Loyalty and Revenge Theme Analysis

Long Way Down tells the story of Will, a 15-year-old boy riding the elevator in his apartment building down to the lobby. This is only the first part of Will’s journey—once he reaches the lobby, his plan is to avenge the death of his older brother, Shawn, who was shot the night before in what was likely a gang-related incident. Over the course of the minute in which Will is in the elevator, ghosts of other people (many of them family members) who died as a result of similar violent incidents join Will. As the other elevator occupants gradually expand Will’s understanding of the events leading up to Shawn’s death, the novel makes it clear that loyalty and love motivated all of these killings. But it also suggests that such emotions, and the violent actions that Will and others like him want to take as an expression of that loyalty, have irrevocable consequences for all parties involved. Long Way Down suggests that while love for and loyalty to one’s family (whether biological or chosen) can be admirable, these convictions can also manifest violently—something the novel suggests is an incredibly dangerous and unacceptable way of defending loved ones.

Given the way in which Will talks about his loved ones (especially his male family members), it’s easy to see that his family is fractured. Will’s father, Pop, was killed when Will was a toddler—as much as Will wants to remember Pop, he doesn’t. The same goes for Buck, Shawn’s mentor who died a few years ago, as well as for Uncle Martin, who was killed before Will was born. The family Will has left then, is his mother and, until the day before the novel begins, his big brother Shawn. In the absence of a biological father or stand-in father figure, Shawn played the most important role in Will’s life, showing him how he needed to behave and teaching him how the world works, just as Buck did for Shawn. This multifaceted relationship—Shawn was, in many ways, a brother, a mentor, and a father figure to Will—means that Shawn and Will were extremely close. While it’s important to not diminish the importance of the relationship between Will and Shawn (Shawn is the reason Will plans to kill someone, after all), the fact that it was just the two of them and their mother speaks to the fractured nature of families in Will’s community, which partially explains the importance of loyalty to that community.

Shawn introduced Will to the concept of loyalty by introducing him to “the Rules,” which are three rules that govern life in their neighborhood. The Rules are simple: no crying, no snitching (to the police), and if a friend or family member is killed, the survivor must avenge their loved one’s death by killing their killer. Loyalty, in this sense, is the very reason families in Will’s community are fractured in the first place—Will suggests that if someone doesn’t avenge their loved one’s death, they’re considered disloyal and effectively betray their loved one’s memory by doing nothing. Because of this, Will thinks he has no choice but to kill Carlson Riggs, the man who he believes killed Shawn. By not doing so, Will would be labeled by his community as a coward, in addition to the trauma of losing his brother. Will knows, however, that seeking revenge will seriously hurt his mom—now his only living family member. Therefore, the very fact that Will is still willing to arm himself and avenge Shawn’s death suggests that Will prioritizes his loyalty to the dead over his loyalty to the living, even if the living will be the ones who get hurt.

In the elevator, Will comes face to face with the ghosts of Buck, Pop, his Uncle Mark, Shawn, and Dani, a childhood friend who was accidentally shot and killed as an eight-year-old. Additionally, Will meets the ghost of a man named Frick, who Will is shocked to discover murdered Buck. Though Pop, Uncle Mark, Shawn, and Frick all died in the process of following the Rules and exacting revenge (and the novel implies that Dani’s death was also the result of a revenge killing gone awry), all of them suggest that this kind of loyalty required by the Rules doesn’t actually do much good. In particular, Pop illuminates the fundamental flaw in the Rules and how they play out: he thought he shot Uncle Mark’s killer, but realizes now that he made a mistake and killed the wrong man. In this sense, it’s possible to argue that Pop wasn’t properly loyal—he didn’t actually avenge Uncle Mark’s death, after all—and that he himself then died needlessly. In short, loyalty according to the Rules doesn’t necessarily mean loyalty in practice. In fact, the Rules make it hard to figure out one’s target, given the “no snitching” rule. By making this clear to Will, the ghosts in the elevator ask him to consider if his plan to kill Riggs is actually the right course of action, and if Will is actually behaving loyally by following through with it. While Long Way Down doesn’t fully answer this question—the novel ends on an ambiguous note when the ghosts exit the elevator at the lobby and Shawn asks Will if he’s coming with them—it does make it clear that avenging one’s loved ones can have unforeseen and irreparable consequences.