A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

and true story of the life of Ishmael Beah, a child soldier in the Sierra Leonean war, I was able to understand how much hope Ishmael had in order to survive. Each and every day, Ishmael believed in the idea of a better future for himself and his friends. Without this strong belief, Ishmael wouldn’t have had the strong resolve to survive and to never give up on life. Basically, one significant message of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah is to never give up on hope and…

Without question, violence is never to solution. Therefore, solving your problems of oppression with violence is immoral. For example, the children in “ A long way gone, Memoirs of a boy soldier” talk about how they are fighting for the “good side”, but they are doing things just as bad as the “rebels”. All the children lost the idea of happiness when the war hit them. All the killing they did change who they were and, there was no going back. If the children were never involved in the war and…

A Long way gone: Family is significant in a child’s psychological development A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah is truly a fantastic and emotional read. It contains many life changing experiences for a young boy. Throughout the whole memoir, one major theme that is bestowed with Ishmael is family. Ishmael went from having an ordinary, happy family to being stranded alone in the forest with no one. When he finally encounters a group of boys that he once knew…

A stolen childhood The meaning of war in the dictionary is “A military conflict between two nations or parties”, but in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah war is not just a conflict between two nations or parties but it’s a conflict between death, revenge, and survival. Ishmael Beah is a victim of war that took place in Sierra Leone. His lieutenant easily turns him into a ruthless killing machine. The Lieutenant use a false promise to avenge the death of his…

about change in the world” Michael Franti. If kids were being turned into soldiers at a young age what kind of a world is expected? They don’t know any better than then life style that’s being taught to them. In order for the military to be able to transform these innocent children effectively into killing machines they had to use several tactics to emotionally manipulate these boys to killers. In A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy…

protagonists in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone are forced to deal with the consequences of revenge. In Golding’s novel, young boys are left on an island during WWII with no adults. The leader, Ralph, a foresighted thinker, has a main goal of getting saved and tries to avoid tension at all times while his enemy, Jack, only cares about hunting and cannot stay away from evil. In Beah’s memoir, he describes how his life was roaming around the country of Sierra…

“There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.” William Sherman. A Long Way Gone, written by Ishmael Beah, recounts a real life experience of a child soldier in Sierra Leone and like Sherman said he finds war to be hell. The memoir portrays in horrific detail the realities of war and the effects it has on all the people. Ishmael Beah is only twelve when the war arrives on his doorstep in 1993. It tears apart his family and leaves him to wander the…

Literary Analysis Ishmael Beah’s childhood was sensationally different than his old accustomed ways. He not only experienced a unmerciful war, his family and friends perished. At only twelve years of age and going through this, Ishmael goes through serious trauma. In his own memoir A Long Way Gone, Ishmael explains what happened during his experiences in the war and he raises awareness to the topic of child soldiers. The book goes into great depth of how every factor, choice, and death shaped…

Healing the Mind of a Child Soldier “I didn’t feel a thing for him, didn’t think much what I was doing…The prisoner was simply another rebel who was responsible for the death of my family, as I had come to truly believe” (Beah 124). In the Memoir “a long way gone” by Ishmael Beah, sees 12-year-old Ishmael trying to survive in the war stricken country of Sierra Leone. Ishmael is just an ordinary boy when the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) attacks his home of Mattru Jong, while he is away in a…

A Long Way Gone to Cinderella Man Everyone goes through hardships in their lives, but two stories rise above the rest. A Long Way Gone and Cinderella Man are compelling tales of strength and recovery during two extremely difficult times in history. Both go along with the theme that family will always be there for you, even during the hardest times. Ishmael Beah, the protagonist in A Long Way Gone, continually yearned for connection and desperately wanted to know where his family had gone, if…