A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah Character Analysis

Ishmael became a victim of the war the moment he became a boy soldier. He was only a young teen at the time, where substances took over his life, as he states, “In the daytime, instead of playing soccer in the village square,

Killing people and destroying villages makes Ishmael a very dangerous soldier. Ishmael has joined the team because of how the Rebels killed all of his family. Ishmael was angry that his family died but he was not the one how did. He wanted to have his family around, so this parents can see Ishmael grow up to an adult. Ishmael had to do something to get his revenge on the Rebels, “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in the process I will kill another person whose family will ant revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will come to an end”

  Ishmael was threatened and forced to join the army of Sierra Leone at the age of twelve. By that time he was a killing machine. Ishmael describes his experiences of

How accurate is the novel “A Long Way Gone” to a historian studying child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s Civil War? It is the 1990’s; a marauding factional militia called “Revolutionary United Front” are engaged in a noxious fight for control against a feeble and poorly funded government army. Sierra Leone is gradually devolving into a macabre mess of blood and carnage; a far cry from the tropical oasis of yesteryear. Hordes of civilians are callously massacred; entire towns are wiped from the map and corruption belies every action. Upon finding salvation in the USA, Ishmael Beah has chosen to write a candid memoir that explores the atrocities he was forced to perpetrate.

The mass amounts of imagination and passion that a child is able to grasp in their minds at such a young is something that, in most individuals, does not last forever. Children should be able to live carefree childhoods where their imagination is not being replaced by worry and hardships. Once imagination and passion is taken out of a child’s heart and mind, there is no getting that back. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah he writes about the emotional and mental changes of the children in his country that have been touched by the war and how he was affected personally as well. Beah recalls, “The children of these families [the refugees] wouldn’t look at us, and they jumped at the sound of chopping wood or as stones landed on roofs…”(5).

This is important because it shows the extreme Ishmael went for drugs and other things. Ishmael also had done so many drugs that killing people was/were as easy as drinking water and death didn’t even scare him. Ishmael says “The idea of death didn’t even cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water”(Beah,122). This quote is important because it shows the Ishmael doesn’t have any feelings nor self-control. An article says “Drugs are mixtures of chemicals and because of their structures they can affect the body in many different ways.”

For example, after being captured by the rebel group, Ishmael is forced to almost kill his brother for his initiation. Although he was fortunate enough to escape that tragedy, Beah was still later separated from his brother, Junior, and never saw him again. It’s things like this can can destroy a man’s character, and once that character is finally destroyed, that’s when you are most vulnerable. You dont know who you are anymore and you must take on a new face and persona. This is how I believe Ishmael fell so quickly to the acts of war.

In the novel, “A Long Way Gone,” Ishmael Beah suffers from PTSD due to the exposure to war at such a young age and the rehabilitation process. Ishmael was exposed to guns, drugs and other types of violent acts due to the war at the age of 12. As time went by, Ishmael lost his family and slowly his friends too. Ishmael was traumatized from all the violence he experienced due to the war approaching his village. He had been forced by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces to serve as a child soldier during a civil war and “It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it.

Ishmael has a flashback of his life in the war. In his dream he encounters a body wrapped in white bed sheets, and as he unwraps it he realizes it is his own face he is looking at. He then awakens, sweating and on the ground. He says, “I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories” (Beah 19). Even being in a different country cannot take away the hell that Ishmael has been through.

The human condition is full of paradoxes and double meanings. We can commit the most shocking and terrible acts, but we can complete the most virtuous and honorable feats. Ishmael Beah describes the appalling and violent behavior he and other children exhibited toward the human life during his time in the Sierra Leonean civil war in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. Beah also details the forgiveness and kindness of complete strangers that helped him become the man that fate meant him to be. Homo sapiens are complex creatures brimming with irony and surprises.

Ishmael does a magnificent job in telling his story, he envelops the reader and does not let go until the very end. But some will not want to be let

A Long Way Gone: War and Rehabilitation Following the life of Ishmael Beah in his autobiography, A Long Way Gone, readers experience how a young boy adjusted to drastic changes in lifestyles. The first- and perhaps more marked- change in lifestyle was when he became a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Army. The second was when he was taken away to be rehabilitated by UNICEF. Although there are several important components in both Ishmael’s life at war and his life during rehabilitation, it is his relationship with fear, how he deals with trauma, and his character in general which significantly share resemblances in each of the two mentioned lifestyles.

At the age of 13 till the age of 16 the author, Ishmael Beah, pulls himself through many terrible conflicts in Sierra Leone. The author uses conflict to show his readers the realism of his story. By using conflict in many different ways, it allows readers to gain an understanding of how Ishmael struggles changed his life for worse and for better. By using person vs person, person vs society, person vs self, and person vs nature conflict the author is opening doors allowing readers to get a full understanding of Ishmael 's challenges of a life in war. The most commonly seen conflict in ‘A Long Way Gone’ is person vs society.

Later, UNICEF came and decided to take Ishmael out of the war and put him in a rehabilitation center. In this part of the novel, the reader can see how his desire for killing has controlled him completely. By fighting and killing rebel members in the rehabilitation center and beating up the guards to force them into doing what the children wants to do, the reader can see that the war has changed their ways of life and thoughts. The army was able to change Ishmael 's desires and from that, he became a deadly

Additional Activity 1 In the book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, the reader can gather certain information about the story he told. The point of view of his story truly affects the reader’s understanding. Also, Beah included details that defined his experience and changed his life. He also wrote his memoir with an emotion that drove the story.