A Long way Gone
Austin Judd
Internal Characterization
Guilt
One of the many emotions that Ishmael felt through out this horrifying time was guilt for stealing corn from a little boy because him and his 5 friends were in so much pain for food. It says in the text "One evening we actually chased a little boy who was eating two boiled ears of corn by himself... We shared it among the six of us and ate our little portion while the boy cried and ran to his parents... Later in the evening, the boy's mother gave each of us an ear of corn. I felt guilty about it for a few minutes, but in our position, there wasn't much time for remorse."
Historical Connection to past or present event
civil war in Sierra Leone (1990s).
Long way gone is connected to the past because the war the is taking place during the story is the civil war of Sierra Leone (1990s). Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government.
2 Vocabulary Words
Brown Brown: Cocaine mixed with gunpowder. A common drug used by the soldiers as a cheap high.
crapes: sneakers
Setting
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone, on the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa, is half the size of Illinois. It neighbors Guinea, in the north and east, and Liberia in the south. Mangrove swamps lie along the coast, with wooded hills and a plateau in the interior. The eastern region is mostly made up of mountains.
2 Conflicts
A conflict in the story is Because Ishmael and his friends travel as a band of young boys, they are often feared by local villagers. So once, they were captured by a group of men who were volunteer guards for their village and were brought to the village council. Because they have no identifying information, the chief threatens to have them drowned. The problem is resolved when They found a cassette tape of rap music in Ishmael's pocket and play it for the council. And i little boy is able to remember the song and them preforming at Mattru Jong.
Another conflict in the story is when the village, Kamator, is attack late at night Ishmael is able to escape but is separated with his group. He walks for days by himself. The problem isn't really resolved yet but he runs into a group of boys from schooling and decides the loneliness was to much and goes with the boys. Hoping that he might meet up with Junior and their friends.