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A Long Way Gone Book Report

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A Long Way Gone Book Report
A Long Way Gone

Survival is a skill everyone’s born with but not many have to test it. In the memoir of Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone, he travels across the Sierra Leone bush to get away from the Revolutionary United Front(RUF) that is attacking his home village. Melissa Fay Greene from the Elle Magazine writes, “No outsider could have written this book, and it’s hard to imagine that many insiders could do so with such acute vision, stark language, and tenderness. It is a heartrending achievement.” This really sums up the feeling of the memoir, it tells a true story of how hard it is to stay alive. Ishmael Beah strives to keep his companions and family safe even if he has to do the things he disrespects. In the novel, the author purports …show more content…
He didn’t exactly change them he just made my beliefs seem more true. The memoir made me realize how fortunate the United States is to not be in constant war and that our country doesn’t have to flee from villages to escape rebels. In Sierra Leone, Ishmael didn’t know what he was going to eat yet or if he could even find food. He made me change my beliefs about addiction a lot. Seeing how little people have made me melancholy. When Ishmael describes his escape and leaving the city in the beginning of the book it sounds like pure terror. They have to hide in the tall grass and be still because if the rebels saw them they would get shot. Beah caused me to change my belief on how difficult living in total war and remote parts of the world would be. He describes, “My eyes widened, a smile forming on my face. Even in the middle of the madness there remained that true and natural beauty, and it took my mind away from my current situation as I marveled at this sight”(Beah, Ishmael 59). In this moment, it is the first time the boys have ever seen the ocean, and the sheer glance at it before going back to war amazes
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