A Long Way Gone Research Paper

A Long Way Gone Essay The effects of the Civil War were very traumatic; people would be captured and sent back to their villages with arms or legs cut off. Ishmael Beah wrote a book called “A Long Way Gone” which is a memoir about his memories from the war because he was forced to be a boy soldier. The civil war in Sierra Leone was a very cruel war that took place from 1991 to 2002. The R.U.F. was a rebel group from the war and they would capture little boys, train them to kill people, and drug them to not feel sympathy and make them have a lot of energy. Ishmael is a victim from the R.U.F because they would drug him and he would not be able to make any reasonable decisions; he was also a victimizer because even though he did not know what was going on, he was still killing people and eventually got used to it. …show more content…
would give the children PCP (Phencyclidine) which would decrease pain perception, and increase responses to the environment, learning, and memory. Now, all the soldiers would not feel as much pain as they would normally, causing them to want to fight harder and longer just like when Ishmael said, “I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy” (Beah 119). Before this quote was said, Ishmael was terrified of where they had to go. When all the soldiers were shooting at the civilians, Ishmael said that his finger was numb and he couldn’t shoot until he saw some of his friends die, then he got really angry and shot anything that moved. That is one of the effects of PCP. “ ‘Get down,’ he was screaming. ‘Shoot,’ ” (Beah 118). This was when they were in the middle of shooting all the civilians. The corporal was screaming at Ishmael to get down and shoot, otherwise, he would be killed. This shows that he is a victim because he is being ordered to do things while he is on drugs which is uncontrollable to go against those