In many parts of the world, child exploitation is an everyday activity that causes many children to be separated from their families and friends. Child exploitation occurs primarily in areas such as Asia and Africa, but modern authors have described its horrors to readers on all continents. In the novel Sold by Patricia McCormick, a young thirteen-year-old girl named Lakshmi was sold into prostitution in India due to her lack of knowledge of the outside world. In Ishmael Beah's memoir A Long Way Gone, Ishmael was a twelve-year-old child soldier in Sierra Leone who killed RUF rebels and pillaged villages. Both Ishmael and Lakshmi faced hardships that forced them to adapt to their violent and abusive situation in order to survive. Therefore, a theme that underpins both novels is that learning to adapt is necessary to survive during times of violence and abuse. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Lakshmi learns to adapt to prostitution during times of abuse because she wanted to survive; she becomes a prostitute to pay off her debt and has to sleep with a large number of men. When Lakshmi was washing herself with a bucket of water, she realizes that “no matter how often I wash and scrub and scrub and scrub, I cannot rinse the men from my body” (McCormick 129). Lakshmi's body is filled with the smell of men and she has realized that she is slowly adapting to prostitution for her own survival. The theme also depicts Lakshmi's adaptation to prostitution when she imagines her life as a television remote control. At the Happiness House, Lakshmi “pretends that what happens at night when customers are here isn't something that's happening to me. I pretend it's a TV show I'm watching from far, far away. I pretend I have a button that I press to silence everything” (McCormick 157). Lakshmi pretends to have her life shown on television to cope with the abuse she receives in the brothel. Lakshmi has also adapted to the unsanitary brothel and cruel abuse of Mumtaz. After living at Happiness House for a long time, Lakshmi “no longer notice[d] the smell of the indoor latrine. And I have long ceased to hear the blows of Mumtaz's belt” (McCormick 153). Lakshmi's senses of smell and touch had already adapted to Mumtaz's abuse and the bad smell of the brothel because she wanted to survive in the brothel. Essentially, the theme of learning to adapt is necessary to survive during times of violence and abuse fits Lakshmi because she had to adapt to the abuse at the Happiness House. Similarly, Ishmael Beah also had to learn to adapt to the violence and abuses of war because it was the only way to survive. Ishmael had used drugs to adjust to the harsh life of being a child soldier. Ishmael “had been taking turns at guard posts around the village, smoking marijuana and smelling brown brown… They gave me a lot of energy” (Beah 121). To adapt to the times of violence and abuse of war, Ishmael took drugs that gave him an abundance of energy and deprived him of his feelings, which allowed Ishmael to kill enemies more easily. Ishmael also adapted to killing rebels by imagining each rebel as the murderer of his family. During the war, Ishmael visualized each rebel as “simply another rebel responsible for the death of my family, as I had come to truly believe” (Beah 125). Ishmael adapts to the times of violence by imagining each of the rebels as a person responsible for the death of his family. Ishmael survived in the army.