Jack Ramos

12/20/15
Period 1
The Second Paragraph from Page 118 to Page 119
In the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah used imagery and
hyperbole to show that people act irrationally during a time of war. In the
beginning Beah watched as people died right before his eyes, including his
friends. Towards the end, Beah began to become enraged with the enemy
and began to kill people.
In the beginning of the passage Beah saw many people dying and did
not know what to do. He used imagery when he said there was blood
everywhere (118). He wanted to let his readers know how awful and
gruesome war really is and what it was like for him to go through it. When
Beah described how bodies had begun to pile on top of each other (118) he
used hyperbole. We cannot be completely positive that Beah used hyperbole
here but the reason he did mention this was because he wanted the readers
to think about what war is really like and why it is an awful event. Later in the
passage Beah was full of rage after witnessing the death of his friends. He
shot everything that moved (119). This use of hyperbole was probably to
heighten the moment that Beah was in and he felt like he shot everything
that moved because he was pumped up with adrenaline and was not thinking
straight.