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This journey is split into 3 parts.

At the begging of this extract the writer started of by explaining the lifestyle he is living and what type of character is shown, we now are aware of vulnerable, unsafe and unhygienic actions. In this case we have no idea what’s going on and why is all this going on.

In the middle of this journey we then finally get to see the characters are progressing and there is better mindset and vision.
He is now

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Within the extract it shows that it easy for younger people or people with problems to be manipulated easily to join Gangs if it just for selling drugs at a young age but it also shows they older you get it harder if you got the education and a job as that prevents you from joining but it also depend on where you live and in the extract it shows that if you live below the poverty line your more likely to join a gang

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At the beginning he is explaining how it was just something that he had to do

During the middle of the extract the writer suggests that he recognises that everything he is doing is wrong and will cause him problems in the future.

At the end the writer shows that he fully knows that it is a negative thing to be involved with gangs and drugs when he says "There was always fighting and blood."

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At the beginning of the extract we learn that the character is vulnerable aswell as naive and doesnt really know whats going on. This also shows thr attitude towards the situation isnt positive.

As the story progresses we learn that the character becomes much more aware of his surroundings and he feels fully involved

Towards the end of the extract we learn that the character has pulled away from the situation after seeing the dangers and risks that thos job entails.

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In this part of the text we learn that the write uses colour to describe what gang life was like. We inow this because in the texts it says" i was green". This implies that the use of colour is significant in the txt related to the gang to show envy and guilt. This also shows the danger and the nature of the job.

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The writer is using colour to show the struggle of gang life and making it out to be positive and helping him "I was green. I was getting respect and money"

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The beginning of this extract clearly shows how easy it is for gangs to minipulate young children into joining these gangs. In the beginning they play on his child like innocence by tricking him into moving drugs and paying him in "sweets and money". Although he is only 8 he understands that what he is doing is wrong this is shown when he talks about people "bringing drugs and taking them" he goes on to say he was " scared ,angry and rejected" these adjectives imply that he doesn like where he is or hat hes doing.

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The writer tells us that joining a gang can be easy but, the message this little boy sends us is that it is like hell and no one should do it. The writer also explains how fast you can make money this is when it states " i had £700 pound in one pocket and £800 in the other ", this proves that money is quick and easy to make.  The day was like loop, wake up take drugs, sleep and get the money that was my life and i could not change.

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The writer has shown that joining a gang can be easy to do. He has shown this in a variety of different ways.
For example, the writer uses the noun "eight" this shows that the boy is eight years old this is one reason that shows it s easy to join  a gang because its still such a young age and hes in a gang which means that even at such a young age you can be in a gang.
The writer says that "people were always coming in and out" this means that all of the people were in the gang and if so many people were always coming in and out the gang would be letting everyone join.
The boy says "I thought I had to" The noun "thought" suggests that  he thought he had to and he considered them to be his friends like he owed it to them. This shows joining a gang can be an easy thing to do because if you consider someone to be a friend you feel like you owe it to them and to stay friends with them you feel like you have to help them so joining their gang is what you would do which shows how easy it is especially if the gang leader knows a lot of people they may all feel like they owe him/her so they join there gang and they respect and work for them.

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Throughout the extract we see the characters personality and age change. The writer tells us that the boy was in a gang from the age of 8 and was told by the older boys from the estate to go and collect stuff for them.

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Within the Extract the character changes physically in age but also emotionally when he was young he would believe he was useful when he was 12-13 the older boys would insult and he believes he was useless to worthless, and later on he became aggressive and got into fights, for example at the start he would talk about how he was sent on jobs but at the end he would talk about blood and fights, showing how be changed from a seller to a enforces

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In the beginning of the extract he was just a young boy, he still had his child like innocence as shown when he says "giving me sweets" being given sweets as a treat is often something a child would recieve and suggests that he still has some part of his childhood still in him.
However later on in the extract things started to change he started taking drugs as shown when he says he "was once forced to take 17 ecstasy tablets at one time" he knew what he was doing was wrong but he thiught that he wanted to "end his life"
In the end of the extract he has become "desensitised to violence" it was how his life was now he" had a lot of anger and fear" in him but he didnt act on it.he started to sell drugs and started making alot of money this is a massive difference between his childlike innicence of only wanting sweets at 8 years old to now wanting money at the age of 12.

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at the start of the paragraph we are introduced to a young boy who has been brought into the world of violence and power (gangs). Shocked and confused was the boy not knowing what to do or even where to go. The days went on and the boy was now doing jobs, sweets, money and praises were coming his way and he started to feel like someone again. He also says "I became desensitised to violence" this suggest that no matter how fast he runs he will always see violence.

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The start of the extract the writer explains how the boy was in gang crime and he was only young and didn't know what was happening.
The writer uses emotion by using the words "scared, angry and rejected" These show emotion because they show how he is feeling and how he was feeling alone and that he is scared.
However, this changed throughout the text when he says he "was feeling like something bigger" The adverb "like" is used because the writer is showing he feels like things have changed and he feels like he is being respected more.
The verb "changed" is used throughout the text to show that things are changing and also to show hes changed from one thing to another.for example, he has changed from being a little boy who had no idea what was happening to him growing older and now knows exactly what he is doing.

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the writer uses the colour green to show us that the little boy was sick of the jobs he had to do and that he hated being treated like dirt. Also, he uses the colour red to symbolise that when working in a gang is not going to be easy and it shows that gangs want to be tough and show no mercy.

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As we can see in this extract the writer has used colours to describe his journey into this Gang-Life he had to face. The writer said “on scuffed brown kitchen floors” this suggests that the area he is sleeping in is very unhygienic and grimy. This shows how unwashed this place is and that there isn’t much of actions going on, by all means no public and community in the society. This leads to Gang controlling places and drug dealers sell their supplies. This refers to the extract as it shows that there is no live in the streets and its highly owned by Gang members.

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In this extract the writer uses the colour red to describe the violence he saw. The adjective "red" could imply the blood and danger which he sees day after day. furthermore the adjective "red" could suggest anger and rage this is shown when the writer says "I had a lot of anger". The colour red could also suggest a link to gang life as gangs are seen as dangerous and red symbolizes danger.

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In this Extract the writer uses the colour brown to show the area he is in as unhygienic, "scuffed brown kitchen floors" this infers that the area he is from is apart of the low end of society where there is a lack of highygene, and with that poverty it shows why people get into gangs and sell drugs as it allows them to make money and eat and keep clean and well fed,

also the writer of this extract uses the colour red to show his emotions and the pain he goes through and what he endures.

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The writer uses colours throughout the text to express his journey. An example of this is when the writer uses the adjective "red" to show there is blood and it represents violence, danger and anger. Red is the colour of blood the writer uses the adjective red to show emotion in the text and to show that there is blood everywhere.
The adjective "green" is also used in the text when the writer says "I was young. I was green" green symbolises growth and also associated with money. The writer uses the colour green to show how he was now getting money and he was being respected because he was getting older which is where growth is suggested to represent green.

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In the extract the writer uses the colour red as a way to descibe his desensitisation to the life he was living.The colour red symbolises violence and is often linked with blood and death.Also red is linked with anger,which is also shown later on in the extract when he says "i had a lot of anger and fear".

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A Word Cloud of Language Features you could use

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A Word Cloud of Language Features you could use

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Can you find any of these in the extract?

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Parts of speech to use for Close Word Analysis (CWA)

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Parts of speech to use for Close Word Analysis (CWA)

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If you are stuck with Task 2, use this writing guide to help you.

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'Fighting and blood': Ex-gang member describes his life of drug and violence

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'Fighting and blood': Ex-gang member describes his life of drug and violence

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When I was first involved in gang crime, I didn't even know it was happening.

I was eight, and older boys from my estate used to send me on jobs to collect stuff, giving me sweets, money and praise in return. I didn't know it at the time but I was delivering drugs. Later, I started living on the streets. I'd stay at people's houses, sleeping on sofas and on scuffed brown kitchen floors. People would always be coming in and out, bringing drugs and taking them. I'd get woken up with a kick in the head and the older boys would give me drugs and tell me to take them.

I was scared, angry and rejected, but I had to put on a front and not show any fear.

I was once forced to take 17 ecstasy tablets at a time. I had seen a guy overdose before - turning yellow and gray; I thought I wanted to do the same thing he had - end my life. Instead, I just became addicted to the drugs. For the whole of that time there was a lot of violence happening. One time, I was dragged out of the house to where a man was mercilessly beating the mother of his child. Everything was red. I became desensitised to violence - for me, it was just the way life goes. I still didn't become violent myself, though. I had a lot of anger and fear, a lot of lip, an attitude. But I didn't act on it.

That changed when I was 12 or 13. I was eating cold tins of beans, cornflakes with water. The older boys would see I was pathetically poor and they called me names. I was feeling worthless. They said I could sell drugs. It was the thing I'd promised I wouldn't do. But I thought I had to. And, once I started, I had £700 in one pocket and £800 in the other.

I was young. I was green. I was getting respect and money. I was feeling like I was something bigger. People were praising me. I knew what I was doing was wrong and I wanted to stop. But when I stopped - that's when the violence started. When I was robbing people, if someone said something wrong to me, I would just react and they would get hit.

There was always fighting and blood.

All I can remember from that time was blood.

I would black out. Come to. Blood.

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Sephton Henry has lived a life of rejection, drugs, gangs and extreme violence, has been jailed multiple times and suffered from mental illness.
Here, he describes his descent into crime and his eventual path to redemption.
When I was first involved in gang crime, I didn't even know it was happening.

I was eight, and older boys from my estate used to send me on jobs to collect stuff, giving me sweets or money and praising me. I didn't know it at the time but I was delivering drugs.

Later, I started living on the streets. I'd stay at people's houses, sleeping on sofas and on kitchen floors. People would always be coming in and out, bringing drugs and taking them. I'd get woken up with a kick in the head and the older boys would give me drugs and tell me to take them.

I was scared, angry and rejected, but I had to put on a front and not show any fear.

I was once forced to take 17 ecstasy tablets at a time. I had seen a guy overdose before, and I thought I wanted to do the same thing he had, and end my life. But I just became addicted to the drugs.

For the whole of that time there was a lot of violence happening.

One time I was dragged out of the house to where a man was beating the mother of his child. I became desensitised to violence - for me, it was just the way life goes.

I still didn't become violent myself, though. I had a lot of anger and fear, a lot of lip, an attitude. But I didn't act on it.

That changed when I was 12 or 13. I was eating cold tins of beans, cornflakes with water.

The older boys would see I was poor and they called me names. I was feeling worthless. They said I could sell drugs. It was the thing I'd promised I wouldn't do. But I thought I had to. And once I started I had £700 in one pocket and £800 in the other.

I was young, and I was getting respect and money. I felt like I'm something bigger. People were praising me.

I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I wanted to stop. But when I stopped - that's when the violence started.

The other boys attacked me, and I joined a gang - a group really.

Because I had seen some horrific things I had a high capacity for violence, I moved up the ranks quickly. I would rob everybody. Any person that I saw I would rob.

I was getting into fights all the time. I couldn't go two days without fighting.

The main thing that would come with me was my bottle. I wouldn't go anywhere without my bottle. I would wear a bandana and tie it round my face and wouldn't take it off. I was suffering with mental health issues but not knowing.

When I was robbing people, if someone said something wrong to me, I would just react and they would get hit.

No-one wanted to fight with me because it was a situation where there would be violence. No-one would come and test me because they knew there'd be blood. There wouldn't be anything else.

If I was having a fight there was never a nice one. It was over the top, every time. I was a persistent and prolific offender, a PPO.

There was always fighting and blood. All I can remember from that time was blood. The situation would black out and people would be getting hurt.

I believe there are guys who want to be gangsters, guys who are gangsters, and others that are made to be gangsters.

They don't want it, but there's things that happened that caused them to be that way. I was the last one. I didn't want to be involved, but there was always something that kept dragging me back.

Of course, after all of this I ended up in prison. And not just one: I was in Feltham, Rochester, Brixton, Aylesbury - seven times.

I became institutionalised. My mental health deteriorated even more. I was even more violent. I didn't think there was ever going to be a way out. I wanted to hurt everyone: I was just walking, functioning with one need, to hurt people.

In the end, I got out of it because I discovered Jesus Christ.

At first I didn't want to listen when people were telling me about faith. But then one day I realised I need help - I had searched everywhere and felt there was nothing on earth that could help me.

I also had mentors and got a lot of support from different people.

I think we can change things with gangs and knife crime, but everyone who's doing stuff now is doing it wrong. If you look at who's doing interventions in knife crime, it's the wrong people.

There's not enough young people, it's older people who are trying to do interventions for young people.

We need to give more control to people on the ground, people at youth centres who really know what's going on, people like me who have been through that life.

Right now, people are being told what to do from above. They're speaking to gang members but not listening. We need to empower the people who know about it to really do the job.

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'Fighting and blood': Ex-gang member describes his life of drugs and violence

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Sephton Henry has lived a life of rejection, drugs, gangs and extreme violence, has been jailed multiple times and suffered from mental illness. Here, he describes his descent into crime and his eventual path to redemption. When I was first involved in gang crime, I didn't even know it was happening.

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Use the following Subject Terminology as a minimum:

adjectives
connotes
suggests
symbolises
infers
implies

Make sure you link back to 'HIS JOURNEY TO GANG-LIFE'