Anagrams are a major motif in Jason Reynolds's novel Long Way Down. Will likes to play with words, and he is especially good with anagrams. An anagram is a word created by using all the letters from another word. To Will, this is symbolic of his relationship with his brother, Shawn. The two brothers are different words but the same letters. Let's look at the anagrams in section 5 and see how they relate to the section's theme.

Will's first anagram for section 5 is "cool = loco." Will wants to be cool. He wants to follow the rules his brother set for him. But what Will really is at the moment is loco, crazy in his desire for revenge. Uncle Mark wants to point this out to him, for Uncle Mark knows firsthand the consequences when someone mixes up cool and loco. Uncle Mark, too, wanted to be cool. He loved making videos, but he needed money, so he decided to sell drugs. He went from cool to loco, and he got killed because of it.

Will is taking the same risk but for different reasons. Uncle Mark tries to open Will's eyes to this, asking him to describe what he wants to do as if it were the plot from a movie. Will gets only so far. He cannot say that he will shoot. Buck says it for him. Then Will thinks that the shooting will be the end. Uncle Mark tells him there is no end.

There is one more anagram in this section: “cinema = iceman.” Cinema refers to Uncle Mark's love of making movies. Iceman is what Will thinks a bad guy is, cold-blooded. Yet Will must struggle against his own ice.