The Theme Of Revenge In A Long Way Down

Erick Gaona-Guerrero

Mrs. Grey

English I CP

23 March 2023

The Consequences of Revenge

The novel A Long Way Down has many themes and messages within the story. One of these many themes is revenge. The novel heavily implies that revenge is bad and in my opinion is the main point of the novel.

In the beginning of the novel Will, the main character, tells the reader about three rules that everyone in his community follows. On pages 31 through 33 the rules are told as followed, “The rules no. 1: Crying, don't. No matter what. Don’t. No. 2: Snitching, don’t. No matter what. Don’t. No. 3 Revenge: If someone you love gets killed, find the person who killed them and kill them.” Revenge is something that is stated in the rules and throughout the rest of the story the rules are brought up and revenge is the one that is mostly talked about. On page 95 Will tells Buck, “I’m about to do what I gotta do. What you woulda done. I squared. Follow the rules.” When Will encounters Buck in the elevator he tells Buck that he’s going to follow the rules and get revenge on the person who killed Shawn. This goes to show that revenge is the central point of the text.

He’s convinced that he’s the man that killed Shawn and throughout the story repeats that he’s going to kill Riggs although he isn’t aware of the consequences of revenge. On page 218 Will’s father says, “Uncle Mark and My father looked at me with hollow eyes dancing somewhere between guilt and grief, which I couldn’t make sense of until my father admitted that he killed the wrong guy.” This shows that even though Will is confident that Riggs killed Shawn there is still a chance that he’s wrong and the consequence of getting revenge would be killing the wrong guy. On page 267 it says, “Shawn stuck to the rules, … Bang Bang.” This means that Shawn followed the rules and got revenge and because he got revenge he was killed in an act of