A Long Walk to Water

“Home for just long enough to eat, Nya would then make her second trip to the pond. To the pond and back—to the pond and back—nearly a full day of walking altogether.”

In this passage, Park introduces Nya’s main conflict: she must walk for eight hours a day so that her family might live. That a young girl must carry out such a strenuous and important task is shocking to the reader, but the conflict only deepens as the reader later learns that the water is unsafe to drink. The meeting of the two narratives will resolve Nya’s conflict. 

“Like the pond back home, the lake was dried up, but because it was so much bigger than the pond, the clay of the lakebed still held water.”

Nya’s family’s desperation is evident in this passage. There is so little water that they must resort to digging it out of the muddy lakebed. The situation is unsafe, as the water isn’t sanitary and rival tribes roam the area, but they must take their chances or die of dehydration. Here, Park deepens the conflict that the end of Salva’s journey will resolve.

“The Nile: the longest river in the world, the mother of all life in Sudan.”

This passage from early in the novel suggests the importance of water as a symbol in A Long Walk to Water. The river isn’t just a topographical feature to the Sudanese people, it’s “the mother of all life,” it sustains people, crops, and animals. Water in the Sudan is nourishment. Later in the novel, another river, the Gilo, will be the source of death, as thousands die when soldiers force them into the river with crocodiles.