Peter W. Singer

The topic of child soldiers has been a very controversial dilemma for a very long time. Many people argue that child soldiers are victims, while others argue that child soldiers are perpetrators. The real question though, is whether or not all child soldiers should be given amnesty (legal forgiveness) after the war is over. But with further research, it is clear that overall, child soldiers should be given amnesty if they were forced or manipulated into joining the war. Child soldiers usually don’t decide to join the war, they are forced. According to the article “Armed and Underaged”, about 200,000 children per year become underaged child soldiers, and most of them against their will. And it’s not just boys who are getting taken. Many underaged girls are getting taken to be the war’s cooks or messengers, and most of them get sexually abused when kidnapped. Not only are the children kidnapped and forced to join, but the adult soldiers threaten the children, and tell them that if they try to run away, they will be killed. These children are also being put under toxins such as alcohol or drugs, so that they don’t know what is going on, and so that they commit crimes (such as murder) that they wouldn’t normally commit. How can it be far to punish these helpless kids? It is not their fault for getting kidnapped and drugged, and it is not their fault to be frightened into doing something terrible. Therefore, child soldiers should be given amnesty. The situation of amnesty for…

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…

Purpose. War. Peace. Family. The reasons why something is done or created with one’s intention or an objective. In the novel A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael experiences war in his country, Sierra Leone. Ishmael then becomes a child soldier. He experiences hardships during the war and is sent to a rehabilitation center. There he found his peace after the war. He still experienced post traumatic stress disorder, during the night, but he was able to have fun with his friends…

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…

All through life, there is a continuous battle between having the capacity to trust different people, while surviving. Inside Ishmael Beah's record of his life entitled A Long Way Gone, he mourns how war has ruined the happiness regarding meeting individuals that he once had. Beah had to confront with new individuals often, which made him be wary of whether putting his trust in that individual could end up being the root starting point of his demise one day. As Ishmael meets diverse people for…

Job #1: In the beginning of the novel, Ishmael was a skinny, twelve year old African American boy that wore baggy jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and three pairs of socks that he pulled down and folded, which puffed up his sneakers (7). As the novel progressed, Ishmael became very scrawny with dirty, shabby clothes. Ishmael became extremely thin because he was not able to eat regularly. In the novel, Ishmael’s hunger ends up taking over in chapter 5, Ishmael and his friends chased after a little boy…

Salva. He was once just a regular kid in southern Sudan but, he didn’t know his life was about to change forever. His struggle for survival is his village is attacked while he’s at school and he has to go out into the “bush” alone and survive through all his hardships throughout this novel. It changes his struggle by having to cope with his friends and family dying and also getting to refugee camps.In this time of war, Salva has to keep dealing his group leaving him twice and on his third group…

“‘At our age, it’s more complicated for the rebels. So they use stronger stuff, like drugs or money, to bait us and to make us march…I remember the attack on Njola-Kombouya village, in the south of Sierra Leone. They made us wake up at 1 in the morning and we marched until 7. A doctor came. He had a small bowl of cold water, and, every two injections, he rinsed his needle in the water. It was always a small vial with red liquid. At first, I constantly felt weak and then after, I had a sense of…

Going Solo, Roald Dahl's memoir of his work in East Africa and his service in the RAF, covers much of the buildup to World War II. In the book mention is made of the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal plays a large role in the memoir as a sea level waterway running across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt to connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Dahl states that, "The voyage from the Port of London to Mombasa would take two weeks and on the way we were going to call in at Marseilles, Malta, Port said,…

Perseverance is an important theme in A Long Walk to Water and is demonstrated by Salva in this story. The first example is Salva, he had to persevere through many things. The first thing he had to persevere through is getting away from the rebel soldiers. Salva had to run away from his home and family in the hope of seeing them again. Salva encountered many occasions where the rebel soldiers killed many people around him and Salva had to keep persevering through these tragedies. In this story…