Brutally Honest

It is necessary for the author to be brutally honest when describing the violence in his book. Without such detailed descriptions of the violence that the author experienced you would not and could not fully understand what it was like to live through this war. For example in the book a long way gone the author, Ishmael Beah, describes deaths that he himself witnessed when he was a young boy. The depth that he uses not only shows us on the page but also in our imaginations as well. “The last casualty that we saw that evening was a woman who carried her baby on her back. Blood was running down her dress and dripping behind her, making a trail. Her child had been shot dead as she ran for her life. Luckily for her the bullet didn’t go through the baby’s body. When she stopped at where we stood, she sat on the ground and removed her child. It was a girl, and her eyes were still open, with an interrupted innocent smile on her, (page 13)”The depth of the words makes them experiences and not just words on a piece of paper.