A Long Walk to Water Literary Elements

Fictional autobiography

The action of the novel takes place in southern Sudan, in two different years. Nya's story is in 2008-09, and Salva's is mostly in 1985 but goes all the way up to 2009 when his story intersects with Nya's.

The stories are narrated from a third-person omniscient point of view.

Tone: hopeful, solemn, direct, sympathetic

Mood: tense, optimistic, hopeful, apprehensive

The protagonists of the story are Nya and Salva; antagonists include soldiers that menace Salva.

Salva's major conflict is whether or not he will make it to somewhere safe and find his family. Nya's major conflict is if she and her family will be able to survive on the poor, limited water in their region.

The story reaches its climax when Salva realizes his family is gone and he is truly alone.

1. The first chapter of the book opens with a young girl named Nya who has to make every day long trips to a pond to bring water back to her family. This aspect foreshadows the importance of water in the characters’ lives and it also foreshadows the efforts the characters are forced to make to find enough water.
2. When the group led by Jewiir starts to see more green and the air smells like water, it foreshadows that they are coming to a different stage of their journey—the Nile.

1. When Salva thinks to himself that he will spend only a few weeks in the first refugee camp , this is an understatement as he ends up staying in the camp for more than six years.
2. Salva says that the Gilo River is known for crocodiles, which is an understatement as those crocodiles are vicious and end up killing hundreds of people.

N/A.

See separate ClassicNote section on imagery.

1. An example of paradox is the fact that during the trip to Ethiopia, the group had the chance to stay for a couple of nights in a relatively safe place where they also had enough food and water to survive. However, Salva notes that both he and the rest of the people with him were more restless in the safe places than they were in the middle of danger. This is the same when Salva is in the first refugee camp.
2. Salva wonders, "How could memories feel so close and so far away at the same time?" (102)

1. Both Nya and Salva are eleven years old at the start of their stories.
2. Both Nya and Salva suffer from want of water and/or food.
3. Both Nya and Salva have "long walks" in their life.

N/A.

1. "A cold fist seemed to grip Salva's heart" (38)
2. "It was hard to keep hope alive when there was so little to feed it" (85)