Thursday, November 3, 2011

A long way gone

I was a little disappointed in the ending. I wanted to know how he makes it to New York, if he marries, if he has kids, how he goes to school ect. I feel like the ending kind of left the reader hanging because throughout the book the reader becomes attached to his character and wants to know where he ends up. He does end the book with the story about the monkey, which I feel is a little clever. The ending almost ties in the previous quote I mentioned, “I’ve come to learn that if I’m going to take revenge, in the process I will kill another person whose family will revenge; then revenge will never come to an end.” I feel that this ties to the ending of the book in a clever way. The story about the monkey goes as follows. The monkey at the end gives an ultimatum; if he is shot, then the person’s mother would die, and if he isn’t shot then their father would die. Both is a lose/lose situation. One of the last sentences in the book is Ishmael stating, “I would kill the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.” In his first quote he talks about how revenge is never ending and at someone always dies. The second quote ties in with the idea of Ishmael getting rid of the problem in this case, the monkey, so other people would not be put in the same predicament.

2 comments:

  1. I was also a little disappointed in the ending. I wish I knew what happen and what he accomplished the rest of his life. The end of the book did get me thinking though.

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  2. I agree! I really wanted to know what happened after he arrived in New York. His story is so touching and inspirational that it would have been nice to know what happened after the war.

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