Ishmael Beah

environment in which they experience community stigma” (NIH Public Access 10). This study found that family and community acceptance was associated with higher levels of adaptive/prosocial attitudes and behaviors with the child soldiers as was the case for Ishmael…

Ishmael Beah is a Sierra Leonean that was forced to become a soldier at a very young age. Growing up, the Rebels invaded Mogbwemo, his hometown, which caused him to be separated from his family. As a young child, he witnessed disaster take place before his eyes, day in and day out. There were rarely any moments in his life that did not cause him some form of psychological harm. Throughout the times of being a boy soldier, Ishmael was introduced to a lot of toxic things, drugs being one of the…

Dear Ishmael Beah, I am writing to you in regards to your bestselling memoir A Long Way Gone published on February 13th, 2007. I have been a fan of yours for quite some time, but have been convinced by clear evidence gathered that there are some inaccuracy in your memoir. I firmly believe that this memoir contains embellishments and exaggeration on your experience as a child soldier. Several articles have been published explaining controversial facts mentioned in your story that don’t seem…

Ishmael Beah’s character changes throughout the story. He starts out as an innocent ten year old boy that didn’t understand much about the war or realize it would be coming to his village. He then faces his village being taken by the rebels, he is now homeless and must try to survive, making him a refugee. After all that he went through escaping the rebels and other people who wanted to cause him harm, he was captured by the Sierra Leone Military. They taught him how to fight and turned him into…

A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park, is about an 11-year-old boy named Salva. He lives in Southern Sudan in 1985, during the Second Sudanese Civil War. He ends up having to flee his village, Loun-Ariik, not knowing if he will ever see his family again. The factors that made survival possible for Salva are individuals, such as Uncle, groups/organizations, like the refugee camps, and Salva's strength, both physical and psychological. Salva would not have been able to make it to the…

At first, Ishmael who is the main character, was a happy child living a normal life among his family in Sierra Leone. However, during the civil war with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), his family got murdered, and he had no other choice than becoming a child soldier addicted to drugs and capable of terrible acts of violence. Throughout the book, the categorization process appears clearly and lead to different type of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. In fact, at the beginning of…

#6 Child Soldiers, Should They be given Amnesty Child soldiers are a big problem in the world, and the question is that if they should be given amnesty? Child soldiers are normal children from the start, they play and do what children do, but what happens is that they are abducted or they join a rebel group or an army because they need food because their families were killed and they have nowhere else to go, or they were abducted. Child soldiers SHOULD be given amnesty because they have nowhere…

(A)People often associate having hopes and dreams with child's play; that only the young and naive would mess with something as foolish as that. (B)However, movies such as The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, the book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, and the documentary following three Acholi children in Northern Uganda, War Dance prove that not only children should have hopes and dreams, but everyone. (C) There are many different reasons of why we need hopes and dreams and goals in our lives,…

The world is not perfect. People experience death, torture, and poverty. They cry for help, yet the people who are in need are children. Around the world, children are forced to kill innocent people. Children become tools of destruction not of their own will. In fact, the civil war occurring in South Sudan not only consists of battles between armed men and rebels, but the war also involves around the use of child soldiers ("Terrifying Lives of Child Soldiers [analysis]”). Child soldiers are…

In the ¨Drummer Boy of Shiloh¨ written by Ray Bradbury, a 14 year old boy named Joby is in the military and is the Drummer during the civil war. In the beginning, Joby and the soldiers are at a camp just waiting for the next day. There is going to be a battle on the next day that all of them are traumatized over. Joby is scared the most because he is the youngest and he cannot defend himself like the soldiers. He feels very insignificant. He only has a drum and drumsticks and they have guns. The…