A Long Way Gone Case Study

In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah encourages the opinion that everyone is responsible for his/her own actions in all cases. Beah proves this opinion to be true through death, thievery, and violence.

Before reading “A Long Way Gone,” I was not at all familiar with the civil wars occurring in Sierra Leone. I didn’t know anything about Sierra Leone’s political dynamics either, however I could infer much about what might be going on there if asked. At least that is what I thought. That is until I read part of Ishmael’s memoir. I figured, previously to reading the memoir, that civil wars began as a result of some generally good reason, and were continued for a generally good reason. The civil wars in Sierra Leone, as I read, were quite the opposite, rather blind fight for power, as narrated by Beah, “A lot of things were done with no reason or explanation.” It is also implied that each side in the war believed that they themselves were doing

War is and can be defined as both a state of emergency and the liberator to a world so corrupt and unjust. The war in Sierra Leone separated families and ruined lives. How can a fight for a cause so right be so wrong. The Books “The Bite of the Mango” and “A Long Way Gone” compare and contrast Ishmael Beah’s experience to Mariatu Kamaras’. Both books are very different yet very similar. In The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone both characters lose their childhood because of the war, but go through different journeys based solely on their gender.

Violence is almost everywhere around the world. It is somewhat unavoidable in life. In the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael experiences numerous severe and frightful demonstrations of violence in various ways. These cases of violence scar his life for quite a while, however there are some learning focuses that come extremely close to violence. A few things that stem from the effects of Ishmael's fierce encounters are, repulsiveness of memories, posttraumatic stress disorder and a loss of innocence.

There are many factors that greatly influence the behavior of an individual. To begin, adopted by Martin Seligman, learned helplessness occurs when people believe they have little control over their lives after numerous apathetic events. This mental state is difficult for the person to escape because these events have been put into their subconscious. Examples of learned helplessness can be associated with numerous mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. To exemplify, take into consideration a girl who is shy and has a fear of public speaking. Her teacher assigns a project in which they have to get up in front of class and present a ten minute presentation about climate change. Her extensive knowledge on climate change makes her ecstatic

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. -Plato” Music is as a light of hope for Ishmael Beah, when he is placed in these life or death situations. Music plays a big role in most of everyone’s lives. Music can cheer you up, it can get you excited, it can calm you down, and in Beah’s eyes it can save your life. I use music in my everyday life to to cope with my stress, and play music that corresponds with my mood. In some parts of our world, music is their culture. As Santana’s song says, let the music set you free. In the book A Long Way Gone, Beah’s music plays a big role in his survival and displays his innocence when he was still a kid.

For some being a soldier is a choice, for others it’s just another reality of the world we live in. Ishmael Beah writes about his time as a child soldier in the Sierra leone civil war in his autobiography A Long Way Gone. As a young child he sees the world around him spiral into chaos and he sees soldiers as evil.

Surroundings can impact a person’s coming of age by the way things revolve around them and the decisions they have to make in order to survive this world we live in no matter what or how harsh the consequences may be. Ishmael Beah had to have some type of hope with him through all the things he has been through in order to survive it all. Ishmael explains, “When I was very little, my father used to say, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die” I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going” (Beah 54). This demonstrates that Ishmael used the memory of his father

In general I think never giving up is quote that consistently came to my mind while reading A Long Way Gone. Throughout the story Ishmael was a strong young man that never gave up. Even after his village had been attacked with his family in it, he still believed that he could find shelter and that his family could still be living. Even after he knew his family died he still had the bravery to go on with his journey to safety. S a solider he killed soldiers to get revenge and to save himself and others. Later on the lieutenant assigned Ishamel and a few others to a center where they could go back to school. They didn’t know where they were going or how life without being a solider would be. I thought this quote was significant because though

Ishmael Beah had a really tough life throughout his childhood and teenage years. In his literary work, A Long Way

Observational learning is another simple behavioral training technique. It’s as simple as its name, you learn by watching others. For example, let’s say you are trying to learn to balance a book on your head. You’ve been watching your parent do it and you try it out as well by imitating their behaviors that you previously observed. That’s a basic example of learning by observation. This helps us better understand human behavior in this way: it tells us that humans observe other behavior and try to imitate it in order to achieve the same, or a similar effect. That is another basic aspect of human behaviors that also occurs on a daily basis.

The individual who experiences these awful memories will forever hold that pain into adulthood. Memories and negative past experiences are big factors of trauma. Trauma is a distressing experience psychologically, and can last for a lifetime, that may keep an individual from executing certain activities successfully. Lin Shi and Jason Nicol from Dekalb, Illnios are specialized in Family Therapy, and have observed a criminal through the experimental process. Shi and Nicol have announced that, “In the stabilizing sessions that followed aggressive episodes, regardless of what set him off, he frequently referred back to his unpleasant experiences with his parents which often involved a strong physical reaction” (par. 10). The pain coming from an unpleasant experience had resorted out into violence every time the brain conjures up a past memory that was agonizing. A negative reaction is usually shown when the individual had been hurt physically and/or emotionally from any past events. These painful childhood memories make an individual rash out into anger followed by the offenses committed (Shi and Nicol par.10). When a sixteen year old male was analyzed by a treatment center, the clinic had been told that the boy’s mother walked out of the child’s life at the age of two and had been living with the father (par. 5). Children who are left by the main nurturer in the family effects the decisions carried into adulthood. Negative consequences are the

In life, there are some things that just cannot be taught through textbooks or instruction manuals but rather through observation. Do you remember when you first learned to walk? Was there an instruction manual to teach you or did you just observe your parents walking and then try to move your legs in correspondence? Learning to walk is just one of the countless examples of observational learning. Observational learning is learning new behavior by watching others perform, or model, that behavior (Ciccarelli & White, 2014). Observing others, especially during your early development, helps you to form your moral and ethical values you carry with you throughout your life. Observational learning is pertinent to our everyday lives and is a key factor

A. Basic Concepts 1. Observational LearningThe Social Learning Theory says that people canlearn by watching other people perform the behavior. Observational learningexplains the nature of children to learn behaviors by watching the behaviorof the people around them, and eventually, imitating them. With the ―Bobo Doll‖ experiment(s) , Bandura included an adult who is tasked to actaggressively toward a Bobo Doll while the children observe him. Later,Bandura let the children play inside a room with the Bobo Doll.

Everyone listens to music for different reasons, whether it be for comfort, serenity, or to brood. But regardless of what reason one has to listen to music, the main reason people enjoy it is because it allows them to connect to the world around them. In A Long Way Gone, a memoir by Ishmael Beah, music reoccurs throughout the novel as a unique mode of storytelling. Everyone’s story can be told in the form of a song. Everyone can relate to the ever-present threat of life and death and as such this creates universal themes that binds the world together. Through the themes of hope, nature, and companionship, Beah’s struggle through the Sierra-Leone civil war in A Long Way Gone connects him to “If We Hold On Together,” an R&B song by Diana Ross.