Hope allows people to move forward by providing the thought that perhaps tomorrow's events will be better than today's. Hope is a theme that remains constant throughout Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone. Ishmael begins the novel optimistic, believing that he will find his family again. This optimism is later lost when Ishmael is recruited by the army to fight against the rebels, causing him to become addicted to drugs and the thrill of killing. Three years after his recruitment, Ishmael is rescued by UNICEF, a group dedicated to the rehabilitation of child soldiers. During rehabilitation, Ishmael rediscovers hope by relearning to trust, love and have the will to survive. The presence of hope in A Long Way Gone allows Ishmael to have the ability to move forward and the will to survive that he lacks when he loses hope. Ishmael begins his journey with the desire to escape and survive Sierra Leone's civil war in order to be reunited with his mother, father and younger siblings, who fled their home when his village was attacked by rebels. With only his older brother, with whom he ran away, and a few friends by his side, Ishmael is scared, but full of hope. When the brothers are captured by rebels, Ishmael's faith in survival is low, as indicated by his fallible survival tactics when he "could hear the shots approaching... [and] began to crawl farther into the bushes" (Beah 35 ). Ishmael wants to survive, but has little faith that he can. He is trying to survive by hiding where he can, even where the rebels can easily find him. After escaping, Ishmael meets a villager from his home who tells him news about his family's whereabouts. His optimism is high when the villager, Gasemu, tells Ishmael: “Your parents and brothers… middle of paper… will use children rather than men. He is subjected to the violence of war for more than three years before he is finally rescued by an organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of child soldiers. Once Ishmael discovers happiness, affection, and the will to survive, he regains the hope he had lost. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding it, hope has always been the trigger for events in Ishmael's life, thus making hope a theme present throughout A Long Way Gone. Hope allows Ishmael to recover from the tragic events that marked his adolescence and to discover the will to survive. Works Cited Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007. Print.Hạnh, Nhất, and Arnold Kotler. Peace is every step: the path of awareness in everyday life. New York, NY: Bantam, 1991. Print.