Who is Ishmael Beah? Ishmael Beah is an activist known by many and has contributed so much of his time and effort to try and help prevent children from experiencing what he has experienced. He has donated and been involved in many organizations-such as his own- and has learned over time that to make a change, we have to take a stand and have our own voices.…
Ishmael Beah grew up in a town known as mattru jong, during the hard times of the civil war beahs village was under attack by a group known as the rebels. The group of friends that beah…
I feel that guns give people power through fear, I don’t strongly agree with this statement because if all of the opposing sides had guns then the power is eliminated.…
While he and his friends are away for a talent show, their village is raided by rebels. The gruesome storytelling in A Long Way Gone is striking for many reasons on several levels. At one point Ishmael writes, “We are not like the rebels, those riffraff who kill people for no reason.” The narrative takes an unexpected turn by closing with Beah recalling a philosophical moment from his early childhood. In the final pages of the novel, Beah explains a story told to him and other children in his village once a year: you are a hunter prepared to kill a monkey with a rifle; before you shoot, the monkey tells you that if you kill him, your mother will die and if you don’t, your father will. None of the children ever reveal their own answer to what…
In the book Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah struggles between trust and survival in the midst of a gruesome war. He laments how, “the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people” throughout the book there are many examples of this upsetting truth. The consequences of this mistrust in people are clear as he travels through Sierra Leon while being incessantly threatened and assumed a member of the RUF. Most of this book is about the ongoing struggle within Ishmael between trying to stay alive and deciding who to trust. The phenomena of war and trust can coexist only if you have an ability to differentiate your friends from enemies. Ishmael struggles throughout the book to stay alive, and thus decides to trust no one, but this could be detrimental to his survival.…
Everyone has an identity made and changed by what they have been through and what they have experienced. Ishmael did not have a permanent home. He was always traveling and running to get away from the war. He became very strong at a young age. He lived in the wild having to find his own food and shelter, or else he would die.…
The privilege of being a child is only a lost dream to children in places like Sierra Leone where they are forced into joining rebel and militia groups. The children in those groups learn how to shoot guns when instead they should be learning how to ride a bicycle. In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone he speaks about his time during the war and being recruited as a child soldier. Ishmael goes through numerous life changing events and commits awful things during his time in fighting in the war. Ishmael however is able to leave his horrible lifestyle behind, obtain his humanity back and start a new beginning along with the rest of society. Beah manages to withstand the effect of the horrors of war by accepting the loss of his family, and beginning new relationships with people such as his newly found uncle and Esther the nurse from his rehabilitation center.…
“I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them.” This is what Ishmael was saying at the end first war day they had. It had only been the first time when Ishmael and his friends went to war and by the end of it he had already shot someone. At the beginning when they started training he was afraid to hold the gun, and now that the day has come where he actually needed to shot, he had no problem with it. 2 of his friends died that day, Musa and Josiah.…
The theme of, ‘the power of language’ is important in the book ‘Don’t call me Ishmael’ by Michael Gerard Bauer. The book was interesting in many ways, power of language is used not all the time but in most of the cases. The main obstacle of the theme ‘the power of language’ were the dislike and distrust between Barry Bagsley and Miss Tarango in the chair challenge. It was a very useful thing to have for James Scobie in the Assembly and to Ishmael in his prayer.…
I believe Ishmael’s level of resilience throughout the story was immensely high considering the age he was during the war. One example, was when Ishmael first experiences the war and loses all of his family except his brother, Junior. Ishmael does not complain about walking miles and miles all day long in the scorching sun, when many kids his age would start complaining after fifteen minutes on a nice breezy day. As well as, when Ishmael was all alone in the forest he did not act crazy about the freedom he had, but instead was orderly and still did day to day necessary activities while remaining calm. He always shows that even in the toughest situations he acts just like an adult and is always in control, when kids his age lost their cool and acted crazy leading them to die. Last but not least, when Ishmael was at the rehabilitation center he did act agitated, but recovers from the worst thing a child could be during the war, a child soldier. He acts insane and puts his life at risk when he is a soldier because he did drugs everyday and killed hundreds of people for years, and all it takes for him to recover to be a normal child again is eight months.…
During the Ishmael novel, the author Daniel Quinn demonstrates how humans ought to live. According to Daniel Quinn this world is habited by two types of human. Depends on what he said, this worls is habited by Takers and Leavers, each one had their own way to live and they had different cultures. During this novel Daniel Quinn show us, if humanity still living in the same conditions they were, probably is that humans are going to destroy the whole world, causing death to all living things.…
The theme Loss of Innocence was illustrated in the memoir. Evidently, as Ishmael Beah became a child soldier, his story would present a loss of innocence. The hardships and violence of war had been given in the perspective of a child, as Beah describes his experiences simply and without judgement. The Rebel attacks on his village and neighboring villages may have traumatized Beah but however, not have caused him to lose his innocence. He maintains it by pondering over old childhood memories and his ability to rekindle his sense of wonder. For example, Beah and his friends celebrate when they see the ocean. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah on page 59 it states “My eyes widened, a smile forming on my face. Even in the middle of the madness…
Furthermore, Ishmael began to see first-hand representations of the violent acts of war which resulted in his rapid development. These violent events began with an encounter Ishmael had with a dying family attacked by the rebels. While witnessing this event, “people covered the eyes of their children”; however, despite Ishmael also being a child, no one was able to cover his eyes, forcing him to see the true brutality of the rebels (page 12). A few days following this incident, Ishmael was forced to lose his sense of compassion. While running from the rebels Ishmael had to run “past handicapped people…for anyone who stopped to do so was risking his own life” (page 24). From this day forward, Ishmael knew he could no longer think about others and it was necessary that he focused on his survival.…
On the article by Peter Wilson, “Beah’s credibility a long way gone”, Wilson says, “But in the interview with Oxford University student reporter Naomi Scherbel-Ball this week, Beah said: “I drew the map from memory and gave it to the publishing house – I didn’t do the measurement.” Beah himself admits that this was all from memory and he didn’t even make sure that what was being said in the book was actually factual. Beah on a different article, “Thanks for the memories”, says, “I wrote the book from my point of view, as my experiences as a child in the war. Which is why I didn’t write about girls because I wasn’t a girl in the war, so I wrote about my account and my account is accurate in my memories as far as I can remember it and that is what I stand by.” This can be controversial because in the book, Ishmael took many drugs such as Brown-Brown, which could have affected his…
Some people want what they can’t have, but do not think of the reality of it. Ishmael’s friends think it is so “cool” that “he saw people running around with guns and shooting each other” but do not understand how dangerous and traumatic it actually is. They probably found the fact that he saw fighting firsthand mind-boggling. War is just a fantasy in their minds. For Ishmael, war is an unpleasant truth to be avoided at all costs. Ishmael’s friends think it’s something they would love to do but I don’t think his friends would still feel that way after reading Beah’s memoir. They would understand the hardships and obstacles that Ishmael had to go through just to stay alive and to meet up with his family again. His friends would realize that the shortages of food, the dangers of walking in the open, and the risks Ishmael takes to escape the war is not something to be proud of. They would apprehend that war is certainly not “cool.” In general, I think American children thinks that war is something that shouldn’t be joked around with. They have had dads or brothers go off to war in Iraq so I think they understand how damaging war can be to our lives. American children know war is not “cool” and that it is in fact the opposite. Sure, they might find it honorary to fight for our country but I don’t think they would take war so casually or lightly and sum it up in “cool.” Due to America’s current wars and deaths every day, American children would think war is devastating and…