A Long Way Gone

One allusion that appears in the first chapter of A Long Way Home is Ishmael’s reference to one of the Rambo films. He mentions that at age ten, he had seen and heard survivors from the war zones...

At the beginning of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah's hometown, Mogbwemo, is attacked by rebel forces. Beah himself avoids the attack because he is participating in a talent show held in a...

Perhaps the writer of the introduction for an essay on A Long Way Gone may wish to capitalize upon the significance of the book's title and irony of its author's name. For Ishmael Beah, like...

In Chapter Eight, Ishmael is on the run after a rebel attack destroys the village of Kamator and scatters the remaining villagers who manage to escape execution. As Ishmael makes his way west, he...

Ishmael Beah's novel A Long Way Gone opens when the protagonist is ten years old and completely innocent about the destructive nature of the civil war moving inexorably towards his village,...

An overwhelming irony surrounds the death of Ishmael Beah's family in A Long Way Gone. All the while that Beah spends on the run, he desperately wants to find his family. In every village that he...

Ishmael Beah's memoir is a chilling account of his days as a child soldier and his struggle to return from a personal hell. His story is presented through the description of his three worlds: his...

The formidable amount of stress caused in war makes it difficult to remember details from wartime experiences correctly. In no way would the inability to fully recall all wartime experiences...

After Beah hears gunshots in his village and realizes that his family is now dead, chapter 12 of A Long Way Gone serves to introduce Beah to his new life of a child soldier. Ishmael Beah explains...

The title of Beah's memoir A Long Way Gone refers to the rocky journey that Beah has taken as a former child soldier. He is forced into the army so that he can survive, and the lessons that he...

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah describes several friendships that he had as a young boy before he became a child soldier. He had friends in his home village before it was raided, and he ran with...

Earlier in the story, a rebel messenger comes to Mattru Jong to tell the people that the rebels will be coming to the village. They expect to be welcomed without reservations, as they claim to be...

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier traces the activities of Ishmael Beah, the author, as he tries to survice war-torn Sierra Leone before escaping and making his way to America at only 18...

Chapter 2 begins with one of Ishmael’s nightmares. He did not see the attack on his own village, but nonetheless has nightmares about it. In the nightmare, Ishmael sees dead, “mangled bodies,” with...

Determining the tone of a literary work requires you to think about what the author's attitude or opinion is of the topic. The best way to analyze tone is to review the chapters mentioned and look...

Chapter 13 of A Long Way Gone deals with the boys' introduction to actual combat. We see here just how they are turned from boys into mindless killers. Ishmael and the others have just finished up...

Family, choice, innocence and manipulation are all important themes in Ishmael Beah’s memoir. Family is significant as a strong influence in Beah's early life, and their influence gives him...

The first sign of war to reach Mogbwemo is when Gibrilla tells Ishmael Beah and their friends that rebels had attacked the mining areas of Ishmael’s hometown. Gibrilla learns of this development...

In my mind, I think that the plight of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, or anywhere, is probably some of the most convincing evidence that globalization is uneven. The information superhighway as...

Chapter 7 of A Long Way Gone begins with the rebel attack on Kamator. While at one point most of the people of the village had been expecting an attack to occur, they had let their guard down....

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah is finally put into rehabilitation, but he and the other boys do not take to it easily. The boys have been exposed to harsh drugs for so long that it is not easy...

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah devotes significant attention to nature. He has been taught to pay attention to nature and to learn from it. He has grown up hearing his elders tell him that...

One event that had a major impact on Ishmael Beah was the Revolutionary United Front’s raid on Mogbwemo, his home village in Sierra Leone. Although he and several friends were outside the village...

Love is actually a difficult emotion for Beah to display within the confines of A Long Way Gone. I say this to emphasize the fact that Beah himself certainly appears to be a loving person, but...

When chapter 14 begins, Ishmael Beah has become a functioning unit within the group of boy soldiers. In large part because he has become addicted to the “white capsules” and is often high on...

The original question had to be edited. I think that Beah's life in the exposition of the memoir is steeped in this idea of innocence. The fact that he seems to be a "regular" adolescent helps to...

Chapter 14 Beah usually suffers from extreme migraines but notices that the pain dulls as he begins to focus on the violence and lifestyle associated with being a boy soldier. He and his fellow...

In chapter 1 of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah explains that he and his friends had snuck away from their hometown of Mogwembo to participate in a talent show in the town of Mattru Jong, 16 miles...

In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael, his brother Junior, and their friend Talloi travel to Mattru Jong to perform a dancing and rapping act. Their decision to travel without...

A Long Way Gone is Ishmael Beah's firsthand account of life as a child soldier in the army during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war against militant rebels in the 1990s. He was trained to use an...

Many people are ignorant to the fact that children are still used in gruesome manners that have been long outlawed in other countries. Children who are forced in labor, used as slaves, and driven...

A detailed description of each of 21 chapters is not possible within the confines of this format. What follows is an attempt at providing some details. Chapter 1: Ishmael’s childhood, beginning at...

In chapter 8 of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah joins a group of six other boys who are heading south to a village called Yele, where they believe the army is stationed. At first, he is afraid of...

In a conversation with UNICEF, Ishmael Beah answers this question directly: What can I do to give back and make child soldiers understand the possibilities on the other end?” So, I decided to be...

The theme in this passage is nature as a source of comfort. Having escaped the rebel onslaught in Mattru Jong, Ishmael is now in the village of Kamator. Although the village is free from rebels—at...

The two quotations relate to multiple themes in the book. Ishmael Beah relates his time and experience as a child soldier during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. As a child caught up in a war and...

When we meet Ishmael in chapter 10, he and his friends have traveled to a number of different villages, where they experience a great sense of hospitality and a respite from the violence of war....

In Ishmael Beah's 2007 memoir A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, he tells the story of how he became separated from his family as a young boy in Sierra Leone during the country's civil war....

The theme present in this passage is a false sense of hope and the ignorance of youth. Initially, all is quiet as Ishmael is cooking some rice and okra soup. All of a sudden, however, the peace of...

One instance when a group of adult men make the boys an offer occurs when they are appointed to be child soldiers. When Ishmael and his friends make their way back to their village, they are...

A Long Way Gone is actually autobiographical non-fiction rather than a work of fiction, and thus critics will usually not use the term plot in discussing the main events of the work. Instead, it’s...

I would say that one way in which Beah is contributing to the community is through his efforts to make the world aware of the plight of child soldiers. Beah has not retreated into a sanctuary of...

In A Long Way Gone, Beah's main focus is the struggle to survive as a child soldier. Beah, about to be reunited with his family, witnesses the burning of a village and there is no trace of his...

One example of irony in A Long Way Gone that supports the theme there is hope in horrific situations is the recurring mention of Ishmael’s love of rap music. When the story opens, before the...

In Ishmael Beah's memoir A Long Way Gone, family plays an important role. Ishmael recounts his experiences amid violence in his homeland of Sierra Leone. Ishmael, just twelve years old, travels to...

The central idea running throughout chapters 15 to 17 is that Ishmael's PTSD debilitated him psychologically, emotionally, and physically, and as if from the inside out. For example, in chapter 15,...