Tolog Review: The Long Walk

The Long Walk 

by Stephen King

reviewed by Lilian Welwood

The Long Walk by Stephen King is a 370 page story of gripping literary fiction. The story starts out with the protagonist, a boy named Ray Garraty. His mom seems to be dropping him off at an unknown location for a competition that she is against. They say goodbye as Garraty joins a hundred other boys meeting around a starting line. The reader soon learns that Garraty has chosen to join a competition of a hundred boys who try to out walk one another. The rules are pretty simple, if a boy walks slower than 4 mpr he will get a verbal warning. After someone's 3rd warning they get their “ticket” as Garraty calls it, the reader soon finds out that for someone to get a “ticket” means to lose their life. The road that Garratty and the other shrinking number hundred boys are on is lined with armed soldiers, and getting your “ticket” means getting shot to death by these soldiers. While Garraty walk along side with these boys, he ends up making befriending some. Especially one boy with the last name of McVries.

When I first read about what this book was about I wondered how interesting a book could be if the whole time the characters are only walking. Once I started reading I realized that was not the case. As I mentioned Garraty makes friends and throughout the book has many conversations with them about each other's life and mainly their thoughts on death. For this book Stephen King made the decision to make a lot unknown, and some parts are just never fully answered. Through the conversations of these boys the reader gradually learns about what is going on in the book. I see this as a good decision on the author's part, because, even though at some points the readers might feel frustrated with the lose of information, I was compelled to read it more to find out.

I ended up really enjoying Stephen King's writing style and technique. Since all the boys in this book (except one) are walking to their death, the subject of death is brought up a lot. Stephen King gets very deep into the meaning of death overall and especially to these boys in a very impactful way that really made me think. When talking about death with some other boys if people just took it a day at a time, they'd be a lot happier (67).” This quote really made me notice how life is going to end no matter what so you might as well enjoy it. Stephen King also used a lot of figurative language to get ideas across. I especially enjoyed one part where he referred to a boy that was very mysteriously insightful as “the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland(189).” I saw it as a very clever reference that allowed me to really see what the character was like.