A Long Way Gone - Paragraph

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In the literary work I have studied, "A Long Way Gone: the author uses many symbols to support his main theme on oppression like the moon, the cassettes', and dreams. The author uses three ways to show his account of the events, he uses present, past and his dreams which he switches over from time to time to support his story. The moon is included in every part of the book. The author first remembers how his grandmother told him “We must strive to be like the moon.” (Beah 16) and this gives him safety. In the book when Ishmael is outside during the night he feels safe as he watches the moon. When Ishmael starts to ignore the moon he starts to lack safety and loses his freedom of expression. The next symbol that is heavily used is the cassettes and music. The cassettes of Ishmael always give him a sense of safety and symbolise his freedom of expression, his morality and humanity. Before the war Ishmael and his friends would dance and be able to feel free, but when the war starts and Ishmael is recruited into the army he loses those cassettes and with them his morality and humanity. Once he is taken from the army and put into the rehabilitation center he starts to regain those feelings and emotions that he lost. The nurse gives him the cassettes and walkman as a present symbolizing that he is able to freely express himself and fully regained his morality and humanity. The final symbol we see is dreams that Ishmael sees, as he changes his dreams reflect his thoughts and fears. Normally dreams represent freedom of expression as we learned in Unit 1 with the poems about oppression. I think that the author uses the dreams in this book as a symbol for the consciousness of Ishmael and how oppressed he is. In the poem "Oppression" by Langston Hughes there is a verse "Now dreams Are not available To the dreamers, " and in the book when Ishmael is recruited he loses his dreams

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