In “And So We Thought,” Daniel Xu ’29 explores creative works, both in their content, but also in how they relate to broader media and societal ecosystems.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques. This review contains spoilers.
A couple of weeks ago, I gave up biking. This statement might sound strange, even heretical at a place like Stanford, especially when you consider that it’s a 22-minute walk from Rains to the West Campus Tennis Courts. But I’ve always preferred to walk. Especially at Stanford. The crispness of the early morning or late night air, the solidity of foot hitting pavement and the warm, lazy light of the California sunshine spilling onto your skin — in a world of abstract academic ideas and lofty must-have internships, there is something special about the grounded nature of walking.
I doubt, however, that I would enjoy walking nearly as much if there was a gun pressed to the back of my head. This is the simple yet brilliant premise of “The Long Walk” by Stephen King. Originally written under King’s pseudonym, Richard Backman, the “The Long Walk” follows 16-year-old Ray Garraty, one of 100 boys competing in an annual televised walking contest. Starting at the Canada-Maine border, the boys are instructed to walk as far as they possibly can. The winner is awarded an elusive guarantee of comfort and riches. The rest are shot.
“The Long Walk” is, in many ways, defined by its physicality. This may not seem surprising given the premise at play, but it is King’s careful control of prose that drives the point home. Rather than immediately exhausting its horror through overly-dramatic language, “The Long Walk” purposefully mirrors the suffering of the Walkers themselves. Garraty’s first observation of his own pain, for instance, is downright innocuous.
“[He] was aware for the first time that his feet hurt,” King writes. “He noticed that he had been unconsciously walking on the outside of the soles, but every now and then he put a foot down flat and winced.” Other than the wincing, Garraty is almost detached from pain. He is still lucid in his mental processing, still scientific in his precision and description. And crucially, he still subscribes to the myth of the Long Walk, whose glorified narrative of opulence sits at the nexus of their adolescent dreams. In the beginning, it is a privilege, not a punishment, to Walk.
But by the end of the contest, we are left with an exceptionally different Garraty. As the Walkers approach Boston, “[Garraty] began to cry a little bit. His vision blurred and his feet tangled up and he fell down,” King writes. “The pavement was hard and shockingly cold and unbelievably restful. He was warned twice before he managed to pick himself up, using a series of drunken, crablike motions.” With hundreds of miles to his name, this version of Garraty is no longer in control: not of his emotions, nor his vision, nor the feet that betray him at every turn. The ruins of his mind are divorced from the husk of his body, a perpetual machine of drunkenness functioning on rudimentary, crustacean movement. He is, in effect, no longer human.
That loss of humanity is also echoed in the novel’s depiction of social death. From the get-go, Garraty meets a host of other contestants: somber Abraham, boastful and blustering Olson, the sadistic Barkovitch. Garraty grows closest to Peter “Peter” McVires, whose kindness, sincerity and discipline mirror his own — but with an added dose of self-hatred after a traumatic breakup. In the grim coldness of “The Long Walk,” Garraty and McVires’ friendship is a little spark of joy. The two have genuine concern for one another, to the point where each saves the other’s life on at least one occasion.
Yet these relationships are conditional; runners learn quickly that the only certainty is death. Contestants who can no longer go on are shot on the spot — a much anticipated event for the hoards of spectators and TV audience. Others simply die walking from exhaustion.
The initial exposure to mortality is horrific. When Curley, the first walker, dies, King writes, “Curley’s angular, pimply head disappeared in a hammersmash of blood and brains and flying skull-fragments.” It is a viscerally nauseating description, one meant to shock Garraty and the reader in equal parts. “This is not just some TV show,” King seems to say. “This is the real deal.”
Just a couple of hours later, however, the horror of death has already settled into the background. By the time a contestant named Fenter dies, Garraty barely reacts. He is simply too tired. Garraty still maintains his deep compassion and fierce loyalty to his friends, but he has adjusted to the long and bloody nature of the road. Only instances of specific horror — like Barkovitch ripping out his own throat — are enough to capture his attention.
King seems to envision “The Long Walk” as a cog in a greater dystopian world. The Major, the mystical and macho figurehead who begins the Walk, is the leader of a secret police force known as the Squads. Political dissenters, like Garraty’s father, are “Squaded,” or forcibly disappeared. Perhaps most curiously of all, the word “Government” is capitalized — hinting at a permanent, totalitarian institution and an associated suspension of democracy. The design of the Long Walk reflects these absolutist ideals. The Squads have complete control of the food and water supply and total discretion over life and death, with the guns to back them up.
The regime also has the complete cooperation of public opinion. Watching the Long Walk isn’t even so much obligatory as it is downright fun. It is the Super Bowl of a new, perverse America. Garraty himself once watched a Long Walk, and he recalls being “mildly disappointed at not seeing anyone [die].” They are the vultures of King’s world, these men and women and boys and girls plopped into their lounge chairs, munching on hamburgers, “ooh”-ing and “ahh”-ing as boys take bullets to the back of their brains. For those unable to attend a physical viewing, high-definition cameras and microphones broadcast the experience straight to your sofa-step. As King grimly notes, “The crowd had come now, and the crowd was here to stay.” The Long Walk is reality TV taken to its highest degree.
But ultimately, the horror of “The Long Walk” lies in its simplicity. Walking is quotidian. It is both absolutely essential — especially when navigating a campus as large as Stanford — and largely unconscious. More than eating and almost as much as breathing, it is something that we simply do. And walking is also fundamental in a quiet way: whether we’re strolling back from a dorm party at half-past three, meandering over to ANKO for a PoliSci class or striding over to Treehouse for lunch with friends, walking is how we shape our realities at Stanford. King takes this most simple act and uses it to deconstruct reality — to deconstruct the bodies of Garraty and fellow Walkers, to deconstruct the relationships that form our societies, to deconstruct our beliefs about morality and mortality. In this sense, “The Long Walk“ is about the power of the act. It is an allegory of how even the most innocent actions can be transformed into utmost suffering, and how Schadenfreutic nature — of regimes, of media, of us in the audience — never really leaves us. Nor leaves the Walkers themselves.