, it was a very well written and captivating novel.…
The Sierra Leonean Civil War from 1991 to 2001 affected every citizen of Sierra Leone, including children. Ishmael Beah is a man who was caught in the war as a child, and forced to both witness and commit acts of violence as a child soldier, as expressed in his memoir. The role of violence in the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is to portray the theme of loss of innocence through the comparisons and contrasts of violent acts while Ishmael was running from the rebels, during his time as a child soldier, and after his experience in the Sierra Leonean army. The role of violence is first shown through the comparison of Ishmael as he is running from the rebels to the families who are trying to escape the war and stopping in the mining area…
Imagine if a person had been orphaned, forced work hard labour during all waking hours, hearing the sound of people last plea for mercy before they are brutally murdered, to hunt because the food that you are provided are simply not enough. Would lose they lose their will to survive? Would that person compromise their morals? Would they let the situation break them? Luckily, most do not have to answer these questions, but Arn Chorn-Pond in the Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick did.…
Anywhere you look, you are looking at evil. You might not think so, many people may seem wholly good, but everyone has evil in them. You might not see it right now, but trust me, it’s there, lurking in the shadows. This is, at least, what Bram Stoker, the writer of Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, want you to believe through their characters of Dracula and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, respectively. These characters use their supernatural abilities to disrupt peace and cause hardship throughout their eponymous works.…
The idea of capitalism and urbanization, has reshaped the world as we know it. Most humans living today are living in poverty and misery with little hope of escaping it; there is a small minority however who live in extravagance and abundance and whose main goal is to keep this arrangement persisting. Often seen but never observed, this issue is hiding just beneath the sight of those who are blind to the suffering. As a result, suffering citizens believe some sort of war will be the solution to the amount of suffering the “lower class” family’s experience.…
War is one of the oldest traditions in human history that costs millions of innocent lives and destroys families across the globe. There must be a logical explanation for such a barbaric act; the justification for war must lie in human nature. War can stem from power, money, greed, justice, and these reasons have been justified in the past as being in the best interest of the group as a whole. Especially in the case of defending basic human rights, people are often persuaded to participate in the act of war. This flexing of power convinces people they are doing the right thing by devaluing the human mind and body to the equivalent of a pawn, blindly following their leaders to death for the government’s benefit.…