essay topics for a long way gone

A Long Way Gone

86 pages • 2 hours read

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-21

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Consider Ishmael’s maturity level at this age. While he has certain predictable interests, such as rap music, he also possesses a clarity of vision and a sense of autonomy that enables him to survive these circumstances. Using examples from the text, explain what caused Ishmael to mature so early. 

What happens to normal standards of behavior during times of crisis such as war? Why is there a change in what is considered socially acceptable? What do you think causes the sort of sadism exhibited by the rebels and, later, Ishmael himself?

Dreams and nightmares are referenced repeatedly throughout this memoir . The author is traumatized by dreams of violence and dead bodies; he awakens having fallen to the floor during such a nightmare even after his relocation to New York City. What psychological mechanism do you think may be at work here? Do dreams serve a cathartic purpose? Why does Ishmael continue to suffer from terrifying dreams long after his military experience is over?

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Essay Samples on A Long Way Gone

The powers of revenge and forgiveness.

The novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, is a memoir about himself, sharing his harrowing experience as a child growing up and his struggle for survival in Sierra Leone. The unthinkable happened in his village, Mattru Jong. The civil war occurred out of...

• A Long Way Gone

Book Review "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah

 The novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, is a memoir about himself, sharing his harrowing experience as a child growing up and his struggle for survival in Sierra Leone. The unthinkable happened in his village, Mattru Jong. The civil war occurred out of...

The Horrifying Reality of War in Ishmael Beah's Novel A Long Way Gone

“A Long Way Gone” written by author Ishmael Beah is a book about a young boy named Ishmael who went through a lot of early teenage trauma because of a war that was happening in his home country. The author wrote this book about his...

Sierra Leone's Robbed Childhood in A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

The war deprives kids of childhood, distorts humanity, and brings despair and fear. People living in a peaceful world can never feel the same about the reality and cruelty of wars. This book tells the reader about the actual miserable situation of Sierra Leone during...

Uncovering The True Fiction Behind Ishmael Beah’s Recount of His Life Story

What settles the difference between nonfiction and fiction? The specifics. In a nonfiction novel, the author is recounting on purely true events. However, in a fictional text, the author has a wide range of possibilities and can be very subjective. The specifics can be used...

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The Life Lessons in "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah

“The book is raw, run through with melancholy, but so honest and longing that hundred and thousands have read it, and it’s made Beah…arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature,” said Dave Eggers (Vanity Fair). A Long Way Gone is a story of...

Best topics on A Long Way Gone

1. The Powers Of Revenge And Forgiveness

2. Book Review “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah

3. The Horrifying Reality of War in Ishmael Beah’s Novel A Long Way Gone

4. Sierra Leone’s Robbed Childhood in A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

5. Uncovering The True Fiction Behind Ishmael Beah’s Recount of His Life Story

6. The Life Lessons in “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — A Long Way Gone — Critical Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Critical Analysis of a Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

• Categories: A Long Way Gone Civil War Sierra Leone

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Published: May 14, 2021

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A Long Way Gone

by Ishmael Beah

A long way gone themes.

From the moment he fled the violence at Mattru Jong, the focus of Beah's life became surviving day to day. He learns quickly that in order to survive, he must suppress his true emotions. After the RUF attacks Mattru Jong, Beah lets go of his prior attachments to family and friends, joining up with boys who, like him, are on the run. Even though he welcomes the company, he remains emotionally distant from his newfound friends. When they die or become separated from one another, Beah does not have time to mourn. His goal is to live through one more day, and he can't afford to stop and think about the atrocities around him.

For months, Beah stays alive by overcoming hunger, violence and isolation. When Beah becomes a soldier, he is trained to tap into his rage in order to kill rebels. The officers manipulate the boys into thinking they are exacting revenge on the people who killed their families. Beah acknowledges it is unlikely that he and his fellow soldiers confront those actually responsible for their families' deaths, but the temptation to believe is strong. They accept this as reality - fueled by drugs and violent films - and operate on the assumption that they kill or be killed.

When Beah arrives at Benin Home, he finds it hard to access his true feelings about the loss and the violence he has experienced. After years of subverting his emotions, he is unable or unwilling to speak about what happened because Beah long gave up hope for a real life. Only through therapy is he able to trust others begin to tell his story. Cutting off his emotions kept him alive, but examining those feelings after the war gave him a new life.

Beah weaves memories of his life before the war into his recounting of months on the run from the RUF. In distressing times, Beah calls up happier moments in order to get through another day. Memories of his family - especially those of times before his parents divorced - allow him to keep a glimmer of hope alive in the darkness. His memories of his grandfather help in a more direct way; Beah uses legends and advice from his childhood while alone in the forest. Memory is an aid. When he becomes a soldier, however, Beah no longer indulges in memories of his childhood. After he kills his first man, the memories become a burden as he believes his life will never be the same. When he is rescued by UNICEF, he still resists remembering his family because he is afraid he will have to first reexamine his war years in order to access memories from before. But, Beah uses flashbacks later in the book as he allows his memories to return while he is in rehabilitation. For Beah, memory is the key to survival at the start of the war, then blotted out as a coping mechanism when he is forced to do inhuman things, and a signifier of healing later on.

Loss of Innocence

Obviously, since Beah became a child soldier, his tale would incorporate the resulting loss of innocence. The violence and terror is rendered through the eyes of a child and Beah writes plainly and without judgment about his experiences. Though the attacks on his village and subsequent villages he seeks haven in sever Beah from normal childhood activities, he at first maintains his innocence. He holds onto childhood memories and is able to fleetingly rekindle his sense of wonder; for example, he and his companions rejoice when they first see the ocean.

Although the violent pursuit of rebels across Sierra Leone traumatized Beah, it is not until he is turned into a killer that he truly loses his innocence. To emphasize this change narratively, Beah stops utilizing flashbacks to his childhood in the memoir after he is indoctrinated into the army, citing his inability to remember anything good. Beah details the manipulative tactics used by the commanding officers to create killers, which have the cumulative effect of eradicating childlike emotions or actions. Beah's experiences in the war strip him of his humanity but the relief efforts help restore the dreams he had forsaken when he was 12.

Even amid the horrors of civil war, Beah can see a grander perspective when confronted by natural beauty. Beah strives to be like the moon, he is adept at living off of the forest when he is stranded, and he rejoices when he sees the ocean for the first time. In nature, Beah retains his innocence. In his memoir, nature also echoes or foreshadows coming evil. Left alone in Mattru Jong after most of the villagers fled to the forest, Beah notes that the moon does not appear in the sky that night and that the air felt "stiff, as if nature itself was afraid of what was happening." (p. 22) When Beah is traveling with Kanei , Musa , Alhaji , Saidu , Jumah and Moriba , a crow falls out of the sky and the boys, desperately hungry, eat it despite their ominous feelings. The next day, Saidu falls ill and dies shortly thereafter.

For Beah, there's a deeper spirit to nature, one that resists the manmade atrocity. As a soldier, when it rains, he notes that the forest is washed clean, "as if the soil had refused to absorb anymore blood for that day." (p. 150) When his rehabilitation starts to take hold, Beah considers the moon for the first time since the war. For the past several years leading up to this moment, Beah has been divorced from the redemptive power of nature. He has been trained to fight, to kill, and to survive. Now, having broken through his own barriers against trusting nurse Esther and the UNICEF worker Leslie , Beah recovers his sense of family history. He invokes the memory of his grandmother and her lesson about man's communion with the natural world. For the first time since he was inducted into the army, Beah remembers this connection and seeks to make himself whole again.

Life and Hope

Hope comes in the starkest terms for Beah during his ordeal. When on the run from the RUF, Beah is able to comfort himself with memories of his earlier life. His father's saying, "If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die" is enough to push him towards another day. (p. 54) Being alive one more day is proof that all is not yet lost.

When he is a soldier, however, Beah forfeits a connection to his life. Hope dims in the haze of drugs and violence. Beah gives up any dream of a future beyond simply surviving. However, his father's adage rings true once rehabilitation begins. After speaking at the UN, Beah's hope is rekindled. He meets many children like him and sees that his experiences can have an impact on the world. For once, he realizes that someone will care if he lives or dies. Far away from the civil war, Beah's life has meaning again. In New York, also meets storyteller Laura Simms who offers him a lifeline out of Sierra Leone - which he eventually takes.

The Damages of War

Beah's memoir sheds light on the multifaceted damage done by civil war and terrorism. The anguish of losing his family and friends is compounded by the uncertainty each day brings. Although they attempt to find a safe haven from the war, the boys know from bitter experience that no such place seems to exist in Sierra Leone. Each new village brings either hopelessness - in the form of desolation and isolation - or hostility on the part of the frightened inhabitants. Beah feels that there is no place for him to call "home" any longer, and fears that such a place may never exist in his future. Whatever dreams or goals he had set no longer seem possible.

As a soldier, the fear subsides and he is forced to tap into rage and vengeance in order to survive. The constant violent acts Beah is subjected, as well as the drugs he becomes addicted to, tamp down his fear - but also his humanity. The war also breaks down civilization. Beah notes that before the war, kids his age would never raise their voice against adults. But the rebels and soldiers respect no one. Because of this, when Beah travels in packs of other lost boys, they are assumed to be devils. The civil war leads to chaos and mistrust on both personal and community levels.

Beah loses his mother, father, brothers and grandparents in the war. Family is the most important thing for Beah, and he struggles to keep his family alive any way he can. At first, he is stranded along with his brother Junior in Mattru Jong. Their bond deepens despite the tragedy that has befallen them. Ishmael and Junior try to protect each other as best they can, as they had when they were "misfits" at school. However, when they become separated, Beah is unable to mourn for him as he must focus on staying alive.

Each pack of boys Beah ends up with during his travels becomes an ad hoc family; family becomes situational rather than genetic. But each boy realizes that something irreplaceable has been lost. When Saidu dies, Kanei must represent his family at the funeral. The villager who accompanies them say that they will always know where their friend is buried and can return; but each boy knows they will never return. Later, Beah's squad becomes his family. Even at Benin Home, the ex-RUF boys clash with the rescued army boys. Likely orphaned, each boy desperately clings to one another. Family is something to fight for.

At Benin Home, Esther offers to be Beah's sister but he can only grant her familial status on a temporary basis. He has been jaded by war, but he still seeks connection. Beah eventually finds a home with Uncle Tommy - who, like Beah during the war, takes care of children other than his own despite not being blood - but he is wary of opening up about his wartime experiences. Beah does not want to alienate his cousins. Beah has learned that family is precious but can be fleeting.

The memories and stories of Beah's childhood are interspersed throughout the memoir, typically at times when Beah is most afraid. Within the story, they are a comfort to child Beah, but they also serve a greater, narrative purpose. With Esther, Beah bemoans the fact that as sole survivor, no one else will be able to tell stories of his childhood. His memoir is a way to keep his family alive in some way.

A Long Way Gone Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Long Way Gone is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Ishmael Beah takes a matter-of-fact tone in his memoir. Although he is recounting great horrors experienced by his twelve-year-old self, he does not dwell on lurid details or seem to exaggerate for dramatic effect. He states plainly what he sees...

GradeSaver has a complete study guide for this unit, which includes a short-summary of the novel.

How did Kanei become a refugee

He escaped with both mother and father, lost two sisters and brothers in chaos. They arrived at the river and got on a boat but the rebels shot at the boat so he swam.

Study Guide for A Long Way Gone

A Long Way Gone study guide contains a biography of Ishmael Beah, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About A Long Way Gone
• A Long Way Gone Summary
• Character List

Essays for A Long Way Gone

A Long Way Gone essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

• Thematic Analysis of A Long Way Gone and Sold
• The Inhumanity of War and the Loss of Innocence in 'A Long Way Gone'
• The Impact of Revenge in War as Displayed in “A Long Way Gone”

Lesson Plan for A Long Way Gone

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to A Long Way Gone
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• A Long Way Gone Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for A Long Way Gone

• Introduction
• Main character list
• Plot summary

A Long Way Gone

Ishmael beah, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Children in War

A Long Way Gone is the autobiography of a boy soldier, Ishmael Beah, who as a boy was afflicted by and then coerced to participate in the Sierra Leone Civil War as a boy soldier. Narratives of war often involve a loss of innocence, where dreams of glory are replaced by a realization of the horror of war, but a narrative of a child soldier is something else. It is the story of not only…

The Horror of War

Beah’s memoir is an act of witness. He relates gruesome violence so that the reader might understand what his life was like, what the war was like. The hope is also that he might draw enough attention to what happened in Sierra Leone so other atrocities might be stopped before they begin.

When the memoir begins, war is just a rumor to Beah. He doesn’t believe it will ever reach him. Refugees who pass through…

Companionship, Hope, and the Self

In the face of so much horror, Beah’s will to live is tested. His hope that each new set of companions will be the one he gets to keep—the ones who will not leave him or be torn from him—allows him to keep moving forward, even as the evidence mounts against that hope with each loss.

Beah is separated from his family at the beginning of the memoir, fleeing the advancing rebels with a group…

Guilt and Responsibility

War is fertile ground for feelings of regret and guilt. Although as a manipulated child soldier, Beah can never be said to be at fault, his actions as a child soldier are often at odds with the person he imagined himself to be. Beah experiences himself firing the gun or slitting the throat—because he did fire the gun and slit the throat—and therefore cannot help but feel he is responsible for the pain he causes.

As a boy before the war, nature is essential to Beah’s understanding of the world. Its beauty seems to him not just good in itself, but a reminder of the essential goodness of the world. Beah often looks to the moon as a model of good behavior. As his grandmother says, “no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way.” In the narrative present, the…

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

Cicada map 2024: See where to find Brood XIX and XIII − and where they've already been spotted

For many Americans, the cicadas are here .

Trillions of periodical cicadas are already emerging in a rare, two brood event across multiple states , with more expected to come in the following weeks. Thanks to warm temperatures and good conditions, these 13- or 17-year cicadas are emerging from their underground habitats to eat, mate and die, making a whole lot of noise in the process.

Broods XIX and XIII have not emerged together since 1803, and after this year, won't emerge together again until 2245. While they are largely in different states, they are both emerging in parts of Illinois and Iowa.

So if you've seen one cicada or hundreds of cicadas, here's where you can expect to see more this year.

Are cicadas dangerous? Busting myths on the harmfulness of the noisy pests.

Are cicadas already out in 2024?

Adult periodical cicadas from Brood XIX have been spotted by users in multiple states across the Southeast and Midwest including in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and Illinois, according to  Cicada Safari , a cicada tracking app developed by Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Through Cicada Safari, users can confirm their sightings of cicadas with pictures, look at a map of other cicada sightings, join a leaderboard with other users and learn more information about cicadas.

2024 cicada map: Check out where Broods XIII, XIX are projected to emerge

The two cicada broods are projected to emerge in a combined 17 states across the South and Midwest. They emerge once the soil eight inches underground reaches 64 degrees, expected to begin in many states in May and lasting through late June.

The two broods  last emerged together in 1803 , when Thomas Jefferson was president.

What is a brood?

According to the  University of Connecticut , broods are classified as "all periodical cicadas of the same life cycle type that emerge in a given year."

A brood of cicadas is made up of different species of the insect that have separate evolutionary histories. These species may have joined the brood at different times or from different sources. These different species are lumped together under the brood because they are in the same region and emerge on a common schedule.

Why do cicadas make so much noise?

You'll have to thank the male cicadas for all that screeching. Male cicadas synchronize their calls and produce congregational songs, according to  Britannica , which establish territory and attract females. There is also a courting call that they make before mating.

Unluckily for us, the 13-year and 17-year brood cicadas  are the loudest , partially because of the sheer number of them that emerge at once.