Analysis Of A Long Way Down

William Gardner

Amanda Holiday

English 10

6 April 2023

Lesson Analysis Within The Novel A Long Way Down

In the novel, A Long Way Down, author Jason Reynolds maintains common ideas of darkness, disorganization, and regret. These ideas help to reveal underlying meaning and lessons within Reynolds' novel such as nothing always goes according to plan. Furthermore, the negative ideas shown in Reynolds’ novel are arguably more helpful to understanding profound messages than the use of positive ideas. Sometimes we need to see darkness, we need to see how others live, and we need to understand how and why their decisions are influenced by their environment.

The setting of Reynolds’ novel reflects the idea of darkness embedded in the lesson, nothing

Reynolds frequently alludes to disorganization on the cover of his book and within its text. The front cover of his book has scratch marks, color fading, and distortions of the objects on it. Usually, we intend for objects to be tidy, newly colored, and with no distortions, but the front page of his book doesn’t follow this plan, further demonstrating Reynolds' lesson. In addition, within his text, it always seems like characters’ decisions are represented as disorganized, which symbolizes how things do not go according to plan. Some of the moments Will experiences in the elevator support the idea of disorganization. For instance, when Will intended to hide his gun, as seen when he says, “I covered it with / my too-big T-shirt”(Reynolds 66). However, when Will has the pistol hanging out of his pants, Buck exposes him by saying, “Your tail is showing”(Reynolds 90). Because Will was disorganized, his gun, which he intended to hide, was visible. The disorganization regarding Will’s actions and the cover of the book reflect the idea that nothing ever goes according to

For instance, when Will’s uncle is killed, Will’s dad tried to get revenge and kill Will’s uncle’s killer. However, Will’s dad couldn’t conciliate his anger and this led him to make a feckless decision that ended up with him killing the wrong guy. We can see this when Will narrates, “Uncle Mark And My Father / looked at me with hollow eyes /dancing somewhere between / guilt and grief, / which I couldn’t make sense of / when my father admitted / that he had killed / the wrong guy”(Reynolds 218). Will’s father killed a young kid named Gee, who he incorrectly thought was the one that killed Will’s uncle. This mistake made Will’s dad experience a lot of regret and penitence, as seen in the quote’s descriptive language regarding Will’s father’s “hollow eyes dancing…between guilt and grief.” In addition, we can further see that even the most precise person, like Will’s dad, can miss sometimes when Will says, “staring at my father who / wasn’t my father at all. / At least not like I had imagined him. / A man who moved with precision, / patience, purpose, / not no willy-nilly / buck-bucking off / at randoms / at random. / Spent my whole damn life / missing a misser”(Reynolds 221). The repetition of words with the root “miss” in them contributes to emphasizing the importance that people can miss sometimes and, that no one is