A Long Way Gone
Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Over the weekend, please read Chapters 1 and 2 and answer the following questions.
1. Begin by reading the page before Chapter 1 begins, titled, “New York City, 1998”. What effect is this page
meant to have on the reader?
2. Identify at least 10 words or phrases that identify the setting of Beah’s homeland – Sierra Leone. Include
references to time, place, region, and atmosphere (cite page numbers). Then answer the question: What
aspects of this culture and setting will influence the characters themselves, their behavior, and their fate?
3. How does Beah’s grandmother explain the local adage (“saying”) that “We must strive to be like the
moon”? Why has Ishmael remembered this saying ever since childhood? What does it mean to him?
4. Describe Ishmael and his friends – what kind of boys are they? What do they like to do and how do they
relate to each other?
5. Describe his relationship with his family – mother, father, brothers.
6. Juxtaposition is a literary technique in which two or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are
placed side by side in a narrative or a poem for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts.
Explain how Chapter 2 juxtaposes something from Chapter 1.
7. Chapter 2 introduces TIME in an interesting way to establish the structure of flashbacks that Beah uses
to tell his story, comparing past and present. Copy the last sentence of Chapter 2 below. Then draw three
columns on your page, labeling each column with one of the “worlds.” Copy words and phrases from the
chapter and place them under the appropriate heading (he writes about each “world” in this chapter).
Include at least 3 words/phrases for each column that gives clues as to which world he is in, and how we
know he has transitioned into another one.
Sentence:
8. What does Ishmael mean when he says as he looks into the wheelbarrow, “I am looking at my own”?