Stephen King bibliography: The Long Walk

The plot of this novel, that King wrote under the name of Richard Bachman, centers around a boy named Ray Garraty who signs up for an annual event where 100 contestants walk as far as they can. As people drop from exhaustion, they are subsequently shot to death.

The winner basically gets anything they want for the rest of their life. It's interesting incentive, but hardly enough to justify going through all of that. You have to maintain a minimum speed of four miles an hour at all times and it goes non-stop until the last man is standing. They provide water and food paste, but beyond that you're on your own. There's no sleeping, most of the characters end up sleeping mid walk, and when nature does call, you have to multitask.

If you are the type who hated the Lord of the Rings movies because all they did was walk, you are not going to like this book, because that is literally all they do.

Well, they also talk of life and love to pass the time, but mostly it's just walking. As the contest drags on, they all come to realize the weight of their own mortality and have to deal with the fact that they are the walking dead.

I found a thread on the forums of Stephen King's homepage that discussed how long people thought they would last in that contest. I'd link to it, but I can't find the bloody thing and have no clue where I found it before. I wouldn't make it very far myself. Seriously, they walk from Maine to Boston non-stop, that's just nuts. Even if you were allowed to bring an iPod with you, the batteries would die before you got very far.

There's no villain in this one, sure the soldiers are an ever present threat and Barkovitch comes close, but really, the primary conflict is with the contest itself.

Speaking of Barkovitch, he really loses his gourd by the end of it. By the 11th hour, he was raving that they would all be dead by midnight or dead by morning (how cool would it have been if he started repeatedly screaming "Dead by dawn!"?)

I'm kind of surprised that this was never made into a movie. I can't imagine it would be that expensive to produce. Actually, I think a low budget look would suit the film even better. The main cast isn't that large and it doesn't require a whole lot in the way of special effects. You could make the argument that it has a bunch of kids walking themselves gaunt. While I wouldn't suggest that teenagers copy Christian Bale's approach when he was cast in The Machinist, I'm pretty sure make up would achieve the same goal. Incidentally, the idea of a movie is another topic that came up in the forums.

The ending is...interesting. Given the toll that the walk took on the other walkers it sort of makes sense, but some might think it's weird. The book's wikipedia page suggested that the figure that Ray sees is Randall Flagg. I didn't find anything to suggest that, but there's nothing that says it isn't Flagg either. I think either Death or downright insanity are better explanations, but it's open for discussion which is always a good thing.

I've read this book a couple of times now and it is still an entertaining read. The simple plot allows the story to focus on the characters and their relationship. It doesn't quite have the awesome and gripping power of The Shining, but it does hold up to repeated readings and effectively gets you involved in what's going on.