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A Long Way Gone Ishmael Quotes

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Some of the character traits that Ishmael shows in the beginning of the book is that he is a studious and innocent child. This quote is from before Ishmael is affected by the war, when he was a young boy at the age of eight and takes place in Mobimbi, a city in Sierra Leone. Ishmael, his brother and some friends like listening to rap and formed a dance group. Ishmael says, “The four of us had started a rap dance group when I was eight. We were first introduced to rap music during one of our visits to Mobimbi. […] I loved the dance, and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics because they were poetic and it improved my vocabulary” (Beah,6).
This quotation shows that before Ishmael became a soldier, he was an innocent child who liked to listen and dance to rap music with his brother and friends, much like kids …show more content…
He went from a normal child, who liked listening to rap and dancing with his family and friends, to someone who would put someone through a lot of pain before he killed them. Ishmael was cruel and brutal because he shot the rebels in the foot, and let them sit and cry in pain and agony for an entire day. These actions would have gone against the morals he had as a child before the war, but as you can see his morals during the war have changed and he has become someone else. In addition, he became unremorseful, he would look into their eyes before he killed them and see them give up hope, to him their eyes were irritating. Ishmael didn’t care that he put his enemies in so much pain before he killed them, and it was no big deal to him, he would carry on like nothing ever happened. Considering he was just shot in the foot and experienced the same pain, you would think that he would have some empathy toward the captives but he did not, he chose to let them suffer all day. This quote shows the dramatic change from a nice young child into a brutal and unremorseful youth, and how much war can change

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