These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the play.

Post-Reading Analysis: Cycles of Violence

The Rules are a social code that trap Will in a cycle of repeating violence. Why do you think this social code exists, and how are the characters in this book trapped in a system that they don’t believe they can change?

Teaching Suggestion: As you discuss the prompt, you might find it helpful to engage your students in Will’s larger context—poverty, lack of institutional trust, Toxic Masculinity, and many other factors might help students connect Will’s feelings of helplessness or lack of agency to larger conversations about injustice in America.

Personal Response Prompt: Challenging assumptions about inner-city violence

When you think of people who live in an inner city and engage in violence, what do you typically think about their emotional state or their character? How does this book challenge those notions?

Teaching Suggestion: Long Way Down reveals the posturing of the street as a fragile shell built around a core of inexpressible feeling, yet the dominant narrative for decades has been around thinking of gang members as violent, unrepentant criminals. Getting students to write about how this book defies those stereotypes will help them engage with Toxic Masculinity and Vulnerability and Cycles of Violence.