A Long Way Gone Essay

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Mikall Tran

Ishmael Beah describes the horror of his life by expressing the setting in the most realistic way. It made me feel like I was a bystander within the war itself. Beah loved his village life. He was a performer and danced and imitated rap music of the 1930s. But ever since the war, he has gotten through many troubles just to get to the city.
Beah wanted to live a peaceful life. So he chose the United States. On page 19, it was the after effects of the first rebel attack. " I am pushing a wheelbarrow in a town where the air smells of burnt flesh. The breeze brings the faint cries of those whose last breaths are leaving their mangled bodies." Beah even starts to describe the corpses of the bodies. " Their arms and legs are missing; their intestines spill out through their bullet holes in their stomachs; brain matter comes out of their noses and ears." In this situation that he described, I could have imagined what that looked like. But the difference between Beah and I was that he was mortified. Those nightmare-inducing images are probably scarred on the back of his eyelids.
Beah's choice of music is rap. Rap is a type of sic where the artist expresses his emotions and feelings through music. The reason why Beah liked this music, even though he couldn't understand it, the music must have expressed how he felt during the war. But while he was in the Benin home, he wanted to listen to rap. It was the music that barely kept him mentally stable during war. Some memories that must have changed Beah were on page 34.
The rebels have captured Beah, Junior, and friends. The rebels wanted to "man up" the new recruits. Since Junior was recruited and not Beah, Junior was forced to kill Beah and the others that have gotten captured. But nearby gunshots has opened an escape route for Beah and friends. This must have affected Beah. Junior was about to witness his friends about to die. Beah was about to kill by the hands of his own brother. The trust that Junior and Ishmael had must have changed drastically. Another memory that has changed Beah was the separation from his brother. On page 43, the group was in Kamator, working on a farm, but a group of rebels raided the village. Junior and friends got separated from Beah.
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