Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Long Walk

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The Long Walk by Stephen King, Richard Bachman

5 reviews

eliz_m_rhodes's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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twocents's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The death game trope is one of my favorite tropes in media, because nothing else forces characters to really explore what matters to them quite like it. Sure, horror inspires terror and maybe you could say that those flashes reveal something, but sheer terror can't be the main driving force for you to compete in a death game for hours, or more typically, days or weeks. You find out what matters when people need a reason to deliberately drag themselves through such suffering. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has Prim. In Alice in Borderland, Arisu has his friends. In Squid Game, Gihun has a deep desire to feel like a less worthless human being.

The Long Walk is interesting in that it's the only death game I've read whose participants are pure volunteers. (I mean, you could argue that the Squid Game participants "volunteered" after round 1, but when the contestants are literally desperately signing away their organs for money and you're dangling billions in their face, I'm not sure that's a true volunteer scenario.)

The Long Walkers have to sign up by passing a physical test and mental evaluation. They aren't thrown into this by sheer happenstance, and sucks to be you if you're disabled! They're hand selected by the military for people they think will be able to actually compete and do well. The Walkers are allowed to back out, consequence free, all the way up until the day before the Walk starts. 100 Walkers are selected AND 100 backups are selected and even wait at the starting line in case someone drops out.

The Walk itself is heavily promoted and advertised. People line up to watch it in person, it's televised, and status updates are communicated over the radio. The results are public record. People go into this knowing they have 99% odds of dying, and even if they win, they know from past winners that they will likely be so physically damaged that the rest of their life is not likely to be a very long time.

So what compels them?

One of the Walkers admits that he's there on a lark. He was going to the movies when he saw one of the annual testing centers, passed the physical exams, and on the mental eval, wrote something like (paraphrased), "I want to participate because I'm a worthless S.O.B. I'll spend my victory winnings on hookers." He didn't back out and no one even pressured him too, because everyone felt like it was a huge joke being played on him. Who would select him of all people?

The story itself is really just the characters walking and the thoughts that come to mind while they're basically slowly killing themselves. They talk about women, spending their winnings, telling tall tales, their lives, and even ask each other repeatedly, "why are you here?" And most of them can't answer it. Not honestly. By the time they are ground down into being willing to admit what drove them there and what drives them forward, the people who are left have been slowly losing their minds to the point that it's hard to know if they're answering truthfully or not. If they even know themselves if they answer truthfully or not. You can even sort of track their descent into madness through how quickly Garraty revises events; he replays key moments over and over in his head, and one of the last big key moments, he's revising what happened just a few pages later, and you know he's way past being a reliable narrator.

It's such a deeply unsettling story because the pain inflicted is something you can imagine, your body slowly falling apart and you're trying to fall apart the slowest, while your mind is unraveling to try to protect you. The stupid shit you would reflect on that happened in your life. Not even in an insightful way about regrets and moving forward, but in a growing realization that that was it. That's what your life was.

"Garraty wondered how would it be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex or love. Absolute zero. ...

"How would that be? Just how would that be?"

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bruinrocks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

This book had a looming dread over it from the beginning, which really helped shape the atmosphere. With some many characters in the book I had though it would be a little muddled. But many of the characters get flushed out and are memorable. The whole premise of the novel is simple yet destructive, it really packed a punch with a little mix up of a few genres, Dystopian, Physical Horror, Thriller. I really enjoyed this book, I just wish it was a tad shorter.

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skydragxn's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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vici24kl's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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