William Hemmer
Joseph Cunningham
Intermediate Comp.
June 24, 2013
Books that inflict emotions upon the audience can use
many forms of writing to provide this.
While a portion of
the audience believes that the main form of writing comes
from genre, they can be proved wrong. Rhetorical triangle
is used to help persuade an audience with the help of
genre. It’s hard to name a novel that does not use the
rhetorical triangle throughout a novel. A Long Way Gone:
Memoirs of a Child Soldier by Ishmael Beah is a book that
was able to use the genre and rhetorical triangle.
While
the book itself may not be the best book written properly,
it invokes a reaction to its audience.
In the book A Long
Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier the author does an
excellent job in persuading and convincing his audience
with the help of genre, ethos, pathos and logos.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier written
by Ishmael Beah is classified as an Autobiography and a
Memoir. The book follows the life of Ishmael Beah as a
civil war is going on in Sierra Leone, Africa. Beah, who is
around the age of thirteen when the rebels pillaged his
home village.
Beah’s village was attacked while he and his
friends were away participating in a rap battle. As they
learned about the recent events at their village, “Their
day-today existence is a struggle of survival, and the boys
find themselves committing acts they would never have
believed themselves capable of, such as stealing food from
children” (A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah Book Summary).
Ishmael does what he has to do to stay alive, and one day
is taken in as a child soldier and is brainwashed with the
use of drugs to kill for revenge. Ishmael losses many
friends in the process but is eventually taken to
rehabilitation center, and he progresses slowly over the
next couple of years before moving to the United States.
Ishmael went through a lot, which compelled him to
write a book about what he had to endure for a fraction of
his childhood.
Ishmael Beah’s book, A Long Way Gone:
Memoir of a Child Soldier is an Autobiography and memoir.
An autobiography is non-fiction and is written by the
author who experienced the event. A memoir is, “A record of
events written by a person having intimate knowledge of
them and based on personal observation” (Memoir). A memoir
is the same thing as an autobiography, but just a more
unique name.
The use of certain genres can be very useful while
writing novels, but in particular for A Long Way Gone:
Memoir of a Child Soldier, it’s important to understand the
use of the genre memoir.
From the definition of memoir we
can see that it’s a first hand account of an event and that
is precisely what A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Child
Soldier is. The Author Ishmael Beah wrote the book about
his life and how he struggled to survive through these
tough times and a kid. With the choice of genre the
audience is aware that it is coming from a first hand
account of the event which helps play role in the
rhetorical triangle.
Before understanding how genre helps support the
rhetorical triangle in this novel, we must understand the
rhetorical triangle.
Rhetoric has been around from the
time of Aristotle and the “Rhetoric encompasses the art of
analyzing the language choices authors and speakers use to
create meaningful and persuasive texts, texts worth reading
or hearing” (The Rhetorical Triangle and Situation).
Rhetoric is described as being able to create meaningful
and persuasive text, but to better understand how these
texts become meaningful and persuasive we must understand
the rhetorical triangle. The rhetorical triangle can be
broken up into three parts, “ Ethos, Pathos and Logos are
modes of persuasion used to convince audiences” (Examples
of Ethos, Logos and Pathos).
Ethos, pathos, and logos all
work together to convince audiences, but each one does so
in a specific way.
Ethos and pathos contribute to the most to Ishmael
Beah’s book A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Child soldier,
while logos is used less effectively. Ethos in the book is
a very important role in building up credibility because,
“Ethos (credibility), or ethical appeal, means convincing
by the character of the author” (Ethos, Pathos, and Logos).
In the book A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Child Soldier,
ethos is used effectively throughout the entire book.
The
author, Ishmael Beah, uses “I” throughout the book, which
implies that it is coming from a first hand account of the
person. We can see this throughout the book such as, “The
only wars I knew of were those that I had read about in
books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood, and the
one in neighboring Liberia that I had heard about on the
BBC news. My imagination at ten years old didn’t have the
capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the
refugees” (5-6). As we see the use of first person pronouns
are used in this novel, which can also be predicted from
the genre of the book. This is why genre is important to
this book because it helps supports the claim that ethos is
used efficiently throughout this book.
An autobiography
genre helps ethos out because the autobiography is written
about some ones life, which can be understood as a first
hand account of an event.
Ethos gives the author credibility to help persuade
the readers through the life events of Ishmael Beah, but
uses pathos to help his case. Pathos is another part of the
rhetoric triangle, and defined as “an element in experience
or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion”
(Merriam Webster).
The definition provided by the Merriam-
Webster dictionary described pathos more in detail of a way
to show emotion. Since we know that the author has
experienced first hand the events that happened Ishmael
could write in more detail about his life events with out
losing credibility.
By going into more detail about his
life and creating a more precise image of his encounters is
noteworthy. Pathos is used throughout the novel from the
start to the end. In A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Child
Solider, Ishamel writes, “ It was over 120 degrees, and we
were barefoot. The humidity by the sea was less than
inland, but since there were no trees to provide shade, the
sun penetrated right into the sane, making it hot and
loose. Walking barefoot on the sand was like walking on a
hot tar road… after I had cried for several hours, my feet
became numb” (60). This gives an idea of how Ishmael
provides more detailed information to his audience to
provide a more emotional connection and response.
Ishmael try’s to paint a picture in our mind the best
and sometimes he uses more descriptive words, but sometimes
he use simple and less descriptive words to convey an
emotion.
There is a part in the book where he talks about
Saidu, who sits in the attic of his home while his sister
are raped and parents abused.
This part of the book he has
to use very little descriptive words to convey and
emotional response from his audience and according to Samia
Chughtai, “Although descriptive imagery is absent from this
excerpt, the scene still paints a vividly dark picture. The
actions and the very nature of the scene creates a strong
emotional” (3). Sometimes the events that happen are all
that needs to be said because some events are taboo and are
hard to comprehend. In this scene it could be beneficial to
be more descriptive, but with certain words such as rape,
it is not needed as much.
While Ishmael flips back and forth between how
descriptive he is in his book, the title also plays a role
in the use of pathos. The title to Ishmael’s book can
provide an emotion with some of the audience if they have a
general idea of child soldiers. The title invokes the idea
to certain readers an emotional response before or after
reading this book. Back in the
Video of about Child Soldiers
year 2012 a viral video about
child soldiers went viral on
YouTube. It was called KONY
KONY 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
2012; while the title may do
very little for the video it was the ethos, pathos and
logos used throughout the video that made it such an
incredible film and movement. This film just simply talks
about child soldiers and this one leader who is running the
child soldiers and terrifying the villagers. It is similar
in ways to the book A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Child
Soldier, but the main purpose is that an audience who knew
about these issues going on in the world would have a
reaction before picking up the book. Through the KONY 2012
video that is one way a person could be educated about such
events on going through this world.
Pathos is used throughout the book in the main form of
being descriptive with the details of the events that makes
an emotional connect. It is strengthen with ethos because
we understand that he has credibility towards the event,
because he lived through this. Ishmael Beah uses two sides
of the rhetorical triangle effectively; he limits his usage
with the last side, logos. According to the Purdue OWL, “
Logos or the appeal to reason relies on logic or reason.
Logos often depends on the use of inductive or deductive
reasoning” (Weida).
A notable scene in the book is when,
“My squad had lost the base where I had trained, and during
that gunfight Moriba was killed. We left him sitting
against the wall, blood coming out of his mouth, and didn’t
think much about him after that. Mourning the dead wasn’t
part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive”
(149).
Logos being used throughout the novel is seldom
compared to pathos as we see we have some vivid images of
the event.
There are logos used within the book it can be
typically dry and very faint to catch. As we can se it is
hard to view how logos is used in this scene, but according
to Samia Chughtai “Beah relates one of the hard facts of a
soldier on the front: survival triumphs over companionship
or emotions. After a valued comrade dies, the others,
including the author, abandon his body and his memory.
“Mourning the dead wasn’t part of the business of killing
and trying to stay alive.” This heartless, yet logical,
statement relates the dehumanization at work” (4). As we
can see we need to use reasoning to determine how ethos
would be used and it persists throughout the book just like
this. The logos part is not straightforward statistics, but
simply the fact that the audience must think.
I find that the use of logos in this novel to be on
the poorer side for the fact that you must stop and think
about it, but the author must have reasoning behind it.
Ishmael wants his audience to stop and think about these
areas where logos persist because it is there to help
persuade and inflict emotions.
Logos still stands on the
poor side for being very limited, could be used more
effectively, but its there, and adds a slight benefit to
the book.
Ishmael Beah used the genre and rhetorical triangle to
make his book much better and more convincing, but for
being human it is not exactly perfect. Ishmael Beah used
genre to help build his ethos before picking up and reading
the book and by using first person pronouns to indicate he
experienced these events.
Pathos was also used effectively
with making very precise and vivid images of most events,
but struggled to use logos effectively.
A Long Way Gone:
Memoir of a Child Soldier is an excellent book to pick up
and read if time allows, and to experience a good book
about an African civil war.
Works Cited
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Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
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