Tuesday, November 4, 2014

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

The second memoir that I chose to read for this assignment was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. A Long Way Gone is about Ishmael, a child soldier, and his life in the army. He experiences lots of violence and deaths during his time as as soldier. This leads up to him eventually becoming violent also and having violent thoughts. The central idea in A Long Way Gone is: War and/or violence can change a person's life greatly.

This affects Ishmael because he used to be a normal kid who loved to play games with his friends. After he is forced to become a soldier, he is very violent and starts to think that this is the best thing for him. A quote to support this is, "When the young muscular rebel was captured, the lieutenant slit his neck with his bayonet. The rebel ran up and down the village before he fell to the ground and stopped moving. We cheered again, raising our guns in the air, shouting and whistling" (Beah 122).

The central idea that war and/or violence can change a person's life greatly can be seen throughout this world today. An example of this in the world right now is in Ferguson, Missouri. If you don't know about Ferguson, long story short, a white police officer shot a black 18-year old who was unarmed. This has caused many controversies over why the police officer shot him. Because of this, violence has broken out in Ferguson. An article by USA Today gives a timeline of what had happened after he was shot. One of these events highlighted in the timeline was that police had to fire tear gas because of violent protests. This supports the central idea because after Michael Brown's death (the one who was shot), the city of Ferguson, Missouri resorted to violent protests which changed their lives from peaceful to being violent.

Below is a photo from the USA Today article that shows police officers firing tear gas into the crowd. This shows the police officers also resorting to being violent because of the violent protests. Also, the link to the USA Today article is below.


 LINK FOR USA TODAY ARTICLE






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2 comments:

  1. WeiGNovember 5, 2014 at 5:55 AM

    I think it would also be true that most people automatically resort to violence in stressful situations, as you pointed out with the Ferguson riots. The police officers would of course use violence, as people tend to be dragged into violent actions in a chain reaction, such as Ishmael.

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  2. UnknownNovember 5, 2014 at 6:03 AM

    I like how you related the central idea from the A Long Way Gone to an event that is pretty recent and most people have heard on the news. This book sounds fascinating and the character Ishmael seems like a character that I would want to read about. Good Job on your blog.

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