Child Victims of Traumatic Experiences
Sixty percent of adults report having suffered through some sort of childhood trauma in their past (“Statistics”). A percentage of these people are child soldiers; children under the age of eighteen who are subjected to war. A quarter of all soldiers in the Sierra Leone civil war were under the age of eighteen (Shah “Sierra Leone”), the main character of A Long Way Gone being one of them. Another example of those who have suffered from trauma would be the countless other victims of the holocaust. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the main character was a teenage boy who was faced with war violence both during and after he was transported to a concentration camp. Those in the holocaust suffer from many psychological-based misconceptions that should always be treated by a medical professional. Some of these symptoms are theories such as death imprint, survivor’s guilt, numbness, …show more content…
Though we are not sure what Elie faced mentally after leaving Auschwitz, we do know that he suffered from many moral challenges such as religion, family values, and depression. Similarly, A Long Way Gone focuses around a child who participated in war as a soldier, forced into killing his friends and an uncountable amounts of others. Both first account documents of children in a war scenario, the children can represent child soldiers as a whole. As displayed in A Long Way Gone and Night, children who experience trauma hide more than just physical scars; they also possess varying degrees of emotional trauma. Like in all war situations, Beah in A Long Way Gone faces emotionally traumatic situations which, in turn, caused the young boy to grow up exponentially faster than the typical society normality. Beah turned into a killer at an early age, which is evidence of how he had to mentally mature faster. “Since Beah became a child soldier, his tale would incorporate the resulting loss of innocence.
Sixty percent of adults report having suffered through some sort of childhood trauma in their past (“Statistics”). A percentage of these people are child soldiers; children under the age of eighteen who are subjected to war. A quarter of all soldiers in the Sierra Leone civil war were under the age of eighteen (Shah “Sierra Leone”), the main character of A Long Way Gone being one of them. Another example of those who have suffered from trauma would be the countless other victims of the holocaust. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the main character was a teenage boy who was faced with war violence both during and after he was transported to a concentration camp. Those in the holocaust suffer from many psychological-based misconceptions that should always be treated by a medical professional. Some of these symptoms are theories such as death imprint, survivor’s guilt, numbness, …show more content…
Though we are not sure what Elie faced mentally after leaving Auschwitz, we do know that he suffered from many moral challenges such as religion, family values, and depression. Similarly, A Long Way Gone focuses around a child who participated in war as a soldier, forced into killing his friends and an uncountable amounts of others. Both first account documents of children in a war scenario, the children can represent child soldiers as a whole. As displayed in A Long Way Gone and Night, children who experience trauma hide more than just physical scars; they also possess varying degrees of emotional trauma. Like in all war situations, Beah in A Long Way Gone faces emotionally traumatic situations which, in turn, caused the young boy to grow up exponentially faster than the typical society normality. Beah turned into a killer at an early age, which is evidence of how he had to mentally mature faster. “Since Beah became a child soldier, his tale would incorporate the resulting loss of innocence.