Preview

A Long Way Gone

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
418 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Long Way Gone
Greg Dorchester
Along way gone
Imagine being a nice well respected kid into a cruel boy at such a young age. Interacting with people that you do not even know in your life that has an intention of just killing can be difficult for a young boy. Beah’s harsh actions were displayed in his memoir, Along Way Gone.
Ishmael Beah proved that he lost his innocence by letting the rebels turn him into a murder, by getting convinced that violence is the solution to everything, and by relying on drugs to ease the pain he was suffering.
Beah was manipulated by rebels into becoming a non­stop murder. The rebels really get under his skin and brainwashed him into fighting in wars. He ends up coming across another rebel group that he surrounds with the other kids and the other rebel kids looks familiar to him because he thinks they were the group who killed his family. Beah gets angry and angrier, “so when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many as I could, but I didn’t feel better” revenge takes over him and has an outburst (pg. 122). Beah had encountered, “… a few rebels after a long gunfight and a lot of civilian casualties. We undressed the prisoners and tied them until their chests were tight as drums” and tortured the rebels that the kids captured (pg.123). Beah is a murder and has no sympathy for any harm he does.
Beah inserted violence and killing into his life at such a young age. The rebel group manipulated Beah by convincing him, “my squad is my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed” and does not think otherwise (pg. 126). Beah was now made into soldier and enforced that this was all he had. No intention to think of something

else for the better never came to mind to him. Killing was, “… a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone” which ruined for his childhood (pg. 126). Ishmael Beah’s personality completely changed and his innocence was destroyed.
Drugs had become the main component of losing his

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    death was a result of failed accountability by his Squad leader, platoon sergeant, and his OIC.…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A child carrying a gun, and forced to kill was deemed as normal. A boy who became a soldier against his will, was normal. This visual is concrete evidence that this is very much real. That this was Ishmael Beah’s reality.…

    • 272 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    09 English Studyguide 1

    • 2226 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Was Beah better off on his own or with the group of boys he found in this chapter? Explain your answer.…

    • 2226 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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…

    • 344 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ishmael Beah Analysis

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ishmael Beah is an unsettled thirteen year old boy. With no family to comfort him during the war, he is apprehensive. Images of violence, as cold as ice, constantly run through his brain. While circulating through villages, Baeh and his friends find dead bodies, burnt houses, empty bullet shells, and a variety more. By this point, it barely phases him. An empty village that the rebels have already raided is where the boys reside, at this time. This has become normal, because one may never know what the next day is going to give you. As stated by Ishmael Beah, "One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn't sure when or where it was going to end. I didn't know what I was going…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ishmael Beah’s Families

    • 1233 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Familys in a childs life has the most impact on them. It shows them how to grow up and…

    • 1233 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the story “ A Long Way Gone” the main character Ishmael Beah demonstrates a lot of violent actions. His actions begin to change throughout the entire book. One of Ishmael’s violent changes that really taught and helped me understand the many consequences that will happen when you choose to act in a violent manner is when he was going back to his village and noticed that they were being invaded, and they were getting low on food he sacrifices his life to make sure his village is ok. It teaches me that when things happen you sometimes have to change to make things better. When Ishmael and his friends were sent to participate in the war,they got addicted to drugs and started using them way more frequently now. As a consequence the boys were…

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Joining the rebel group, Ishmael receives an opportunity of physical survival yet this accompanies adapting to the cruel reality of guns, drugs and murder to survive the…

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    While Ishmael was running from the war, the idea of killing people hunted him. He could never understand how people would kill and not be affected by it. Whenever the rebels would execute civilians it would shake him up. Once Ishmael joined the army, his state of mind and judgement changed. Ishmael talks about killing innocent people stating, “killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had not only snapped during the first killings, it had also stopped making remorseful records” (Beah 122). This shows that after joining the army Ishmael had changed. Instead of making him sick, killing now gave him some type of fulfilment. While he was fighting, he wouldn’t feel anything. Ishmael had become immune to the world around him.…

    • 508 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Long Way Gone

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages

    3. What kind of music does Ishmael like, and why? What is it about music that matters to Ishmael, or that moves him so? Why is it important to him, especially during his rehabilitation at Benin Home?…

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Long Way Gone

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the novel, A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, the author discusses the topic of survival. The book tells a story of a boy whose life is affected by war and forced to survive on his own. Beah is trying to send us a message that people often do crazy things in order to survive. The excerpts I provide prove this statement to be true.…

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Loss of Innocence

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Beah states plainly that his induction into the Sierra Leone military at the age of 13 was the end of his childhood. Although the violent pursuit of rebels across Sierra Leone traumatized Beah, it is not until he is turned into a killer that he believes himself to have lost his innocence. At this point, Beah stops utilizing flashbacks to his childhood, clearly delineating his old "good" life with his new "bad" life. Before this point, his memories were comforting to him during his wandering and, narratively, they served the function of reminding the reader that Beah is still a child caught in an impossible situation.…

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    a long way gone

    • 546 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Violence has a major impact on teenagers and children in today’s society. In the novel A Long Way Gone; memoir by a boy soldier Ishmael Beah, displays how teenagers are exposed… Through the medias they are showed that the movie Rambo, which influences them to be violent and fight. Another way to seek violence is in real life when the boy soldiers are sent to fight the rebels. The violence that the young boys are exposed to caused them to think and act violently towards others,…

    • 546 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He starts abusing and scolding himself for that, and by doing so exhorts himself to action of taking revenge, which should be, for him, a be all and end all, as a revenge hero. The earlier mentioned line spoken by the captain also forces him to think about the sense of honour, and he concludes that one should…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    A Long Way Gone Argument

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Ishmael Beah is rescued, against his will, from a life that surely would have ended soon. Taken by UNICEF to a rehabilitation camp, Beah begins the long struggle to reintegrate into a normal existence. However, the children cause much trouble for the volunteer staffers at the facility, with Ishmael experiencing symptoms of drug withdrawal as well as troubling memories of his time as a child soldier. Beah is constantly reminded of his horrid and malicious past remembering the stacks of children's body's that have been killed in action (Pg. 100). “One boy asked how I was doing and what I had been up to. I wanted to tell him that I had done…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays