Before The Hunger Games, there was The Long Walk, Stephen King’s first novel, from when he was 18 years old. And this is a lean and mean story, burning with bright, hot fire.
There’s a rawness in “The Long Walk” that reflects the drive and hunger of a young Stephen King, consumed with his craft.
This is a horrifying piece of non-horror, that’s as powerful today as it was when it was first written.
Let’s sink our teeth into The Long Walk and see what this story has in store for us.
Spoilers from now on.
The good
The bad
- story structure; it doesn’t quite take after the traditional story structure model, but it respects some of its boundaries
The concept
What if someone picks 100 teenage boys and tells them to walk some 400 miles?
And what if every time those boys drop below 4MPH, they get a warning? And when they collect 3 warnings, they’re shot dead?
What if out of the 100 who start the walk, usually only one boy survives?
And finally, what if, after all he’s had to lose, his humanity being one of the greatest prices he’s had to pay, the winner is granted anything he wants, for the rest of his life?
This concept is also accompanied by the idea that the US lost World War 2 and is now being governed by less benevolent forces.
This is meant to demonize human nature
Because, who would be capable of killing 100 boys, for the pleasure of those watching at home?
That’s why each chapter heading quotes a line from a game show host from the 70s.
And the one that really sticks out and probably gave Stephen King his idea for “The Long Walk” is this one by Chuck Barris, creator of the The Gong Show:
The ultimate game show would be one where the losing contestant would be killed.
That’s quite startling, coming from a public figure, hosting a show on cable television. But who else could share this horrible opinion?
Well, just ask the Romans. They cheered for Gladiators to be mauled to death by wild animals or other Gladiators. Ask the French, who cheered and jeered, as thousands were led to their deaths by guillotine.
There is an insatiable blood lust
And that blood lust sticks around with human beings. And I don’t think we’ll ever shake it off completely, no matter how “civilized” we think we’ve become.
One of the things I’ve always loved about this book is how King handles the audience as spectators, complicit in this cold-blooded murder of its young boys.
When the novel first starts, the spectators are individuals, with faces and genders and ages. As the story progresses, though, these spectators increase in number to become “the crowd.”
By the end of the novel, spectators are filled with blood lust and are morphed into the raging body of Crowd. The Crowd with capital C.
Crowd is an amorphous and scary entity, that moves and burns with one purpose: obsession for the spectacle and craving for blood, like a hound on the scent.
It’s quite chilling, because there’s such a ring of truth to all of it. Were it to ever happen, this is how it would.
You might say “Well, this is an echo of The Hunger Games.” And you might be right. Except that The Long Walk is the original note from 1979, played by Stephen King, and The Hunger Games is the echo from 2008.
The theme
There are a few themes that spring to mind:
- independence
- survival
- losing your humanity
Stephen King has revisited the theme of survival and what it means for the human body to dig through brutalizing physical experiences. It’s almost fascinating what humans can do to survive and live another day.
Excruciating physical pain undeniably comes with a psychological breakdown. We see it in books like Misery, Gerald’s Game and the short story Survivor Type, all written by Stephen King.
Stephen King uncovers all the details of human physical suffering and asks this question:
How far is anyone willing to go, to keep on taking their next breath?
Just ask Ray Garraty, from The Long Walk. Or the castaway from Survivor Type, most of all.
The human body has an amazing capacity for trauma. It can withstand a lot. So much so that, in fact, the mind often breaks first.
And maybe Stephen King wanted to portray this loss of humanity most, with the shoes falling apart. Even my favorite cover of The Long Walk suggests that, with the bleeding sneakers (check out the image at the top of this post).
At some point, every kid in the walk starts to lose their shoes. And they peel them off like dead skin, like there’s no use for those shoes anymore.
At one point, even the hero and his nemesis, Garraty and Stebbins, talk about this loss of humanity, how the body can function way after your mind got broken:
"It's amazing how the mind operates the body," Stebbins said at last. "It's amazing how it can take over and dictate the body. Your average housewife may walk up to sixteen miles a day, from icebox to ironing board to clothesline. But suppose you told her: today you must walk sixteen miles before you can have your supper."
Garraty nodded. "She'd be exhausted instead of tired."
"Are you tired, Garraty?"
"Yeah," Garraty said shortly. "I'm tired."
"Exhausted?"
"Well, I'm getting there."
"No, you're not getting exhausted yet, Garraty." He jerked a thumb at Olson's silhouette. "That's exhausted. He's almost through now."
What’s extraordinary about “The Long Walk”, despite its raw physical expression of its theme, is that it’s a very spiritual and meditative book.
This book makes you live and breathe like one of those 100 boys who are walking right into the arms of death.
Character Development
When it comes to characters, there’s no Voldemort hiding in the shadows, no plot twists, no deus ex machina.
It’s a book that starts with 100 characters. And in The Long Walk, usually only one gets to survive.
The boys die in bursts of vivid description, their violation of the rules painfully detailed, bullets ringing out from the pages, bodies thumping the ground like heavy mail sacks.
Or they get to die as gossip between the boys who are left alive. But you know that 99 of them are going to die, and then the book will stop.
This Long Walk is referred to as a national sport. Other than that, there’s no really good reason to it. It’s just morbid entertainment.
The main character of The Long Walk
16-year-old Ray Garraty.
Garraty has a mother and a girlfriend and he wants to survive.
He wants to survive because he’s never had the chance to say to his girlfriend how much he loves her. And how much he wants to have sex with her.
Also, he’s not quite sure about the “why” that’s driving him into this sinister race. The only thing he’s certain of is that when he was given a choice to step down, he didn’t. It’s the greed and obscure promise of glory that drive Garraty. Or at least that’s what he thinks, at the beginning of the race.
Garraty meets the other boys on track for the first time and we gradually find what their motivations are.
One boy is married and has a baby on the way. For others, it’s the pot of gold at the end of the sinister rainbow. Other boys have hidden, darker reasons for doing the Walk.
But they all drop. And they all die. After unending walking, feet full of puss and blood and blisters, the boys get shot dead before Garraty’s eyes.
Not the best place to make friends
What’s worse is that Garraty makes friends in this ordeal. Friends that get murdered by those grim carbines. And the most heartbreaking moment is when we lose McVries, Garraty’s best friend in the Walk.
I honestly liked McVries better than Garraty, because he saves Garaty’s ass first and he’s got a special wit about him. To use a gross expression, McVries has the most moral fiber, after Garraty. And sometimes, he even surpasses Garraty.
McVries is quick to point out that the walk is some kind of survival challenge, in which the prize is finding out that nothing can undo the horrors you’ve seen and done. Again, underlining the theme of the book.
Also, McVries is the one who makes the main character want to sacrifice himself:
McVries looked at him for a moment, then smiled again and shook his head. He sat down, cross legged on the pavement. He looked like a world-beaten monk. The scar on his cheek was a white slash in the rainy gloom.
"No!" Garraty screamed.
[...] And suddenly two of the soldiers were wrenching McVries away from Garraty. They were putting their guns to McVries's head.
"No!" Garraty screamed again. "Me! Me! Shoot me!"
But instead, they gave him his third warning.
McVries opened his eyes and smiled again. The next instant, he was gone.
Garraty walked unknowingly now. He stared blankly at Stebbins, who stared back at him curiously. Garraty was filled with a strange, roaring emptiness.
Earlier, I said that there’s no Voldemort in this story. But there is another force that’s driving Garraty, the main character, to finish the walk.
And that’s Stebbins.
The antagonist popping up in the key moments
Just like we learn in the Fiction Coach Masterclass, Stebbins pops up in those key moments where a bad guy usually pops up in a story:
- Call to adventure: The first boy gets his ticket
- Beginning of transformation: Stebbins foreshadows the relationship between Garraty and McVries by the end of the walk
- Revelation: Stebbins gives Garraty his wisdom, the way an antagonist might give away part of his evil plan.
- Resurrection: Garraty decides to fight back and walk Stebbins into the ground
1) When the first boy gets his ticket, Garraty looks over at Stebbins and sets off on making Stebbins the bad guy of the bunch, based on his first impression of Stebbins:
[...] Stebbins stepped over the body. His foot slid a little in some of the blood, and his next step with that foot left a bloody track. Stebbins didn't look down at what was left of Curley.
His face didn't change expression.
Stebbins, you bastard, Garraty thought, you were supposed to get your ticket first, didn't you know?
Then Garraty looked away. He didn't want to be sick. He didn't want to vomit.
2) When Stebbins foreshadows the relationship between Garraty and McVries by the end of the walk, he’s telling the story of how the first walk he saw ended:
[...] "I saw the end four years ago," Stebbins said. "I was thirteen."
"What happened?" Olson asked softly.
"[...] The crowd was yelling at them. [...] Some were yelling one guy's name, and some were yelling the other guy's.[...] You could see the broken blood vessels in his feet. I don't think he really felt it anymore."
"Stop. For God's sake, stop it." It was McVries. He sounded dazed and sick.
"You wanted to know," Stebbins said.
Somewhere farther up, someone drew a warning.
"It was the big blond that lost. [...] He threw both of his arms up, like he was Superman. But instead of flying, he just fell flat on his face and they gave him his ticket after thirty seconds, because he was walking with three. They were both walking with three.
"Then the crowd started to cheer. They cheered and they cheered and then they could see that the kid that won was trying to say something. So they shut up. He had fallen on his knees, like he was going to pray, only he was just crying. And then he crawled over to the other boy and put his face in that big blond kid's shirt. He was talking into the dead kid's shirt. Then the soldiers rushed out and told him he had won the Prize"
"What did he say?" Garraty asked
"He didn't say anything to them," Stebbins said. "He was talking to the dead kid. He was telling the dead kid something, but we couldn't hear it."
No one said anything. Garraty felt a panicked, trapped sensation, as if someone had stuffed him into an underground pipe that was too small to get out of. Up ahead a third warning was given out and a boy made a croaking, despairing sound, like a dying crow.
[...] They walked on, the ninety of them.
3) When Stebbins gives Garraty his wisdom, his philosophy to win the long walk, the way an antagonist might give away part of his evil plan.
This also makes Stebbins some kind of dark mentor to Garraty, helping him understand the game from the inside:
"You reach a certain point," Stebbins said, "when the crowd ceases to matter, either as an incentive or a drawback. It ceases to be there. Like a man on a scaffold, I think. You burrow away from the crowd."
"I think I understand that," Garraty said. He felt timid.
"If you understood it, you wouldn't have gone into hysterics back there and needed your friend to save your ass. But you will."
"How far do you burrow, I wonder?"
"How deep are you?" Stebins asked.
"I don't know."
"Well, that's something you'll get to find out, too. Plumb the unplumbed depths of Garraty. You burrow until you hit bedrock. Then you burrow into the bedrock. And finally you get to the bottom. And then you buy out. That's my idea. Let's hear yours."
"You sound like you've got nothing to lose."
"That's right," Stebbins said jovially. "None of us really has anything to lose. That makes it easier to give away."
Garraty said nothing.
McVries, like the “big blond” who lost, is “built like a bull.” And McVries, as well, develops a bond with a walker: Garraty, the main character.
4) When Stebbins finally guesses Garraty’s fears and marks the decision of the main character to fight back and walk Stebbins into the ground. This is also known as “the resurrection”.
In the Fiction Coach Masterclass, we get to know all about these crucial checkpoints in our story, where the theme, concept, main character and story structure combined give you the secret superpower of a great story.
Here’s the point of no return for Garraty:
"McVries is an idiot," Stebbins said casually. "You really think you'll see your girl, Garraty? In all these people?"
"She'll be in the front," Garraty said.
"The cops'll be too busy holding everybody back to get her through to the front."
"That isn't true," Garraty said. He spoke sharply because Stebbins had articulated his own deep fear. "Why do you want to say a thing like that?"
[...]
"What makes you think you deserve to win, Garraty? You're a second-class intellect, a second-class physical specimen, and probably a second-class libido. Garraty, I'd bet my dog you never slipped into that girl of yours."
"Shut your goddam mouth!"
"Virgin, aren't you? Maybe a little bit queer in the bargain? Touch of the lavender? Don't be afraid. You can talk to Papa Stebbins."
"I'll walk you down if I have to walk to Virginia, you cheap f***!"
Garraty was shaking with anger. He could not remember being so angry in his whole life.
"That's okay," Stebbins said soothingly. "I understand."
For a moment Garraty was sure he must throw himself on Stebbins or faint with rage, yet he did neither. "If I have to walk to Virginia," he repeated. "If I have to walk all the way to Virginia."
Stebbins stretched up on his toes and grinned sleepily. "I feel like I could walk all the way to Florida, Garraty."
[...]
But maybe Stebbins was right—maybe she wouldn't be there. It had to be considered and prepared for, at least.
Even the kid’s name, Stebbins, makes us think about someone who’s waiting in the shadows, waiting to stab his way up the top, making sure he’s the only one who survives the long walk.
Now, it might seem at first that the antagonist is Gary Barkovitch, the kid who gets all giddy and railed up whenever a boy gets shot or as the saying goes inside the story, “buys a ticket.”
But Barkovitch is the kind of guy you end up hating and feeling sorry for, because that’s just a facade for his insecure and cowardly self. The same happens in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter Book 1, when Harry suspects Professor Snape is the antagonist.
Garraty sees Barkovitch for what he is and tears Barkovitch to shreds, in the last part of the book.
"You don't look so good," Garraty said.
Barkovitch smiled cunningly. "It's all a part of the Plan. Just thirty-five left to walk down. They're all going to fall apart tonight."
[...]
"What will you ask for?" Garraty said aloud. "When you win?"
"Plastic feet," he whispered. "Plaaastic feet, Garraty. I'm just gonna have these ones cut off."
"I thought maybe you'd wish for friends," Garraty said sadly. A heady sense of triumph, suffocating and enthralling, roared through him.
"Friends?"
"Because you don't have any," Garraty said pityingly. "We'll all be glad to see you die. No one's going to miss you, Gary. Maybe I'll walk behind you and spit on your brains after they blow them all over the road. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe we all will."
"Don't hate me," Barkovitch was whining, "why do you want to hate me? I... I..."
"We'll all spit in your brains," Garraty said crazily
Barkovitch looked at him palely, his eyes confused and vacant, then began to sob. It was an empty, ashy sound that made Garraty's skin crawl.
There was no hope in it.
He wanted Barkovitch to crack up and croak off.
And Stebbins was probably back there in the dark, laughing at them all.
Writing voice
The Long Walk is a work of shocking maturity.
When it comes to characters, mood and pacing, The Long Walk is an accurate map of Stephen King’s adult work. And if you come to think about it, he wrote this when he was 18 years old.
Reading it today might give you a feeling of a dated material, but only when it comes to the way the contest works.
The boys just show up in whatever clothes they have and they start walking with little fanfare. It almost seems like a lackluster contest, instead of something that has the world’s attention. There’s some explanation that Stebbins gives, about how they don’t want crowds or TV cameras as distractions.
However, that doesn’t seem to fit with the idea that the event runs as a distraction and weird kind of motivational tool.
If the story were told now, there would be a lot more coverage, with the arrival of social media and all. Also, the whole thing would probably have a few corporate sponsors, as shocking as that may sound.
Not to mention the walkers would probably have matching shoes and outfits, from this or that sponsor, designed to look cool and keep them walking longer.
The show would also probably have a more practical way of dispatching the kids that get a ticket, than soldiers with rifles and stopwatches.
This doesn’t hurt the story, though. Instead, it gives the whole thing a kind of dated charm, like watching the late night shows from the ‘70s, where everyone used to smoke and people had to wait by the phone, to talk long distance.
In the larger context of Stephen King’s work, The Long Walk works, because it offers an intriguing look at King’s evolution as an author.
The Long Walk seems less far-fetched today than it did in 1979. And as such, it stands as one of King’s more terrifying novels.
The Richard Bachman books, the pseudonym under which Stephen King chose to write after his rise to fame, are generally darker than the ones Stephen King publishes under his own name. Bachman has more and plenty of isolation, crueler characters, and even gloomier endings.
The Fiction Coach verdict
4/5, for execution, as well as for the moral and philosophical debates of the book.
This is one of my favorite Stephen King books, outstripping even Pet Sematary, which was my introduction to Mr. King’s work.
The Long Walk may be the gloomiest Bachman novel yet. It’s also compulsively entertaining, drawing readers into the walkers’ troubles so inexorably, that they even become part of The Crowd.
It’s almost a metatextual mystery - criticizing a world that would be fascinated with such a competition, while creating a narrative so compelling that it’s irresistible.
I had a conversation with someone, once, and Stephen King popped up in our talk. It’s almost impossible, given that every year a book comes out with his name. And we were arguing.
What is Stephen King actually writing?
Is it horror, is it suspense, is it mystery?
Five minutes in the conversation, the guy cuts me off and he decides for the both of us:
The guy writes evil, man!
I laughed. It sounds so simple. And yet so true.
Yeah, it may well be that Stephen King writes evil, but he is made of condensed awesomeness.
So, if you haven’t yet, read The Long Walk.
If you have a reluctant teen reader in your life, give them this book.
If it’s been a long time since you’ve read this book, don’t you think it’s time to read it again? :)
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