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Author Interviews

In 'long way down,' the ghosts of gun violence chill a plan for revenge.

David Greene

Long Way Down

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Jason Reynolds' new novel Long Way Down is focused on a moment of decision. It happens in an elevator — teenaged Will is on his way to take revenge for the murder of his brother, but his plan is interrupted by a few visitors on the way down to the ground floor.

"Will is growing up in a community where there are certain rules," Reynolds says. "There's a code of conduct, and what those rules are is number one, no crying, number two, no snitching, and number three, always seek revenge."

Those rules ring true to Reynold's own experience: At 19, one of his best friends was murdered, and he considered revenge himself.

"I'm grateful that we didn't do the thing that we thought we were going to do," Reynolds says. "When you start to sort of work through those things and you come back to reality ... you're, like, 'Whoa, my entire life could have changed.' "

Interview Highlights

On the ghosts who visit Will

What I wanted to do in telling a tale about gun violence is not create one-dimensional characters that fall into cliches, and so I think what we can do with devices, like using ghosts of the past, is we can create a space where the writer, the author — quote-unquote me — doesn't have to teach a lesson. Instead, it's about us, a community, thinking about those of our family members and our friends who we've already lost to this thing, and allow their haunting to be the thing that creates our psyche and our conscience.

On the clichés and misconceptions Reynolds wanted to avoid

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One, that young people who engage in this, especially the back and forth, the revenge, that there is a fearlessness, that these young people are sort of without feelings, without emotion, that they're cold as ice, right? The truth is that everyone who's ever been around anyone who has been in these environments knows that the people who pull the triggers are terrified.

On his own experience of pain and revenge

I was 19, I got a phone call at two o'clock in the morning from one of my best friends, who informed me that another one of our best friends was murdered ... the news hit like a Mack truck. I'll never forget the next day, being at his mom's house, overrun with anger and having to admit to myself that in that moment, I was fully aware that we could all leave that house, go in search for whoever we think may have done this, and end their lives. And that I would have been able to go home that night and sleep like a baby. Because what happens is when you feel that kind of pain, time suspends itself, and you believe that you'll be 19 forever, you believe that the way you feel in this moment will last forever. And I remember his mother standing in front of us and telling us that no other mother needs to feel what she feels in that moment, and because of respect for her, all of us sort of standing down.

On why the book is written as poetry

I need my young brothers who are living in these environments, I need the kids who are not living in these environments to have no excuses not to read the book. The truth of the matter is that I recognize that I write prose, and I love prose, and I want everybody to read prose, but I'm also not — I would never, sort of, deny the fact that like, literacy in America is not the highest, especially amongst young men, especially amongst young men of color. It's something that we've all been working very hard on, and my job is not to sort of critique or judge that. My job is to do something to help that, and to know you can finish this in 45 minutes means the world to me, so that we can get more young people reading it and thinking and having discussion about what this book is actually about.

This story was edited for radio by Justin Richmond and Jacob Conrad, and adapted for the Web by Sydnee Monday and Petra Mayer.

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Long Way Down

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Will introduces himself to the reader and swears that his story is true, though he understands if the reader doesn’t believe it. He asks the reader to call him Will, like everyone else does. Only his mother calls him William, and his brother Shawn used to too, when he was trying to be funny—but last night, Shawn was killed. Will says that no matter what he doesn’t or doesn’t have in common with the reader, it’s still horribly painful to see a loved one’s blood outside of their body.

Though Will is disoriented and sad about Shawn’s death, he isn’t exactly surprised. When it happens, Will and his friend Tony are outside, wondering if they’ll grow taller now that they’re 15. Suddenly, gunshots ring out and they get down like they’re supposed to. When they stand up, Will sees that Shawn is dead. He died fetching special soap for their mother’s eczema. Shawn’s girlfriend, Leticia , kisses him and shrieks, while Will and Shawn’s mother moans. When the police arrive, a young officer seems to legitimately expect answers, but Will insists that when someone dies in his neighborhood, everyone pretends to be deaf and blind. The police put up yellow tape, zip Shawn into a body bag, and take him away. Will explains that in his neighborhood, “beef” gets passed around. It never does anything good, and it’s what killed Shawn. Back in their eighth-floor apartment, Will’s mother sobs while Will hides in his room. He tries hard to hold back tears, since “the Rules” of the neighborhood say that he shouldn’t cry. The other two Rules are no snitching, and always seek revenge—this means that if a loved one is killed, you must kill their killer. Nobody can break the Rules.

Will describes his bedroom he shared with Shawn. Shawn’s half is neat, while Will’s is messy. The only thing amiss on Shawn’s side is the middle drawer of his dresser, which contains his gun . Shawn wasn’t an angelic person; once he turned 18, their mother stopped trying to control him. However, he was Will’s favorite and only brother. He let Will start using his cologne when Will turned 13. The morning after Shawn’s death, Will digs into the middle drawer and fishes out the gun. It feels about as heavy as an infant, and Will knows that with it, he can follow Rule No. 3 and take down Carlson Riggs , a former friend of Shawn’s whom he believes is also Shawn’s killer. Will lays out his evidence for why Riggs killed Shawn: Riggs was a member of the Dark Suns, a gang whose territory included the shop where Shawn had to buy the special soap. Will also just knows Riggs did it—he’s had lots of practice identifying bad guys from watching crime shows. The next morning, Will pulls the gun out and feels close to Shawn as he grips it. Will tucks the gun into the back of his waistband. His plan is to go early to Riggs’s apartment so he can “do it.” He creeps past his mother and out of the apartment, calls the elevator , and presses the L button .

On the seventh floor, a man gets on and checks that the L button is lit up. Will remembers how he and Shawn used to giggle that “L” meant anyone going to the lobby was a losers, and Will thinks that he’s already chosen to be a loser. The man starts to look oddly at Will, and finally he turns around and shows Will his T-shirt, which has a photo of the man and a caption memorializing his own death. The man is Buck , and he’s supposed to be dead. Will tries to wake himself up from what he thinks is a dream and deliberates about whether he should be scared or not. Buck was Shawn’s mentor after Pop , the boys’ father, died. Will wonders if Buck has come to “steal his breath,” but Buck says he came to check on his gun. Will tries to adopt a tough stance and listens to Buck explain that he gave the gun to Shawn and told Shawn to keep the gun away from Will. Will announces that he found it anyway, and that he needs it to avenge Shawn’s death and follow the Rules, just like Buck would’ve done. When Will nervously grumbles about the slow elevator, Buck quips that it’s a long way down and laughs at Will’s insistence that he has work to do. Buck says Will doesn’t have it in him, and asks if he checked that the gun is loaded. Will almost shoots himself trying to check, so Buck takes the gun and announces that there are 15 bullets in it. There are supposed to be 16. Buck lights a cigarette and the elevator stops.

On the sixth floor, a beautiful young woman gets in. Will tries to check her out, but the gun digs into his back and makes him wince. The girl scolds Buck for smoking in the elevator and then asks Will why he has a gun. Will is disturbed—the girl can see Buck’s ghost and somehow knows Will has a gun. Trying to play it cool, Will says he’s not going to talk to a stranger about this, but the girl says she’s not a stranger: she’s known Will for a long time. She opens her purse and shows Will a photo of himself and his friend Dani when they were eight years old, on the day Dani died. He realizes the girl in front of him is Dani’s ghost, and says that the day in the photo was the best and worst day of his life. They were playing on the playground when someone started firing gunshots around them, and Will watched Dani get shot and bleed to death while Shawn tried to shield them from the bullets. Will cried all night. The next morning, Shawn taught him the first Rule (no crying). When Will tried to follow it, he wanted to punch something. Now, in the elevator, Dani again asks Will why he needs the gun, and Will says he’s going after Riggs. He explains the Rules to Dani so she doesn’t think he’s being violent for no reason. When she asks what happens if he misses, Will insists he won’t. Dani then accepts a cigarette from Buck, which Buck lights as the elevator grinds to a stop.

The cigarette smoke seems to box Will in, and he figures that whoever’s waiting to get on won’t get into this crowded, smoky elevator. However, big hands reach into the elevator and grab Will’s neck. Will yelps, leaps back, and reaches for his gun. He sees that the hands belong to the ghost of Uncle Mark , whom Will recognizes from the many photos of Mark around his house. Uncle Mark extremely tall and impeccably dressed, and he emotionally tells Will that he looks just like Pop. Uncle Mark was an aspiring filmmaker in life and wanted to make a movie based off of Pop and Will’s mother’s love story. When Will asks why Uncle Mark is here, Uncle Mark slowly asks the same question of Will and then menacingly forces him to answer. Will says he’s following the Rules, just like Uncle Mark would’ve. Uncle Mark walks Will through the “scene” of killing Riggs, but when they get to the point of Will pulling the trigger, Will struggles to say it. Will tells the reader that Uncle Mark died after he lost his video camera and started dealing drugs to get money for a new one. It was lucrative for a few months until a young kid killed him. Uncle Mark asks Will what happens after he shoots, but Will insists that’s the end. With a chuckle, Uncle Mark lights a cigarette and says that’s never the end. The elevator stops again.

The ghost of Pop steps in on the fourth floor and immediately envelops Will in a hug. Pop died when Will was three, so Will doesn’t remember anything about him. According to his mother, Pop died of a broken heart after Uncle Mark died, but according to Shawn he was killed at a payphone after killing Uncle Mark’s killer. At that point, then-16-year-old Buck took Shawn under his wing. In the elevator, Pop and Will start to make small talk. Though Will wants to tell Pop everything, he doesn’t—he doesn’t want to look weak in front of the other ghosts. He vows not to cry, and when Pop asks Will what Will thinks he should do, Will says he should follow the Rules just like Pop did. This worries Pop, and he asks Will if Will has ever heard his story. Pop explains that he was broken when Uncle Mark died, and he followed the Rules. He killed the man he knew killed Uncle Mark, but couldn’t sleep that night or touch his wife, Will, or Shawn. Will insists that Pop just did what he was supposed to do, but Pop says that’s not true: he killed the wrong guy, even though he believed he had the right man. Hearing this, Will is disappointed that his father isn’t the man he thought he was. He also wonders if he’s disappointing Pop right now. Pop steps forward and pulls Will into a hug again. Will feels both confused and comforted until Pop grabs Will’s gun and puts it to Will’s head. Will shrieks for help, but the smoke blocks out everyone else in the elevator. After Will wets himself in fear, Pop removes the gun away and gives it back to Will. Uncle Mark offers Pop a cigarette, and when Buck lights it, the elevator stops.

A light-skinned stranger gets on and doesn’t acknowledge anyone, so Will thinks he must be alive and real. Buck, however, approaches the stranger and shows the man the back of his T-shirt. They embrace happily, and Buck introduces the man as Frick , his killer. Will is shocked, especially when Buck asks if Shawn never shared this story. Will thinks that Shawn didn’t, but he remembers Shawn saying that he knew who killed Buck and watching Shawn load his gun. Buck says that one day, he was with Shawn at the basketball court. Shawn was talking about an old friend who’s now a Dark Sun, and who tried to get Shawn to stop buying the special soap for his mother in Dark Suns territory. Will knows Shawn was talking about Riggs. Buck explains that as they talked, he tried to show Shawn a gold chain he’d just stolen from a suburban kid. He gave the chain to Shawn to cheer him up, and Shawn left the court. Will explains how to become a Dark Sun: one must acquire a cigarette burn under the right eye, live nine blocks from Will’s building, and perform a “Dark Deed,” which can be robbing, beating, or killing someone. Frick pipes up and says that he was supposed to rob Buck as his Dark Deed, but when he approached Buck, Buck just laughed. When Buck then swiped at Frick, Frick got scared and shot him. Will asks what any of this has to do with Shawn, and Frick replies that Shawn followed the Rules. He pulls down his shirt to reveal a bloody bullet hole, and Buck explains that Shawn found out who Frick was from Tony, who spends his days at the basketball court talking about everything to make himself seem cool. Turning to Will, Buck asks how he knows Riggs killed Shawn. Will says it makes sense: Riggs avenged Frick’s death. Frick, however, doesn’t know who Riggs is. He lights his own cigarette and the elevator stops.

Nobody is there when the elevator doors open. Will is getting impatient and thinks the elevator feels like a coffin. When the doors are almost closed, fingers stop them and they open again to reveal Shawn, wearing the blood-soaked clothes he died in. Shawn steps in, warmly greets the other ghosts, and then turns to face Will. Will hugs Shawn, but Shawn just stands there awkwardly. Will tells Shawn everything and says he’s trying to follow the Rules and kill Riggs. He confesses that he’s scared, and wants Shawn to tell him if he’s doing the right thing. Shawn starts to cry. Will tells Shawn that the first rule is that they can’t cry, and looks away so that he doesn’t start crying. But Will realizes that he doesn’t love Shawn any less because he’s crying—he’s still Will’s favorite and only brother. Shawn makes a pained, grinding sound as the elevator reaches the lobby. The doors open and all the ghosts step out after the smoke. Will stands in the elevator, wet, tear-stained, and afraid. Shawn turns around and asks Will if he’s coming.

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Long Way Down

52 pages • 1 hour read

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Before You Read

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

Long Way Down (2017) by Jason Reynolds is a young adult novel in free verse about Will Holloman , a young black boy struggling to make a decision after his brother Shawn is shot dead in the street. Will plans to seek revenge, but before he can leave the elevator of his building, he is greeted by a series of ghosts who confuse and complicate his perspective on Shawn’s death and the idea of revenge killing. Long Way Down became a New York Times best-seller and received several prestigious honors in young adult literature, including a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Honor, an Edgar Award, a Walter Dean Myers Book Award, and a Printz Honor.

Plot Summary

The book begins as Will Hollomon, a 15-year-old boy living in a poor neighborhood in an unnamed city, witnesses his brother Shawn’s death. Shawn is shot by someone in the Dark Suns gang while picking up special soap for his mother’s skin condition. Will sets the scene, describing his neighborhood, the relationship he and his neighbors have with the police, and the basics of The Rules: no crying, no snitching, revenge.

Instead of crying for his brother, Will finds Shawn’s gun in a dresser drawer and decides to kill Riggs—the Dark Sun gang member he believes killed Shawn. Will sneaks out past his sleeping mother the next morning and gets in the elevator to kill Riggs. But then a series of ghosts appear in the elevator, each with a connection to Will’s past.

The first visitor is Buck , Shawn’s street mentor. He tells Will he isn’t tough enough to kill Riggs. Buck is the person who gave Shawn the gun . Next, Dani enters. She was Will’s childhood crush; when Will was eight years old, he watched Dani die of a gunshot wound from a drive-by shooting on the playground. Dani asks an important question: “ What if you / miss? ” (142).

Next, Will’s Uncle Mark enters. He forces Will to consider the long-term consequences of his actions, and what it would look and feel like to kill another man. Then Will’s father enters and puts a gun to Will’s head, trying to show his son what it feels like to be the victim of a random murder.

Finally, Shawn enters the elevator. He won’t talk to Will, but he cries, breaking The Rules . Will is confused but loves his brother so deeply—it hurts to see his brother’s grief.

When the elevator stops, Shawn asks Will, “You coming?” (306). The novel ends on a cliffhanger , as Will debates whether to follow the rules, like all the ghosts before him, or to make another choice for himself.

Related Titles

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Coretta Scott King Award

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Novels & Books in Verse

Realistic Fiction (High School)

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Long Way Down Essay Topics & Writing Assignments

Essay Topic 1

Long Way Down uses and reinterprets several metaphors throughout the book. Choose one of the metaphors or figures of language used in Long Way Down (such a middle drawer). Find and write three instances of how the metaphor is used and changed or interpreted in new ways throughout the novel. What is the first definition of the word? What is the meaning of the word by the end of the novel? Finally, why is this metaphor used over and over? What is the purpose of the novel in using the same figurative language over and over?

Essay Topic 2

In Chapter One, Will takes Shawn’s gun and alludes to a little brother holding his big brother’s hands, in a sense, walking in his footsteps. In Chapter Five, Mikey Holloman tells his story of going to shoot his older brother’s killer in words and actions...

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The Practical English Teacher

Free Resources for Secondary English Teachers

• Jul 28, 2022

Free Materials for Jason Reynolds' Long Way Down

Updated: Mar 6

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Long Way Down (Lexile 720) was the first book I finished at the start of the COVID lockdowns. A co-worker suggested it to me a few years ago when I had a class of tough boys that hated reading, but I never got the chance to read the book, let alone teach it. This was regrettable, since I know now that this would have been the perfect book for that class. This blog has free materials for Long Way Down .

In Long Way Down , the main character's brother (Shawn) is killed in a shooting. This book in verse then follows the thought process of the surviving brother (Will), who feels he must avenge his brother's death. If he does avenge his brother, Will will perpetuate a spiral of death and destruction in the neighborhood. If he doesn't, he will have broken the "rules" of his family. Each "chapter" is a stop on the elevator that Shawn is riding down. He starts on the 8th floor and rides down from there, picking up a new person on each floor who has advice for him on how to proceed. I am getting chills just thinking about it!

Luckily for me, there's no shortage of boys who don't like to read coming through my classroom, and I got my chance to teach Long Way Down during the 2020-2021 school year. We were virtual for much of this year, which is reflected in the heavy directions on each handout. Since I had 4? 5? preps that year (I don't remember), I leaned heavily on this unit that I found online from Columbus City Schools . My kids LOVED the opening materials about social codes, etc. This unit really carried me at the beginning of my unit and helped me to frame my lessons going forward. Since I was teaching this book to 10 Integrated students, though, who were quite a few years below grade level in reading, I still needed to supplement the above unit with a lot of graphic organizers, and I needed to break up some of the provided activities into smaller steps.

The materials below are the handouts that I created to scaffold lessons for my students. They are organized by "section" since the book is organized into 8 sections (one section for each floor of the elevator ride). I highly recommend looking through the Columbus City unit and then using my materials as needed to scaffold. Please enjoy these free materials for Long Way Down .

Essential Questions

What is the "circle of violence"?

How does the circle of violence affect the community, families, and individuals?

Can this cycle be broken?

Free Long Way Down Pre-Reading Materials

"Does Reading Fiction Make You a Better Person?" Graphic Organizer

Trevor Noah Interview of Jason Reynolds

"Code of the Streets" Article by Elijah Anderson

"Code of the Streets" Article Group Reading & Graphic Organizer

"Code of the Street" Paragraph

Opening Chapter of Long Way Down (8th Floor)

Close Reading of Opening Passage

Opening Character Chart

Rules Journal

Magical Realism Graphic Organizer

Literary Devices in Long Way Down

Section 7 Close Reading (for annotating)

Section 7 Literary Devices Graphic Organizer

Literary Device Analysis for Section 6

Anagram PowerPoint

Anagram Analysis Handout

General Symbolism PowerPoint

Section 6 Symbolism Handout

Symbolism Reflection

No Materials

Section 3 Journals

"Code of the Streets" Video & Questions

Flipgrid Assignment

Long Way Down Multiple Choice Test (paid product)

Analysis for Long Way Down

How to Identify Theme

Free Long Way Down Writing Materials

End of Novel Essay Prompts

Outline & Model

Connecting Texts

I really enjoyed teaching this book to a whole class. I only got to teach it this one time AND it was during virtual learning, so I am looking forward to teaching it again on e day. In the meantime, and I had a lot of luck getting kids to read it independently this year. Some of them had read it before and wanted to reread it and others enjoyed the graphic novel version.

Another book kids really enjoy if they liked Long Way Down was Yummy by Gregory Neri. Yummy is a short, easy high-interest graphic novel that is, unfortunately, a true story. Yummy is a kid in South Side Chicago and gets caught up with the local gang. Things quickly go very, very wrong.

Other Stuff

Teacher background reading (NPR Article about Long Way Down )

If you have any free materials for Long Way Down that you would like to share with others, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

• Jason Reynolds
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Analysis of "Long Way Down" by Jason Reynolds

In Jason Reynolds’ anti-gun novel, Long Way Down, written in verse, he explicitly emphasizes the effects of the acts of revenge in Will’s society to evoke the adverse consequences of a gun violence.

Reynolds uses connotation to reveal the grievance of Will after going through the loss of a loved one. When Will sees Shawn crying, his tears also comes “bursting free”. The tears come into the scene as it “burst[ing] free”, as something that is forbidden and was trapped by Will’s follow of the rules. Though the rule clearly states no crying, Will can no longer hold in his grief. Something that burst free is generally unmanageable. Will’s loss of control of his emotions expose his true character. He is innocent and is only a kid. Even though Will tries to take actions that the people he looks up to will do, Reynolds implied how Will’s character is unsuitable to do such a brutal act, kill Rig to revenge.

Jason Reynolds also warns about the rightfulness of killing a person by the use of repetition in portraying the questioning of the revenge in Will’s confession to Shawn. In Will’s explanation, he states that he “knew it was Rig” to “thought it was Rig” and back to “knew it was Rig”. This fluctuation demonstrates the insecure in Will himself and displays the development of doubt in Will’s heart over whether the plan of the revenge is truly and spiritually the right thing for him to follow. If a person “knew” something, this is to be a fact. However, if a person “thought” something, this is only a thought that could be inaccurate. By using the inconsistent words, Reynolds exposes the instability within Will. Throughout the explanation, Will simply wants a reassurance from Shawn that he is doing the right thing. The author triggers the question, should he also blindly pursue the rules that the past generations have pursued that ultimately resulted in the reoccurring of the violence?

The author uses symbols to further explores the possible consequence that will supervene a gun violence. Reynolds uses the cigarettes to symbolize a revenge acted for a died. While everyone else has a cigarette, Shawn’s cigarette was “burning in [Will’s] stomach” and thus fills him with “stinging fire”. Smoking cigarettes can cause major health issues. In this case, the cigarette represents the negative effect of what a person’s death has caused. Will has not yet avenged for Shawn, in other words, he has not yet continued on this chain of violence. When one’s stomach is being burned by “stinging fire”, one suffers from extreme pain. Will, however, does not suffer from the physical pain, but the mental and emotional tortures. He is torn between whether he should continue this endless chain of revenge or remain calm and reconsider the murder. Through Reynolds’ use of representative symbolization, he reflects that an act one takes can conclude in intense outcomes that may affect another’s life miserable.

In the fast-paced novel, by using a variety of poetic devices and figurative languages including connotation, repetition, and symbolism, Jason Reynolds is able to explore the feelings of the broken, warn them about the miseries that may be the aftermath of an impulsive act, and guide them out of the darkness. At the end of the book, the author closes with “you coming?” to affirm that if you choose to do something, you have to be prepared for the consequences of your own actions.

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Long Way Down

By jason reynolds, long way down irony, have a nice day bag (situational irony).

When recounting the sight of his brother lying dead on the ground, Will notes Shawn was holding a plastic convenience store bag that features the phrases "Thank You" and "Have a Nice Day." In this instance of situational irony, the cheerful phrases on the bag create a jarring contrast with the grim and brutal turn that Shawn's day took. Indifferent to Will's reality, the face blithely broadcasts its message.

Ain't Never Done This Before (Situational Irony)

After an assailant shoots Shawn in public, the police arrive on the scene. A young officer comes over to question witnesses about what they saw. Will says, "He looked honest, like he ain’t never done this before. You can always tell a newbie. They always ask questions like they really expect answers." In this instance of situational irony, Will realizes that he, despite being a fifteen-year-old kid, has more experience with gang murders than a cop does. What Will understands and the cop has yet to learn is that no one is going to give useful answers to the police because people in his neighborhood live by a code of ethics that requires them to never snitch on a criminal to the police, no matter how serious the crime.

Kids Would Play Mummy With It (Dramatic Irony)

After police and coroners remove Shawn's body from the shooting scene, they leave up yellow caution tape to keep the public out. However, Will observes that the children in his neighborhood use the tape the next day to "play mummy with," wrapping the yellow plastic around their bodies as though mummified in bandages. In this instance of dramatic irony, the children innocently and ignorantly treat the tape that marks off Shawn's murder scene as a tool for make-believe while Will understands it as the police's quickly abandoned effort to appear as though they are investigating the killing.

Will Used to Know Dani (Situational Irony)

When a young woman steps into the elevator Will is taking down to the lobby, he is taken aback by her attractiveness. He leans back to get a glimpse of her chest down her shirt, and he is excited when she engages with him and flirts back. However, in an instance of situational irony, Will discovers that the fifteen-year-old woman is actually the ghost of Dani, a girl he used to play with. Instead of meeting a fellow teenager, he could start a romance with, he faces the haunting presence of a girl he once watched die after being hit by a stray bullet in another gang shooting.

Long Way Down Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Long Way Down is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Long Way Down

Long Way Down study guide contains a biography of Jason Reynolds, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Long Way Down
• Long Way Down Summary
• Character List