While I was reading the touching and true story of the life of Ishmael Beah, a child soldier in the Sierra Leonean war, I was able to understand how much hope Ishmael had in order to survive. Each and every day, Ishmael believed in the idea of a better future for himself and his friends. Without this strong belief, Ishmael wouldn’t have had the strong resolve to survive and to never give up on life. Basically, one significant message of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah is to never give up on hope and to believe that there will always be a better future in life. One key passage in the novel is “When I was very little, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen.
