Ishmael Beah's Innocence

Ishmael Beah is described as a pre-teen, with a love of rap and hip-hop music. He finishes as a drug-addicted killing machine, out avenging the death of his entire family. Before being rescued by a United Nations Program, and eventually fleeing to New York for rehabilitation, it is a tragic and harrowing tale that gives substance to the term ‘Boy Soldier’, that isn’t really understood in most cases. Ishmael gives a gentle portrayal of his life, before the war reached his small village and forever changed his life. Abruptly he becomes fugitive fleeing for his life and eventually into a corrupted teen.

Beah, at age twelve, was in constant fear after losing his parents and everything that made him feel safe. In Boyd's’ book review on Ishmael Beah's’ memoir, A Long Way Gone, he wrote: “A 12-year-old is conscious only of immediate circumstances, and in Beah’s case the arrival of the rebels in his small town meant sudden separation from his parents and months of indeterminate flight from danger with a handful of other boys” (Boyd 302). From this quote alone you can tell Beah went through a lot more hardships that any aged person can fathom. Everything was thrown at him at once at such a young age. At time where kids are just starting to gain a sense of responsibility, a time where people are most vulnerable. Losing your parents as an adult, let alone a twelve year old child, can destroy someone's mentality.

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war(1991- 2002) with the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), provides an extraordinary and heartbreaking account of the war, his experience as a child soldier and his days at a rehabilitation center. At the age of twelve, when the RUF rebels attack his village named Mogbwemo in Sierro Leone, while he is away with his brother and some friends, his life takes a major twist. While seeking news of his family, Beah and his friends find themselves constantly running and hiding as they desperately strive to survive in a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. During this time, he loses his dear ones and left alone in the

Have you ever wondered what the life of a child soldier is like? Well, if you have, then the story of Ishmael Beah may be of interest to you. Ishmael Beah’s story is one of hope and of humanity and how if given a chance any child who has experienced being a child soldier can eventually regain their humanity and live a normal life again. In this essay I will be telling you how Ishmael is able to regain his humanity after being a child soldier. Now, I will be talking to you today about what happened when Ishmael became a child soldier.

The book A Long Way Gone, was an honest book. It showed the struggles of war and what it does to a person. The story of Ishmael Beah is a valuable one, full of love, struggle, family and violence. One of the things that is great about this book, is that it shows a clear progression of Ishmael’s character, from a sweet young boy, to a hardened young man You can see is innocence being slowly ripped away by the military, who forced him to smoke gunpowder and massacre villages. He is a real role model for kids who are struggling to get through something. If this boy can get through a war and survive, then you can get through this! The thing I didn’t like about it is the violence. They could have gotten away with not showing a baby being cut out

There is so much irony that happens in Beah’s life, it’s impossible to not feel sorry for him. For example, he says, “If we hadn’t stopped to rest on that hill, if we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family, I thought,”. (95) The story behind this quote is that Beah and the rest of his family has been split up for a while now. He then stops in a village and someone there tells him that his family is in the next village over and they were looking for him. As Beah travels to the next village, he meets Gasemu, someone from his old village, and Gasemu asks the boys to help him carry bananas. As soon as they get to a hill and can see the village, they hear gunshots. Beah runs down the hill, only to find everyone in the village already dead. It’s ironic how he was so close to seeing his family again but is minutes late because he stopped for Gasemu. Another example is when he says, “But instead of the usual sounds that brought the city to life, it was woken that morning by gunshots erupting…”. (202) In this quote, Beah is finally stable after being a soldier, and is living peacefully and happily because he is far away from the war. Ironically, the war ends up spreading to Freetown, where he is staying, even though it's not a typical spot for war. All these ironic things add to Beah’s terrible life. These ironic experiences were shared to show that life and society can be

Ishmael initial reaction to the Benin home was that of confusion and anger. At the same time he was dealing with going through withdrawal from the drug use. He did not cooperate with workers at the Benin house He refused medical treatment and all Ishmael wanted to do was fight. It was infuriating to be told what to do by civilians...We were unhappy because we needed our guns

Ishmael Beah is someone who has lived through a lot. As a child, he grew up in Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone. His life was changed when war came into his country. Here, we will be exploring the transition from being an innocent child to becoming a soldier, to being a scarred adult.

Ishamael Beah’s resilience allowed him to be adaptable to many different and difficult situations. In the beginning of the book Ishmael and his friends decide to go to Mattru Jong for a talent show. As they begin to go there they hear that the war has hit the mining areas. Ishmael and his friends knew that they may never be able to find their families again. Ishmael adapted very quickly and never gave up on trying to find them. “For more than three hours, we stayed at the Wharf, anxiously waiting and expecting to see our families or to talk to someone who had seen them.” (Beah 10) They never heard any news of them. Ishmael, Junior, Talloi begin to travel back saying goodbye to their friends. Ismael and they boys saw their first look, at what the war was about. They saw blood everywhere, parents carrying their dead children and people in pain. As Ismael, Junior and Talloi traveled

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of these child soldiers  , Ishmael Beah is a child who lived most of his childhood in the war   . He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words according to  http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html and his memoir “A Long Way Gone”. The war had made ishmael have perseverance  in the long run , inference that he was brainwashed by the war and that ishmael was a very hopeful child always wishing for better days.

Ishmael Beah was at the age of thirteen when his childhood and innocence was taken from him. For example, Beah says “My childhood had gone without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen”(30). It happened so quickly. He was frantic with worry. Beah was forced to join the Sierra Leone military. It was not until later he himself started to believe he has lost his innocence. At this young age he was killing the rebels that traumatized him purely to seek revenge and to survive. His hate for the rebels was very strong, “Whenever I looked at the rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many

(Beah 23) He describes how intimidating and alarming each bullet was and how horrific each shot exploded throughout his being. But not only did Beah experience war as a child, he also lost his childhood and innocence. “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed… I felt no pity for anyone. My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.”

Innocence is what makes a child a child. Innocence is the reason for a joyous childhood for children. However, Innocence can be seized away just instantaneously. Ishmael Beah's Innocence was snatched away when he became a child soldier in the Sierra Leone war. In A long way gone, Beah embodies the loss of Innocence by sharing his inhumane actions.

Beah and the boys who became his fellow child-soldiers had no real understanding of the conflict they were recruited to fight in beyond how it affected them personally. Ishmael and the other boys couldn’t fully comprehend why they had to kill the only thing they had on their minds at that moment was that they had to follow orders, so they wouldn’t be killed or left to die of starvation. “A 12-year-old is conscious only of immediate circumstances, and in Beah’s case the arrival of the rebels in his small town meant sudden

Ishmael Beah was a boy from Sierra Leone who became a soldier in the country`s tragic civil war. He spent nearly all his childhood running away from the war and eventually ended up joining the army. During difficult times, Ishmael always held on to hope to continue his life’s journey. In A Long Way Gone, the theme is “Always have hope”, and is shown through Ishmael Beah’s hope for a better life, to find his family, and through the rehab staff`s hope for the boy soldiers.