once touched by it, your life will never be the same. The book I am using to attempt to answer this question today is a Long Way Gone, (a memoir of a boy soldier), written and based on the life experiances of Ishmeal Beah, during the time that that the Civil war in Sierra Leone was going on. it tries to answering this question through the of Ishmaels life's stages: Untouched by war, touched by war, and running from war. Firstly, Ishmael starts this book of by telling us that he once had been untouched by war. This stage of Ishmeals life is significant because he was untouched by war, he had no idea what it would be like to be in one. There were all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land (Beah, 5). This is significant to the point, because it reveals that his mind didn't have the capacity to imagine the gruesumeness people see, when they see a war happening. Secondly, this section tells us about when Ishmael was first touched by war. This stage of Ishmael's life is significant, because, it changed him on the inside. I stayed awake all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover the happiness I had known as a child (Beah, 20). This quotation is significant to the point, because it proves that war changed him inside, it took away the happiness he once knew. Lastly, Ishmael talks about a stage of his life , where he was running away from the war. This stage of his life is signifant because he talks about how the war had perminantly damaged him emotionally and phycolocically.