The Long Walk (novel)

The Long Walk is a dystopian horror novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1979, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback and hardcover. In 2023, Centipede Press released the first stand-alone hardcover edition.
Set in a dystopian alternative version of the United States, ruled by a totalitarian regime, the plot follows the contestants of a grueling annual walking contest. In 2000, the American Library Association listed The Long Walk as one of the 100 best books for teenage readers published between 1966 and 2000.
While not the first of King's novels to be published, The Long Walk was the first novel he wrote, having begun it in 1966–67 during his freshman year at the University of Maine, some eight years before his first published novel, Carrie, was released in 1974.
Set in an alternative, dystopian version of the United States, the plot revolves around the Long Walk, an annual, televised contest in which 100 teenage boys walk, without stopping, along U.S. Route 1. Each Walker must keep his pace above 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h). If a Walker drops below this speed for 30 seconds for any reason, he gets a warning. A Walker can earn back this penalty if he walks for an hour without earning another. If a Walker gets three warnings and fails to resume pace after 30 seconds, he is eliminated. The winner is the last Walker to remain in the contest; the prize is determined by the winner himself.
Ray Garraty, from Androscoggin County, Maine, arrives at the start of the Walk on the Canada-Maine border, where he meets the other Walkers. We are introduced to the sardonic McVries, the friendly Baker, the cocky Olson and the enigmatic Stebbins. The Major, the leader of the secret police force known as the Squads, starts the Walk. Throughout the first day, Garraty befriends Baker, Olson, and several other Walkers such as Abraham and Pearson, growing particularly close to McVries and becoming intrigued by Stebbins. The boys speculate on who will be the first Walker to be eliminated: when one boy falls behind and earns three warnings, he is shot dead by the security detail following the Long Walk. We realize that this brutal process of elimination will apply to all the Walkers, except the winner.
A Walker named Barkovitch reveals to a reporter that he is in the Long Walk to "dance on the graves" of other participants, and later provokes another Walker into attacking him, resulting in the Walker's death and Barkovitch being ostracized.
Garraty succeeds in surviving the night. Scramm, the odds-on favorite in Vegas, tells Garraty that he has a pregnant wife and so will have sufficient motivation to keep going. Garraty decides that his motivation will be surviving until Freeport, where he hopes to see his girlfriend Jan in the crowd. The Walkers begin to resent the Major, and McVries stops walking in an attempt to fight the soldiers, but is saved by Garraty. In return, McVries saves Garraty's life after Garraty experiences a panic attack. This camaraderie infuriates Olson, who is now severely fatigued. Garraty reveals to the others that his father was a member of the Squads, and a fight almost breaks out between McVries and another Walker, Collie Parker, when Parker claims that only "damn fools" are Squaded.
Stebbins tells Garraty that he believes he is going to win, but that all Walkers have a death wish. McVries tells Garraty that he will sit down when he cannot walk any further. Stebbins advises Garraty to watch Olson, who has become unresponsive. After Garraty brings Olson out of this state, Olson attacks the soldiers and is executed.
Scramm falls ill with pneumonia and seems likely to collapse.The other Walkers agree that the winner should provide financial security for Scramm's wife. Garraty asks Barkovitch to join the agreement, and Barkovitch agrees, as he has suffered in his isolation from the others. Scramm thanks the others and is killed in an act of defiance against the soldiers.
After developing a charley horse, Garraty is given three warnings and has to walk for an hour to lose one. To distract himself, he tells McVries about how he felt a compulsion to join the Walk and that his mother allowed herself to be persuaded by the thought of financial security. McVries reveals that he joined the Walk against the wishes of his family, and Abraham tells Garraty that he did not withdraw after being accepted due to the amusement it provided his town.
Garraty begins to suffer from doubts about his sexuality and masculinity due to suppressed memories re-emerging, especially after McVries hints that he is sexually attracted to Garraty. This causes Garraty to lash out at a deteriorating Barkovitch, and Barkovitch commits suicide when the rest of the Walkers begin taunting him. The next morning Garraty finds that many Walkers (including Pearson) have died overnight, as Barkovitch predicted.
When the Walkers arrive in Freeport, Garraty attempts to die in Jan's arms but is saved by McVries. As a response, Abraham convinces the Walkers to make a promise to stop helping each other, which Garraty does reluctantly. This has disastrous consequences: Parker starts a revolution against the soldiers but is killed when nobody joins in; Abraham removes his shirt and catches cold overnight because nobody can offer him a replacement, resulting in his death; Baker falls over and gains a severe nosebleed, and is given three warnings as nobody can help him up.
On the morning of the fifth day, Stebbins reveals to Garraty and McVries that he is the Major's son, and that his Prize would be acceptance into the Major's household. However, Stebbins has become aware that the Major is using him as a "rabbit" to cause the Walk to last longer, which has worked, as seven Walkers make it into Massachusetts. Baker, now delirious, tells Garraty that he cannot walk any further and thanks Garraty for being his friend. Garraty unsuccessfully tries to talk him out of suicide.
With Baker dead, the only remaining Walkers are Garraty, Stebbins and McVries. As Garraty tells him a fairy tale, McVries falls asleep and begins walking at the crowd, and Garraty breaks his promise and saves him; however, McVries chooses to sit down and die peacefully. A distraught Garraty is beckoned by a dark figure further ahead, and decides that he will give up because Stebbins cannot be beaten. When he tries to tell Stebbins, Stebbins clutches at him in horror and falls over dead.
This leaves Garraty the uncomprehending winner. He ignores the Major and keeps following the dark figure (whom he believes to be another Walker), declaring that there is "still so far to walk" and in the hope of catching up, even finds the strength to run.
Heidi Strengell describes the book as a naturalistic novel, noting King’s representation of human nature through the characters. She called it one of King’s “most pessimistic novels”. Critic Douglas Winter similarly viewed the novels as King's most despairing work, calling it a "bleak science-fictional mirror of contemporary America". Reviewers have also categorized the novel as a metaphor for the Vietnam War. James Smythe of The Guardian connects several elements of the novel to the conflict: “the televised draft, the horror of seeing new friends die, the seeming lack of reason for it occurring in the first place”.
In 1988, George A. Romero was approached to direct the film adaptation, but it never happened. By 2007, Frank Darabont had secured the rights to the film adaptation of the novel. He said that he would "get to it one day". He planned to make it low-budget, "weird, existential, and very self contained". Kirby Heyborne narrated an audiobook adaptation of the novel in 2010 for Blackstone Audio. In April 2018, it was announced that New Line Cinema would develop a film adaptation of the novel. Darabont's rights to the film had lapsed, and filmmaker James Vanderbilt stepped in to write and produce the film with Bradley Fischer and William Sherak of the Mythology Entertainment production company. On May 21, 2019, New Line announced that André Øvredal would direct the adaptation, and on November 28, 2023, Øvredal was no longer attached to direct and Francis Lawrence was announced to direct the adaptation and the rights were moved to Lionsgate after it lapsed from New Line. On June 10, 2024, Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson were announced to be in talks to star. In July, Hoffman and Jonsson were confirmed to star, along with Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, and Roman Griffin Davis.