Masculinity and Coming of Age Theme Analysis

At 15 years old, Will is on the brink of coming of age, even before his brother Shawn is shot and killed. However, after Shawn’s murder, Will realizes that manhood has unexpectedly arrived early for him: he must, per “the Rules” of conduct in his community, avenge Shawn’s death by killing Carlson Riggs, who he believes is Shawn’s killer. Much of how Will conceptualizes manhood has to do with acting appropriately masculine—that is, as an adult capable of killing another person. As the ghosts who appear in the elevator on Will’s way down to avenge Shawn’s death engage with Will, they begin to show him that how he thinks of manhood may be misguided and ultimately, they drive home to Will that he is still a child. In this way, Long Way Down critiques Will’s perception of coming of age as simply embodying a particular type of masculinity. Instead, the novel shows that such ideals don’t actually enable men to live as men. Rather, the violence inherent to manhood in Will’s community turns the men into targets, cutting their adult lives short.

Will’s coming of age, in many respects, began a long time ago. Shawn introduced Will to the Rules when Will was eight years old, after Will’s childhood best friend, Dani, was accidentally shot and killed. This was essentially the first time Will was asked to act like a man—that is, to repress his emotions and to understand how men in his community customarily handle gun deaths. Importantly, Will tells the reader that if he’d known the Rules before Dani’s death, he would’ve (even at eight years old) felt compelled to seek revenge for her death. While it’s somewhat unclear whether this is actually the thought of eight-year-old Will or whether it’s 15-year-old Will trying to appear appropriately loyal according to the Rules, it nevertheless situates Dani’s death as a step forward in terms of Will’s maturity, but not a complete jump into adulthood. This idea of Will’s actions catapulting him forward but not entirely turning him into a man forms one of the book’s most important points about maturation: that there is no one defining coming of age moment. Rather, growing up and becoming an adult is a series of comparatively smaller choices and experiences.

Additionally, the ghosts, as well as Will’s mother, believe that male adulthood is partially governed by “nighttime”—essentially, a darkness and a danger that Will suggests plagued many of his now-dead friends and family members, including Pop, Buck, and Shawn. According to what Will relays of his mother’s beliefs, this concept of “nighttime” is what made Shawn a violent and uncontrollable person. Their mother stopped trying to control Shawn when he turned 18, and instead focused on praying that the darkness and violence wouldn’t lead to Shawn’s death. Buck, meanwhile, seems to have always had elements of the nighttime in him, given his difficult and split upbringing by a troubled, nighttime-ridden father and a stepfather who was a pastor. Buck, Will suggests, couldn’t escape the fact that nighttime seemed to be in his genes. According to Buck and Pop, however, Will doesn’t possess this quality. Buck is the first to say that Will doesn’t have it in him to kill anyone, and later, Uncle Mark echoes this sentiment. Indeed, the way that Will handles his gun makes it very clear that even if he feels compelled to behave in a violent way to avenge Shawn’s death, the violence of what he’s about to do is abhorrent to him and almost unthinkable. Despite Will’s clear discomfort with the idea of killing someone, making the choice to fish Shawn’s gun out of his dresser drawer nevertheless brings about an important coming-of-age moment for Will. He says that he’s surprised by how heavy the gun is and suggests that it feels about as heavy as an infant, a clear allusion to fatherhood and thus to Will’s rapidly disappearing innocence as he attempts to come of age and embrace adulthood.

As much as Will might feel compelled or required to come of age by murdering Carlson Riggs, it’s worth considering the long-term consequences of this action, as laid out in the Rules. While Will might come of age and begin to experience some of the darkness and danger that his deceased male mentors suggest is just a part of being a man in their neighborhood, Will may also become a target for a family member, friend, or fellow gang member of Carlson Riggs. That is, if someone close to Riggs also chooses to follow through with the Rules and retaliate against Will, Will won’t have the opportunity to live very long as an adult. Though Long Way Down never fully fleshes out what adult masculinity should look like (though the tears shed by both Shawn and Pop suggest that, ideally, it’s more emotional than the Rules want it to be), it nevertheless makes it very clear that the vision of manhood Will has in mind is fundamentally flawed—it’s only attainable for a short period of time before the young man in question inevitably dies. Tying coming of age to this toxic, violent version of masculinity only creates an environment in which men continue to senselessly die. Should Will choose to not go after Riggs after the novel’s close, however, he may have the opportunity to define what kind of man he wants to be—and hopefully, to live a long life as an adult.