"Violence is Cool"

Greetings Bloggers,

This blog entry is based on a list of topics we could discuss our opinions about a book we have recently read in English called A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah. The book is an account of a kid that is caught up in the middle of the Sierre Leone Civil War. The story follows Ishmael Beah’s journey through Sierre Leone running from the rebel army and the government army, until he and his group of friends are forced to fight on the side of the government soldiers. As he becomes attached to the violence, drugs, and guns, he is taken in Freetown to be “re-educated” back into a more humane self. The rest of the story is of him recovering from the horrors he experienced and his healing from it.

My reaction to the friends’ response of how cool it would be to see people running around with guns shooting each other was utterly shocked with a side of wow. I had that reaction because as I read further into the book I was absolutely horrified with the events that Ishmael encounter as a kid younger than me and how could the student think that it is cool to actually see people running around you and killing innocent people? For example, seeing people’s dead bodies gushing blood or seeing people being burned alive. At some points, I even started to tear up because of the images that were portrayed in the book were extremely powerful and difficult to read. I mean for some people there reaction maybe similar to mine or similar to the one in the book because we all have different levels of knowledge of what really happens in a civil war as brutal as Sierre Leone’s war. The kids in the US can’t exactly understand what it means to see the actual act of killing people so brutally as Ishmael had experienced because US has been lucky to not have civil war break out in recent times. The kids might be taking the “coolness” of seeing people killing other people from video games that they play. The video games that the kids might be playing could be showing that it is cool to see people killing other people with guns; plus the video games are not as graphic as seeing it in real life, so the video games dim the reality of seeing blood gushing out of someone’s head down a bit. Media has a strong contribution to the way kids think about things. I think that this response is expected from kids in America because they are sheltered when it comes to seeing the images and experiencing the terror in Sierre Leone. There are steps that could be taken to educate students about the reality of events like the civil war in Sierre Leone. For example, they could read books like A Long Way Gone or other books like it. If people are better educated about the reality of a civil war with all its horrors, then people wouldn’t view it as a video game they play and then they will be able to understand people’s experiences like Ishmael’s. If people have more knowledge about the terrors of hard times in countries like the civil war in Sierre Leone, people will have a different reaction to hearing stories similar to Ishmael’s.