Beah Rhetorical Devices

Beah pieces his memories together in ways he can remember the past through flashbacks; “I lay in it, swinging slowly to get my thoughts in motion. I began to think about the times when I visited my grandmother and I would sleep in the hammock on the farm”

The items the soldiers carry hold a substantial amount of credibility throughout each personal story; however, within O’Brien’s story, he lacks credibility aside from the obvious tangible elements of the items held, questioning where the truth lies within these evidential fragments of the soldiers’ lives. These personal accounts of exact measurements attest the reader’s knowledge of war as well as the mental ability to calculate the exact weight upon each person’s hump through a fiction of mental and emotional agility. O’Brien quotes within Chen’s criticism stating, “A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (Chen 77). This background knowledge of O’Brien’s theory that an “absolute occurrence is irrelevant because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth,”(Chen 77) places the credibility of the information upon the emotional accounts that O’Brien’s writing bestows upon the personalities of the soldiers. The “academic tone that at times makes the narrative sound like a government report (Kaplan 45),” adds documentation like analysis of these compilations of war endeavors as told by the narrator. Kaplan continues that the “transitional phrases such as “for instance” and “in addition,”’ (Kaplan 45) as well as “whole paragraphs dominated by sentences that begin with “because,”” (Kaplan 45) convince certainty of the

At 12 years old children should be playing sports and living fun, healthy lives. This is opposite of Beah’s childhood experience. It is difficult for one to imagine the fear that would cripple a child when war is brought to their front door. Beah was just a child when he had to experience the devastation of losing his family. How could a 12 year old properly grieve

Beginning my love of reading an early age, I was never the type of child who was drawn to fictional stories. As an 8 year-old child in West Virginia, I was recognized by the local library for my love of biographies, autobiographies and recollections of world events. This love has continued throughout my adult life, desiring to read novels such as “We Were Soldiers Once…and Young” by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore rather than watch the major motion picture “We Were Soldiers” starring Mel Gibson. Even though the motion picture received multiple awards, when reading the recollection of Mr. Moore’s accounts, the feeling of loss, distress, anxiety and fear can be felt in each word that he has written while reliving this horrendous war.

Beah shows how poor leadership could have been the cause of war. Africa suffers from human rights violations which characterize the era of the civil war (Correa - Velez, Nardone, Knoetze 143). The civil war in Sierra Leone brought abrupt changes to children's lives due to the power of the Sierra Leone government. Beah goes on to say that “sometimes we were asked to leave for the war in the middle of the movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission. We were always either at the front lines, watching a war movie, or doing drugs. There was no time to be alone or to think” (Beah 124). Beah explains that soldiers freedoms were taken away as they were asked to “leave” for combat often. This shows the abuse of power of the government of Sierra Leone as they revoked the freedoms of its citizens for war. Many believe that due to corrupt governance, child soldiers were not given the choice or option to become a soldier (Spencer 222). Beah finds that it’s “…not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it” (Beah 199). Beah discusses how he did not have any decision in “being a soldier” and is instead forced to. He further explains how he has to force himself to survive. Throughout the novel, Beah

“My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.” Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, was filled with embellished stories and memories of war veterans. O’Brien’s reasoning for writing that particular book was because he believed that while a memory can die with a person, written words are forever set in stone. In his book, War was every one of the soldier’s enemy; It did not matter which side they fought on. War took men physically and mentally. O’Brien displayed how war stories were based on a certain soldier’s experiences, morals, and personality; Readers never truly knew fact from fiction. O’Brien’s intended audience were readers who were

Through Beah’s use of questions, the reader is able ponder on the question as if Beah is asking the questions to him or her.

One day four men from UNICEF enter the village, talk to the Lieutenant and they took fifteen children with them, including Ishmael. Beah could not understand what was happening, he says, “The squad had been our family… I still didn’t know what was going on, but I was beginning to get angry, anxious” (130). After they were taken to the city with the people from UNICEF they found other group of children who seemed confused as well. When they started their rehabilitation process it was not easy for them to get clean. They were used to be under stress, violent behavior and drugs. He states, “We needed the violence to cheer us up after a whole day” (136). Inside the rehabilitation center they were unable to get drugs, which caused withdraws resulting in more violence. Even thought, dealing with all those children who once were soldiers was not easy, most members kept trying to help them out, “it was as if the made a pact not to give up on us” (140). After several months without drugs, Beah started his real rehabilitation which started when he began to talk with Esther. The author realizes that his humanity is coming back every time he talked to her, “the more I spoke about my experiences to Esther, the more I began to cringe at the gruesome details” (166). This shows that after that he started to become conscious about what he had

Throughout the memoir, more specifically, after his friends begin to die, Beah begins emotionally detaching himself from everything around him. He begins to keep to himself and not socialize as much with the villagers while he is passing through their village, he begins not to trust people, and he begins to detach himself from his group of friends. This is known as a defense mechanism called detachment, where the person removes themselves from the environment or a group of people they are with to cope with stress or emotional trauma. Beah uses detachment to protect himself from being hurt again after another one of his friends or family members dies during the war. He decided it was easier to have no emotion towards anyone than it was to experience

When he becomes a soldier, and is first taken out to the front lines, Beah watches two of his friends get gunned down. He is terrified, and in desperation, he resorts to shooting “everything that moved” (119), using his anger over his friends’ deaths and his hunger for vengeance as motivation.

War is portrayed as something emotional that every living being goes through in their lifetime. Most of the people experience.

The horrors of war were depicted by the constant threats to the characters lives, the brutal conditions of the bad weather, hunger and combat. Soldiers had to battle the enemy along with nature. Soldiers would become stressed, paranoid and start losing their personalities. As Captain Miller says, “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.” This quote shows the mental toll on these soldiers.

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

The wartime lives of the soldiers who fought in the war were in a state of mind of mixed feelings. Happiness and devastating are two adjectives that can describe the soldier’s feelings in the war because at one second they can be happy that they succeeded on a mission, but on the other hand, it can be very devastating because one of their own soldiers could have been killed during the war. Aside from physical danger losing one of your own soldiers or having your family worry about you every day and night are some negatives and unpleasant parts about fighting in a war. For example, soldiers loved ones worried each day, and hoped that they would not get a knock on their door by someone who was going to tell them that their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers have died in the war.

In the Toastmasters International Speech Championship 2014, Dananjaya Hettiarachchi’s speech called “I see something” is an inspiring speech that contributes of how everyone is special in their own way. Dananjaya creates a message where everyone has potential in them to realize their speciality even if they are at their worst times. He uses many different elements such as one of the rhetorical device which is ethos and pathos. His personal story of himself enhances the topic and naturally becomes effective in his public speaking. Overall, his speech has effectively motivated people to find their own uniqueness.