A Long Walk To Water Essay

Could you imagine having to run away from your home and your family because of a terrible war in your village? According to the Tennessee Office for Refugees, “It is a badge of strength courage, and victory to be a refugee.” In the novel, A Long Walk To Water, by Linda Sue Park, a young boy named Salva is a Southern Sudan refugee, a “Lost Boy”. He shows strength, courage and bravery when he makes his journey to escape war. Salva is stuck in his war struck village, and he needs to show these qualities if he ever wants to make it to a safe place.

First, Salva shows strength when the group is walking through the Akobo desert. He wants to stop going because of the heat and the pain, but with the help of Uncle, he makes it through. When the group is walking through the desert, the heat is unbearable. Salva just wants to stop going, especially when he stubs his toe on a rock, and his toenail falls off. His uncle keeps him going, saying that he just has to get to a group of bushes, or a cluster of rocks. Eventually, Salva is able to get through the treacherous desert. Uncle helps him get through the desert, one step at a time. The author writes, "The worst moment of the day happened near the

The boys had been walking for a year and a half, in the dark of the night through fighting and bombing. Once they got to the refugee camp, it wasn’t the nicest place, but more than 1,200 boys arrived safely. Salva helped them do this by being the unspoken leader. He coaxed them to help do work, and sometimes had to yell. But overall, those boys who had been through terrible times just like him, arrived to a new place in a new, safer country. In the text it states, "And one day at a time, the group made its way to Kenya. More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely. It took them a year and a half." Salva was victorious when he finally led more than a thousand boys to