Most people don’t feel terror when it comes to walking. Even if they don’t particularly like walking or reaching 10,000 steps a day seems like a lot, they still don’t have nightmares over it. But in The Long Walk, Stephen King tries to turn this everyday activity into the stuff of nightmares. Does he succeed? That’s up for debate, but Hollywood thought he did a good enough job to turn his book into a movie billed as a dystopian thriller. Never thought you’d hear walking described like that, did you?
[Warning: My review of The Long Walk contains some spoilers!]
One hundred start, but only one will win in The Long Walk
In King’s 1979 story, the world is a little different from the one we know. We aren’t ever given a very clear view of the broader world, but a few differences are mentioned in throwaway comments. Because we never get a bigger view of the world, we’re never actually given a reason why The Long Walk exists. All we know is that it takes place every year, and the winner gets whatever they want. It is a voluntary competition, but once it starts, there is no backing out. You either win or die.
Yeah, you read that right, win or die. The walk starts with 100 boys deep in Maine, who start walking when the Major drops his hand. Once it starts, the walk doesn’t end until there’s only one boy left standing. The boys must continuously walk once they start. Eating, sleeping, peeing, and pooping must all happen while they maintain a speed of at least 4 mph. If they drop below that speed, they are given a warning, three warnings, and they’re out. Literally, soldiers shoot you dead. Try to leave the walk, and you’re dead. Fall asleep, pass out, fall over, stop for any reason, and you’re dead.
The Long Walk focuses on Ray Garraty as he makes friends, makes enemies, and just tries to survive walking. Boys are shot all around him, sometimes in rather gruesome ways, but the main action of The Long Walk, if you want to call it action, is the conversations that Ray has with his fellow walkers. As he moves around from group to group, he learns about where the boys came from, why they’re there, and what they hope will happen if they win. All of the boys are aware that they could die; the odds are 99 to 1 that they will, after all, but like most teenage boys, they don’t really believe that they will be among the dead. The prize draws them forward at the beginning, but by the end, it’s just about one foot in front of the other until they can’t.
A rather boring book from the king of horror
Stephen King is known for his exciting horror novels. He uses both gory physical horror and intense psychological horror in his works. But The Long Walk was incredibly boring. There were plenty of gory scenes full of grisly death. And there was an abject horror at the wrongness of a walk to the death competition between teenage boys. But it was a low-level anxiety and sense of wrongness, but not actually scary. Mostly, The Long Walk was just a bunch of boys walking and talking. I was extremely bored the entire time I was reading it.
One of my major thoughts while reading it was how nothing was happening. I’m really surprised that Hollywood chose to make this into a movie because nothing really happens. I’ve heard The Long Walk compared to Hunger Games, which I get to an extent. There are teenagers competing to the death for a fantastic prize. But the competition is just who can walk the longest; there is no real action or excitement. So the comparison doesn’t really hold for me.
Part of what made The Long Walk so boring was the lack of investment in the world. King doesn’t give us a reason for the walk to exist. It’s not a punishment because it’s voluntary. It doesn’t seem to memorialize any event. It just is. And there’s no real resolution or change in the book. People don’t fight against the walk; there’s no rebellion or attempt to end it; there’s just these boys walking. There’s nothing for the reader to root for or find hope in, and that adds to the boring factor.
Beyond that, I’m not sure that King actually was aware of what a human body can do when he wrote his book. The boys aren’t allowed to walk below 4 mph, but the average human walking speed is only 3 mph. That means these boys aren’t taking a leisurely stroll; they’re speedwalking through this ordeal. They also aren’t allowed to sleep at all during this multi-day ordeal. In The Long Walk, Ray walks for over five days straight without sleeping. While technically, the longest a human has gone without sleep is 11 days. But within 24 hours, the effects of sleep deprivation can be quite dramatic, and with the intense physical stress the walk would put on the body, 5 days without sleep seems rather unlikely. The whole time I was reading it I was thinking “this doesn’t even really seem possible” which kept me from relating to the characters.
This Stephen King book is not one I would read again
The Long Walk bored the socks right off me. And I can’t imagine that anyone else would be wowed by it either. I really don’t know how a movie was made out of it. From what I understand, the movie is doing well, which makes me think that they must have changed a lot from the original book. A movie of a bunch of boys walking and talking until they get too tired and are shot just doesn’t sound that interesting. The book sure wasn’t, and I would skip it if you haven’t already wasted your time reading it.
Rating: 4/10
The Long Walk is now available to purchase at your retailer of choice.
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
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