(sorry if I'm being silly, I'm a noob in all things arts and literature)
I was reading some stuff and realized that, when hope is the matter, the symbols are usually variations of these: nature awakening (flowers blooming, birds singing...), sunrise, sun coming from behind clouds, illuminated subject in a dark ambient.
As a mental exercise, I tried to remember/think of other images that are used or could be used to convey hope, but I can't think of any.
Have you ever written or read anything that uses other symbols to convey similar feelings as the images mentioned?
My favorite use of this motif is in No Country for Old Men (the movie, I haven't actually read the book). Sheriff Bell, trying to reconcile faith in the Christian God with the seeming random cruelty of his world, speaks of dreaming that his long-dead father is sitting just up a path in the dark, waiting for him, a fire lit to guide the way. And then he wakes up, which I take to mean he comes to believe that his dream was just a dream, his father is not lighting the way to God, God is not there and never was— which dovetails nicely with a lesson Bell learns from his uncle earlier in the film about the world having always been just as cruel as it is in Bell's time.