Social Strife Theme Analysis

Although it is primarily set during Sudan’s Second Civil War, A Long Walk to Water offers surprisingly little background information about the conflict. Aside from a short author’s note, the book is free from any mention of the political forces that led to the long, bloody war. Instead of going into detail about the causes of the violence in Sudan, Park portrays the effects of this violence: displaced villagers, orphaned children, and an overall sense of despair. In this way, her book offers a moving portrait of the social strife in Sudan in the past thirty years.

Even though A Long Walk to Water isn’t a thorough history of Sudan, Park divides the social strife in Sudan into two clear groups. First, she describes the civil war that took place in Sudan beginning in the 1980s. During this period, North Sudanese soldiers acting on behalf of the government tried to tighten controls over the population in semi-autonomous South Sudan. South Sudanese forces refused to be incorporated into the rest of Sudan, partly because they objected to the Islamic laws of the North Sudanese government, and partly because of the lucrative oil reserves on their land. (For more information on the Second Sudanese Civil War, see Background Info.) Park also emphasizes the social strife between different ethnic groups in South Sudan, such as the Nuer and Dinka tribes. On several occasions, Park notes that these two tribes have been warring for centuries, largely over land and water. These two main forms of social strife have one thing in common: both are premised on cultural difference (even if Park doesn't go into a lot of detail on what, exactly, those differences are) and scarcity of resources (such as oil and water).

Park is unambiguous in her depiction of the effects of social strife in Sudan: it tears apart families, terrorizes children, and kills innocent people. The civil war forces Salva to flee his village without his parents and siblings. He and countless other refugees must walk across the country in search of safer conditions in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the ongoing rivalries between different South Sudanese tribes make survival during wartime even more difficult. While the North Sudanese troops think of the southerners as a single entity, the different tribes of South Sudan refuse to work together, instead breaking off into competing factions, which makes them more vulnerable.

A Long Walk to Water offers an optimistic, though arguably simplistic, view of how to remedy social strife: development. (See “Development” theme.) The book ends with Salva, now an adult, returning to South Sudan to build wells for many different tribes. In doing so, Park implies, Salva is ending an age-old rivalry between tribes and breaking down barriers. Even more broadly, Salva’s well-building initiative arguably improves some of the social strife between North and South Sudan, since it provides impoverished people with the resources they need—some of the same resources whose absence sparked civil war in the first place. However, in recent years, the social strife in Sudan has proven to be far harder to repair than Park suggests at the end of her book. Centuries-old rivalries, based not only on the availability of resources but on basic cultural differences, have continued to contribute to instability in the region. While Park can hardly be blamed for ending a young adult novel on an optimistic note, her novel arguably turns a blind eye to some of the more nuanced social issues that leave Sudan vulnerable to ongoing social strife in the future.