Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Long Way Down, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loyalty and Revenge
Grief, Fear, and Cycles of Violence
Perspective and Reality
Masculinity and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
The elevator feels like a box of smoke. Buck and Dani puff and puff on their cigarettes, but Will expects the smoke to rush out when the doors open. It doesn’t. He thinks that cigarette smoke isn’t supposed to feel like a wool blanket or a blizzard—it can be thick, but it shouldn’t be solid enough to hold onto Will. Will coughs and fans the air, expecting the person outside to take the next elevator instead. Even if other people can’t see the ghosts or their smoke, nobody wants to get on an elevator with a teenager who seems to be going crazy. However, the person does decide to get on Will’s elevator, so Will steps back to make room. He’s close to Dani and Buck, but he can’t feel their breath.
Will’s inability to understand what’s happening here and why the smoke is behaving in this way mirrors his inability to understand the long-term consequences of shooting Riggs. However, Will is able to imagine what another person’s perspective of the elevator will be if they get on. This suggests that it is possible for Will to amend his understanding of his own situation by imagining things from a different perspective—and, through doing this, potentially make a better choice.
Themes
Two big hands reach through the smoke, grab Will’s shirt, and hold him by the neck as the doors close. Will can barely breathe and can’t see anything. Suddenly, the hands release Will and grab him again in a headlock, just like Shawn used to do. Will hears laughter, but it feels like he’s being held underwater and is drowning while the ocean laughs. He wonders how to tell this water that drowning isn’t funny. When the hands release Will, he looks to Buck and Dani for help. They move to the corner, laughing and smoking.
Relating the hands that choke Will to the headlocks Shawn used to put Will in shows again how close Shawn and Will were—Shawn colors everything that Will experiences and knows about. This is, in part, because Will is grieving for Shawn right now and probably has Shawn more at the forefront of his mind than he normally would. Though it doesn’t occur to Will, remembering Shawn is a healthier way to grieve than violence is.
Themes
Will yelps and puts one hand on the gun. The newcomer asks Will what he’s reaching for and why. He calls Will “nephew.” Will repeats the word in his head as a question, and the newcomer asks if Will still hasn’t learned to fight back yet. There are lots of pictures of Uncle Mark at Will’s apartment. He’s always impeccably dressed in suits, with jewelry and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He was handsome like Shawn, and always ready for the camera. Will thinks that he “foreshadow[ed] the flash.” Will asks if he’s going insane as Uncle Mark calls Will forward. As Uncle Mark towers above Will, Will remembers that his uncle is supposed to be dead. Uncle Mark puts his hands on Will’s shoulders and says that he looks just like Pop.
Getting to meet deceased friends and family members helps Will connect more deeply with the long line of men who have passed down the Rules, along with other habits and cultural touchstones of the community. In particular, Uncle Mark’s comment that Will looks just like Pop suggests that Will and Pop have a lot in common. His willingness to trust Mark more than Buck or Dani also shows that Will craves a relationship with his blood family—something he can’t have, given the violence that has killed so many of his male family members.
Themes
According to Will’s mother, Uncle Mark videotaped everything, from dance battles to gang fights, with a camera that Mark’s mom bought him for his 18th birthday. He dreamed of making a movie and had a script idea, in which an uncool boy met his landlord’s young girlfriend. The girl taught the boy everything about how to woo and treat girls, so the boy used his new skills to woo the girl. When the landlord found out, he kicked the boy out. The boy and the girl were in love, homeless, and happy. Will finds this silly. The boy is Uncle Mark’s little brother, Will and Shawn’s Pop. The girl is Will’s mother.
Uncle Mark, like Will, is interested in arts and storytelling (Will’s choice to tell his story through poetry, as well as his love of anagrams, point to an interest in creative writing). Mark’s movie idea shows that he wants to tell the stories of the people close to him.
Themes
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In the elevator, Uncle Mark pulls Will into a hug, but Will can’t figure out how to hug a ghost. He thinks it’s weird to know a person he doesn’t know, but he also thinks it’s weird to not know this person he knows. Will asks Uncle Mark why he’s here as he looks his uncle up and down. At this, Uncle Mark looks sad, and Will figures that Uncle Mark expected Will to be excited to see him. Will is kind of excited, but seeing Mark’s ghost is weird. Uncle Mark straightens wrinkles in his shirt, brushes his impeccably tailored pants, and squats to inspect his shiny leather shoes. He puts a finger in his mouth and scrubs at a nonexistent smudge on the toe.
Uncle Mark likely died when Will was very young, so even if Will feels like he knows Uncle Mark through his mother’s stories, he’s not someone that Will actually remembers. This means that Will’s perception of Uncle Mark in has come from other people’s stories, not from Will’s own experience. Now, Will can begin to expand his perspective and figure out who Uncle Mark really is.
Themes
A better question, suggests Uncle Mark, is why Will is here. Will thinks that one should always be skeptical of someone who answers a question with a question, because it’s usually a setup. He offers another anagram: “cool=loco,” and asks Uncle Mark what he means. Will wants to avoid talking about the coldness in his heart and the gun in his pants. Uncle Mark stands up and repeats Will’s question. He cracks his knuckles and warns Will to not play around—Will needs to tell the truth now.
Here, Uncle Mark takes on the role of a somewhat scary authority figure, something it doesn’t seem like Will has had in his life since Pop died. If the ghosts are a figment of Will’s imagination, it’s possible to read this passage as Will’s subconscious desire to have someone like Uncle Mark call him out and make him think critically about his actions. Given Will’s mother’s grief, there’s no one to parent or mentor him right now.
Themes
Will agrees to tell the truth and says that “they” killed Shawn last night. Uncle Mark interjects and asks if Will woke up today ready to fix things because he suddenly realized he could kill someone. Will nods, but Uncle Mark loudly asks Will again if he’s correct. Will confirms that Uncle Mark is right, but says that the Rules are law. Uncle Mark huffs and closes his eyes. Will wonders if Uncle Mark thinking about the Rules— he knows they were passed to Mark and that he passed them to Pop, who passed them to Shawn, who passed them to Will. Will tells the reader that the Rules have always ruled, and they will rule forever.
Will lays out how the Rules have passed from man to man in his family for the last couple of decades. It’s telling that while others try to make Will see how violence cycles from one generation to the next, Will merely focuses on how the Rules are passed down. This suggests that Will doesn’t want to think about the violence inherent to the Rules, and would rather think about them in an idealized way. Idealizing them, moreover, makes it much harder to question or disagree with them.
Themes
Uncle Mark purses his lips, opens his eyes, and very seriously says that they’re going to “set the scene” and talk through how Will’s plan is going to go down. In Uncle Mark’s “scene,” Will stands over Shawn’s bloody body. He takes his mother inside, and then finds Shawn’s gun. Will thinks about the Rules, and the next day, he decides to find Rigg—the guy who he knows killed Shawn. Will gets into the elevator, goes down to the lobby, and walks the nine blocks to Riggs’s apartment. He pulls the gun out. At this point, Will gets stuck and can’t say anything else. He hopes that Uncle Mark will call “cut.”
Forcing Will to talk through what has already happened and what he plans to do makes him confront the fact that at this point, he still hasn’t said outright that he’s going to kill Riggs. He’s mentioned that Rule No. 3 calls for killing, but when he talked about killing Riggs earlier this morning, he used “do it” as a euphemism. This suggests that on some level, Will is terrified of actually carrying his plan out and wants to avoid the truth at any cost—which is why he wants Uncle Mark to let him off the hook by calling “cut.”
Themes
Uncle Mark encourages Will to finish. Will thinks that up until now, things were going well—the last part is just tripping him up. Uncle Mark demands that Will finished while Dani whimpers and Buck laughs. Will says again that he pulls the gun out, but he can’t say what happens next. His mouth dries out and it almost feels like an allergic reaction to the thought of killing. Buck finishes the scene for Will by saying, “and shoots.” Finally, Will can say the words himself. To the reader, he says that this movie would’ve been better than the one Uncle Mark was trying to make when he was alive. It wouldn’t be as happy, but it’d be better.
Buck continues to tease and belittle Will by finishing the scene for him. Especially given Buck’s dramatic flair, this suggests that he’s trying to trivialize Will’s plan to kill Riggs or even make it seem cool. However, Will is well aware that shooting Buck is extremely serious and isn’t a positive thing at all. Will’s belief that that this movie would be a good one suggests that he’s been taught to value violence like this over emotion, love, and support—what his parents’ love story was all about.
Themes
At some point, Uncle Mark lost his camera and couldn’t afford another one. He could’ve asked his mom, but Will says that would’ve been pointless. He could’ve stolen one, but that would mean he’d have to run and sweat. He also could’ve gotten a job, but Uncle Mark wasn’t into having a job. So for one day, Mark did what lots of people in Will’s neighborhood do: sold drugs. In an hour, Uncle Mark had enough money to buy a new camera, but he decided to finish out the day. Will is sure that the reader can tell where this is going. Uncle Mark held his corner for a month and made lots of money, but he became a target for a young hustler. Will’s mother can never remember that hustler’s name.
Through Uncle Mark’s story, Will lays out the many ways in which men in his community can get into trouble and meet their ends. Dealing drugs, he suggests through Mark, is something that may be lucrative—but only until someone inevitably shoots the dealer. The fact that Will’s mother can’t remember Mark’s killer’s name suggests that violence deaths like Mark’s are common and not necessarily noteworthy in Will’s community. The violence isn’t always something personal—at times, it’s just business.
Themes
That hustler shot and killed Uncle Mark in order to take the corner from him. Everyone on the street ducked and hid, and then pretended like the yellow tape was a “neighborhood flag.” Will thinks that Uncle Mark should’ve bought his camera and shot his movie after his first day selling drugs, but he never shot anything again. Will’s Pop did, though. Will offers the anagram “cinema=iceman” and says that he’s not sure what an iceman is, but it makes him think of cold-blooded bad guys. In the elevator, as Will says, “and shoots,” it seems like the words go right into Will’s body and cut him inside.
Again, describing the yellow tape as a “neighborhood flag” suggests that Will and his neighbors see a lot of crime scenes, which speaks to how widespread this kind of violence is there. The sensation of feeling as though the words are cutting him up inside begins to make the case that shooting someone doesn’t just kill the intended target; in some way, it damages or kills the shooter too. Uncle Mark, in other words, wants Will to understand that killing Riggs isn’t without consequences.
Themes
Uncle Mark reaches into his pocket and pulls out two cigarettes. Will is annoyed and hopes the second cigarette isn’t meant for him—he doesn’t smoke, and he reasons that people who are alive, like him, can’t get away with smoking in elevators. Uncle Mark rolls a cigarette between his fingers and asks what happens next in Will’s movie. Will says nothing else happens—it ends when he shoots. As Uncle Mark puts the cigarette in his mouth and motions for a match, he chuckles and says that’s never the end. Buck lights the match and the elevator stops.
Uncle Mark also wants Will to understand that even if Will follows the Rules by killing Riggs, it’s not over—Will would then become a target for someone trying to avenge Riggs. Additionally, Will is likely to end up in prison for his crime. This clearly isn’t something Will has considered, which shows how poorly the Rules prepare kids like Will to get through life.
Themes
