COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY PROJECT

INTRODUCTION

• Story of boy soldier Ishmael Beah in Sierra Leone, Africa
• Hard drugs, surrounded by horrible violence
• Rescued by UNICEF, NYC, return to Africa
• Permanent stay in the U.S.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Born in Sierra Leone on November 23, 1980.
• Graduated from Oberlin College
• UNICEF ambassador, advocate, United Nations

DEFINE THE THEME

• Loss of Innocence
• Society and environment surrounded by
• Challenges and hardships at young age
• "My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my role is to kill or be killed" (Beah 73).

THEME TO CHARACTER

• Main character and author: Ishmael Beah
• Remains independent, courageous and strong throughout book
• "I joined the army to average the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I'm going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge" (Beah 96).

THEME TO CONFLICT

• Major conflict in story is obviously civil war, but an important one is also the conflict with Ishmael vs. himself
• How he perceives himself to others regardless of his past
• "So I told her the whole story about how I got shot, not because I really wanted too, but because i thought that if I told her some of the gruesome truth of my war years she would be afraid of me and would cease asking questions" (Beah 120).

THEME TO SETTING

• Setting takes place in the city of Mattru Jong in Africa
• Much of civil war and violence takes place here which contributes to boys overall loss of innocence.

CONNECTION TO YOUNG ADULTS

• Wars and violence violently taking place across the world each and everyday
• On a smaller scale, the twenty-first century has taken away children's innocent days of youth
• Now filled with vulgar social media and video games

CONNECTION TO PERSONAL LKFE

• Not such a serious wau
• General public not feeling safe in some locations, at school
• Loss of innocence occurs somehow in majority of everyone's life in some way to a certain extent some more than others

WORKS CITED

• "Ishmael Beah, Author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier." Ishmael Beah, Author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2017.