The 6-year war in Sierra Leone captured 10,000 to 14,000 child soldiers and left them displaced after the war with no family and no childhood left. A long way gone by Ishmael Beah gives us a unique perspective of what child soldiers have to go through and what they have survived. Resourcefulness was one of the various skills that Ishmael used to survive well being part of the Sierra Leone war.
Ishmael's resourcefulness helped him in many ways to survive well in war. The first piece of evidence that supports that Ishmael is resourceful is, "I learned about this grass during one of the summers when I visited my grandmother. When I squeezed a bunch of the grass together, they provided foam that left my body with a fresh scent¨ (Beah 52). His use of past knowledge helps him survive during the war. The first way
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Ishmael's great ability to notice his surroundings and use what he has around him is a huge reason he was able to survive. If he wasn’t perceptive during the times he spent alone, he would not have survived. Also, Ishmael used the branches from the trees to keep him safe. One way it kept him safe was by keeping him from predators, and he was able to eat the fruit from the tree. The last quote that shows Ishmael is resourceful is, ¨We loaded the supplies in plastic bags, and the six of us went to the nearest market, where we sold them to a vendor¨ (Beah 145). The use of the supplies to get money for himself and his friends so he could go to the city and experience new things was a great example. This example shows how resourceful he is even when he is out of the war. Selling the supplies is the last way that Ishmael shows how resourceful he is. Ishmael's journey was full of many hardships but a way he helped himself survive was by being resourceful and using his
The RUF go town to town raiding and destroying villages. Stealing food and supplies to fill their needs and they don’t have any sympathy for the people. Even if the people don’t get in their way, they will murder anyone in the villages. When the war came to Ishmael he found a village and they gave him shelter and food, but it return he was forced to fight against the RUF
3. His temporary journey in this world had ended. pg 88 This quote explained that in Ishmael’s culture, things like the afterlife do exist, although I don’t know if it relates to their religion. How does this help Ishmael continue on his journey.
In A Long Way gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah explains his life and how he became a child soldier during Sierra Leone's civil war. During recounting his experiences, Beah uses literary devices which include metaphors, similes, personification, and symbolism to communicate his experiences. Before the war, Ishmael Beah was just a boy who enjoyed listening to rap music cassettes with his friends and preparing for the talent show. Ishmael Beah finally narrates the book when he is an adult, he tells us how carrying the tapes throughout the war changed his life. In his memoir, he used many associations with cassette tapes as a motif to show his psychological degradation and rehabilitation throughout his time in the civil war and return
Both Ismael and Jacob were in vulnerable circumstances organizations and groups of people exploited them to their benefit. Ishmael lost his family after Ishmaels family were killed by the rebels, and he became an orphan roaming his country fleeing from danger and trying to survive. Ishmael focused on his physiological needs: “I began to feel my Ribs when I touched my sides"(32) ALWG. Ishmael was trying to survive; he had only himself: Beah was in a vulnerable situation.
Throughout the book these quotes are what kept Ishmael striving to
War is a haunting time that affects all humans in one way or another at some point in their lives, and this is explicitly shown in Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone. This book was written from the point of view of Ishmael himself, whose life experiences are almost unimaginably daunting, telling his story as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Civil War. The whole candor of the story is surprising, as Beah goes into much detail about some of the horrible things he did whilst fighting, and how this has affected him in his adolescence and adulthood. His purpose for writing is not very clear, as he published it a number of years after the war had already ended officially, which is understandable given the things he went through, which leads
Ishmael was a 12-year old boy when his town was invaded by rebels. He experienced the daily obstacles of living life during a war. He lost the daily basics of life, including food
Hunter Davis Mr.Werley English lll 9 March 2023 Unusual Normalites Ishmael Beah reflects on his experience as a former child soldier in Sierra Leone and his societal challenges after the war. Ishmael describes the difficulty of readjusting to normal life and the struggle to find a sense of belonging and purpose in the world. Beah begins by describing the unreal experience of returning to his village after the war. He says, "Everything seemed so normal, yet it was all real." (8)Beah had spent years as a child soldier, forced to commit acts of violence and witness unspeakable atrocities.
Ishmael illustrates this point as follows " My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. "[126]. Throughout the book, the author conveys this message that he has to make decisions to survive as illustrated in the following passage “ We could not find anything substantial to eat. We got hungrier day after day to the point that is our stomachs were hurting and our vision blurred at times.
Towards the beginning, Ishmael was always on the run. He was running and hiding to survive. On page 69 Ishmael says, “...I was starting over and over. I was always on the move, always going somewhere.” If Ishmael wanted to survive, he had to keep moving.
There is not a more credible source to listen to on this because no one else has experienced exactly what Ishmael has experienced in his own
It was the only way to survive” (Beah 29). Following the outbreak of war, resources were scarce so the boys turned to crime to feed their hunger. The fulfillment's of Ishmael's physiological needs brought him strength to stay safe. During
Ishmael says, “I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care” (Beah 135). Ishmael is no longer in the war, yet the violence and numbness to it continues. The hell from war made its way into a normal life for Ishmael. He will never be the same Ishmael from before the war.
Ishmael went to many different places in his story and at many of those places horrible things happened. At most places the RUF attacked and Ishmael had to leave that place. Other places where already attacked or were going to be attacked soon but at every place Ishmael went he survived and got out. Ishmael was very lucky to live through all of the places he went because not everyone survived but he did.
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