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The writer shows how easy it is to join a gang, whether it was your intention or not,

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The writer makes joining a gang sounds great. The quote I’m going to use is, “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.”  This can be bribery for anyone for a start “respect” is one thing everyone wants and this could feel this is the only way of getting it. Another thing is that people might like it because of the pay too. This is another way people can use it as bribery.

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Joining a gang,

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The writer has shown it is easy to join a gang by saying that the character was first in a gang when he was 8 delivering and collecting drugs and didn’t even know it.
The noun “eight” shows that at such a young age you can be involved in gang.
The writer say “people were always coming in and out” showing that the gang wasn’t small and he was involved in a bigger thing than just himself even at the young age off 8 years old.

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The extract begins with the character narrating his descent into drugs and violence as a child. The writer states that he was not aware he was being used, he goes on to say about his horrible living conditions and how he was treated. As we read through the extract we can see how his descent continues in the quote "I was once forced to take 17 ecstasy tablets at a time. I had seen a guy overdose before", this shows that the character felt confined and had no where else to go and how they were desensitised to death by their simple regard for someone dying.

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Tyler may
At the start of the extract the writer says
“The older boys on the estate use to send me on jobs”
This shows that it’s easy to join a gang and it also shows how young you can be to join a gang . Also at the start of this extract the writer says that he didn’t even know what was going on . This shows how young gang members can actually be.

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In the extract the writer uses the characters feelings to portray that the character is getting/is depressing for example when he watches someone overdoes he doesn’t say how it was horrible he says how he wants to do it also.
So to cure his pain he turns to drugs and violence and Nearlly dies because off it.

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In the extract the writer makes out the young boy sound innocent because all he wants is sweets but what he doesn’t know is that he is dealing drugs. But then there is a change in him later in him, he becomes homeless and starts to get really angry.

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Tyler may
As the extract goes on the writer starts to tell us how he got more angry and violent against people and how his life was changing . He starts to sell drugs and earn money and respect from people. As he gets older he said that he gets violent with anyone that annoys him or says something and hits them instantly .

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The writer uses the colour red as a symbol that he is in the wrong crowd and also thr fact that he has seen violence and death At such a young age.
It can also be used in a way to describe his long journey through the gang life from a young age as he sees and does many things that would scar a older more sophisticated person.

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The writer uses colour to express violence, the quote "Everything was red" infers that the atmosphere was heavy with anger and violence. The colour red connotes rage and blood which reinforces the fact that the atmosphere was heavy. The writer also uses the adjectives yellow and grey to describe someone's death to drugs, the adjective yellow connotes cowardliness which links to drugs being an "easy way out". The adjective grey connotes dullness and which links to the dullness of the corpse.

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the writer uses the colour red to express his journey through gang life. Because he uses the colour red this could symbolise blood and all the violence he has seen in the past.

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In this extract the writer uses a death related colour “grey.” This word makes me think of someone on the edge of death and they can’t help them self so there only choice is to lay in there death bed and wait till that time comes for them to leave the world. Another colour which makes me think is “yellow” because it makes me think of things been rotting away such as a dead body. That’s what the drugs do in your body, they Rot the inside of you.

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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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The writer uses colour to represent illness. The quoet for this is ' turning yellow and grey' the adjective yellow means he was about to throw up or pass out. The adjective gray means he was about to die. This makes me feel that the character is about to die in a painful matter.

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The writer uses the adjective 'yellow' to suggest that in the quote 'i had seen a guy overdose before turning yellow and grey' that the guy has died and is now decayed/decaying and this is now affected his journey to gang-life as it says that he was forced to take 17 ecstasy tablets at once.

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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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Joining a gang is so easy. The quoet for this is ' older boys from my estate used to send me on jobs to collect stuff, giving me sweets and money and praises'  the older boys from the estate where making him do some bad stuff as he got used to it he thought it wasn't as bad untill he started doing the drugs and neally killed him self.

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The writer focuses on the on a young boy who was in the wrong crowd then moves on to the character to be ill or neally dieing of the drugs he was taking. At the end of the extract the character wants to crimit suicide as he chose the wrong choice

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

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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'

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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.