A long Way Home- Manette Tanelus
A Long Way Gone
I enjoyed A Long Way Gone was an exquisite story about Ishmael Beah's Life. I enjoyed the amount of details the author put in the story along walk to thoroughly paint a picture. For example he states in chapter 6, "The first two weeks were extremely painful. I suffered from back pains and muscles aches. Worst of all, the flesh on the palms of my hands was peeled, swollen, and blistered. My hands were not used to holding a machete or an ax. After the clearing was done, the bush was left to dry. Later, when the busch was dried, we set fire to it and watched the thick smoke rise to the blue summer sky"(42). Little details like this provide great imagery of a place we as readers may have never been. Many of us barely know where Sierra Leon is on the African Map, not to mention point out parts of the landscape.
I liked how much he incorporated the money story at the end because I felt that the monkey and the hunter served as metaphors. Just as the hunter faced a difficult choice of whom to choose he also felt the difficult position of being a child caught in a war and forced to choose sides when he had no family to hold on but was desperate for food. The fact that he chose to kill the money not to safe the life of a family member but to save others from being exposed to the same predicament also speaks volumes about who he is and how he sees things.
I am a bit bummed out by the way the story ends because he never finishes telling the ready how his journey gets him to New York, we simply know that he did in fact make it through foreshadowing. He ends the story on a bus headed to Conakry as he is on his way to New York.
I enjoyed A Long Way Gone was an exquisite story about Ishmael Beah's Life. I enjoyed the amount of details the author put in the story along walk to thoroughly paint a picture. For example he states in chapter 6, "The first two weeks were extremely painful. I suffered from back pains and muscles aches. Worst of all, the flesh on the palms of my hands was peeled, swollen, and blistered. My hands were not used to holding a machete or an ax. After the clearing was done, the bush was left to dry. Later, when the busch was dried, we set fire to it and watched the thick smoke rise to the blue summer sky"(42). Little details like this provide great imagery of a place we as readers may have never been. Many of us barely know where Sierra Leon is on the African Map, not to mention point out parts of the landscape.
I liked how much he incorporated the money story at the end because I felt that the monkey and the hunter served as metaphors. Just as the hunter faced a difficult choice of whom to choose he also felt the difficult position of being a child caught in a war and forced to choose sides when he had no family to hold on but was desperate for food. The fact that he chose to kill the money not to safe the life of a family member but to save others from being exposed to the same predicament also speaks volumes about who he is and how he sees things.
I am a bit bummed out by the way the story ends because he never finishes telling the ready how his journey gets him to New York, we simply know that he did in fact make it through foreshadowing. He ends the story on a bus headed to Conakry as he is on his way to New York.
I've heard of Ishmael Beah before this class but I never read the book. I think I heard about how he also makes music - hip hop - which is pretty cool. I am definitely interested in reading this. I read a book called Slave which is by Mende Nazer and it's about a girl who is from the Nuba. It's also autobiographical. She was taken as a child from her tribe and then forced to work in the city. She was abused. She was sent to work for relatives of the people who owned her, in England and she ended up getting free while there and telling a journalist about her story. It's pretty intense but it's also a good book.
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