Long Way Down By Jason Synolds

687 Words3 Pages

Who Had the Greatest Impact on Your Will? Rules don’t always rule. In Long Way Down, written by Jason Reynolds, the main character Will Holloman lost his brother to gun violence. In his neighborhood, it's a rule to avenge any loved ones death. So he grabs his brother's gun and gets on the elevator where he meets his loved ones who’ve died. In Long Way Down, Shawn (Will’s brother) has the biggest impact because he got Will to doubt himself the most. The character that had the biggest impact on Will is Shawn since he started to make Will doubt himself and The Rules more than all the others. Will looked up to Shawn, and as Shawn ignored Will completely, Will started doubting himself. And what was supposed to be his trusted rules? “The rules …show more content…

And it does make sense, he had a big impact on Will. When Uncle Mark had told Will to set the scene and walk him through what would happen when he (Will) got off the elevator to kill Riggs, Will had choked up since he “couldn’t say it”. / Hoped Uncle Mark would say, / cut.” (177) Uncle Mark had tried to get Will to say that he would shoot Riggs but he had choked up. If Will couldn’t even say what he wanted to do, there was no way he could actually kill him. It shows how Uncle Mark had a large impact on getting Will to rethink his choices. But in the end, Shawn still had the largest impact. Uncle Mark had just made Will think about his choices, to get the ball rolling, so to say. In Long Way Down, the smoke in the elevator was a metaphor for how foggy and confused Will was. And when Uncle Mark was talking to Will, the book says that there was absolutely no smoke in the elevator. That it was clear, he said. Which meant that Will was not doubting anything and he was not as impacted as many think. Shawn on the other hand, when Shawn entered the elevator, the smoke was extraordinarily thick, showing that Will was truly rethinking all of his choices, doubting himself and the rules he had spent the last 50 seconds obsessing over. So while Uncle Mark did have a large impact on Will, he didn’t have as much of an impact as Shawn did. In the end, Shawn had the greatest impact on Will because he had made