“A long way gone” by Ishmael Beah
Alone and afraid he grips his machete tightly as he knows the attackers are going to jump out at any second. Fearful of what is going to happen next, he stays still anxiously waiting. Beah hears a branch snap in half, the leaves on the forest floor start crunching as the object comes closer and closer. The infant monkey surprisingly appears but it is too late, as Ishmael had already swung his machete, killing the monkey. Beah asks himself what he had just done. Being forced to be a solider at 12 years old, he realizes the effects of civil war. Killing something innocent was not in his intentions. Visualizing the dreadful and gruesome conditions and circumstances makes the reader feel very vulnerable and sympathetic …show more content…
When Beah’s corporal was training all the soldiers, Beah recalls him restating the same phrase over and over to “visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you” (Beah 112). The corporal manipulates and brainwashes the fighters into killing more people that are innocent for almost no reason at all. This refers to how Hitler was pursuing avenge on harmless people but was concentrating on beliefs and race. After Beah’s group was done killing for the day, he described the activities they would do at night such as “ talk only about war movies and how impressed they were with the way either the lieutenant, corporal, or one of them had killed someone. It was as if nothing else existed outside their reality” (Beah 124). He references this to show the reader just how much they were persuaded into doing immoral things everyday. It creates an allusion to the novel “Fahrenheit 451” in which everyone had been so brainwashed they thought the way they were living was good and normal, but the reality was disappointing and unhappy. The overall point that the author used of all the allusions in this book is to demonstrate the distraction vs.
Alone and afraid he grips his machete tightly as he knows the attackers are going to jump out at any second. Fearful of what is going to happen next, he stays still anxiously waiting. Beah hears a branch snap in half, the leaves on the forest floor start crunching as the object comes closer and closer. The infant monkey surprisingly appears but it is too late, as Ishmael had already swung his machete, killing the monkey. Beah asks himself what he had just done. Being forced to be a solider at 12 years old, he realizes the effects of civil war. Killing something innocent was not in his intentions. Visualizing the dreadful and gruesome conditions and circumstances makes the reader feel very vulnerable and sympathetic …show more content…
When Beah’s corporal was training all the soldiers, Beah recalls him restating the same phrase over and over to “visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you” (Beah 112). The corporal manipulates and brainwashes the fighters into killing more people that are innocent for almost no reason at all. This refers to how Hitler was pursuing avenge on harmless people but was concentrating on beliefs and race. After Beah’s group was done killing for the day, he described the activities they would do at night such as “ talk only about war movies and how impressed they were with the way either the lieutenant, corporal, or one of them had killed someone. It was as if nothing else existed outside their reality” (Beah 124). He references this to show the reader just how much they were persuaded into doing immoral things everyday. It creates an allusion to the novel “Fahrenheit 451” in which everyone had been so brainwashed they thought the way they were living was good and normal, but the reality was disappointing and unhappy. The overall point that the author used of all the allusions in this book is to demonstrate the distraction vs.