A Long Way Gone Theme Essay

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This semester in English, the class learned about 7 different universal themes. The theme that best represents all of the books is “hope and fear drive human behavior.” The books that best fit this theme is Night and A Long Way Gone, because the books were both based on hope, fear, and surviving. The hope and fear people have effect their actions because when someone is in a state of fear they will rely on anyone or anything to get them through that fear. In the book Night, Elie and other prisoners hoped that they would get out and survive because they were fearful that they would die in the concentration camps. “As for me, I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be separated from my father” (Wiesel 82). Elie and his father …show more content…
Ishmael said “Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters” (Beah 73). Before the boys got involved in the war they were very innocent boys. They just wanted to be kids by being listening to rap music, performing it, and being with their friends and family. But once the war started to come towards them, they had to grow up and mature very fast because they were fearful for their lives. The fear affected them and they became monsters because they did not know who they were anymore. Also, sometimes hope can hurt people just as much as fear does. “People are always lying to others with such promises. Don’t let them get your hopes up, my son” (Beah 227). Ishmael’s Uncle told this to him because he knows what happens when someone gets your hopes up with lies. Someone who is in need of hope and safety will listen to anything good that anyone has to tell them. More people get hurt by getting their hopes up because they expect something good to happen and then when it does not happen the person falls down and they do not want to hope anymore. In the book, no matter what happens Ishmael is always affected by the different fears he has and all of the hope he has in himself and
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