The Long Walk
After Michelle’s comment about the novella in the comments on Misery, I went over to Wikipedia to read the summary, because I’ve always wondered if I interpreted the ending correctly. Spoilery discussion after the jump.
The Wikipedia entry mentions that the dark figure at the story’s end is perhaps Randall Flagg, a recurring character in King, apparently, who I must confess I don’t remember although I’ve read most of ’70s and ’80s King and King-as-Bachman. This and other analyses of the story refer to the “fact” that previous winners of the Walk have died shortly thereafter as a result of the mental and/or physical stressors of the experience.
I had always just assumed that the figure is Death, that Garraty dies of shock/over-exertion or that he too gets a ticket — that there is no “winner,” not merely because surviving the Walk when 99 of your comrades just got shot is a mixed blessing at best, but because I kind of got the sense from the dystopian bent of the novella as a whole that even the “winner” would not just die, but get killed. Which means that the rumors of the previous winners’ demises were just that, rumors — propaganda to encourage the belief that anyone survives the Walk. Certainly if the Wikipedia entry is correct and Stebbins is a ringer (I don’t remember this aspect, but I haven’t re-read the book in some time), Garraty is not supposed to survive, and given that Stebbins is the Major’s son (allegedly), it would follow that Garraty gets killed at the end.
I don’t know from Randall Flagg; I’ve just always thought that everything past the penultimate boy’s death was an “Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge”-type fakeout that we were meant to interpret as Garraty’s dying hallucination — that the whole thing is a set-up and he gets shot too in the end, as all the other winners in fact may have.
Anyone?
…Dammit, now I’m going to have to go back and read it again.
Tags: books
I always believed the dark figure was his father. The father that was vanished and presumably killed.
Stebbins was the rabbit but he didn’t realize this until he was about to die.
I have always believed he lived. Insane and crippled but alive surrounded by the ghosts of his friends.
I have always loved this story. Flagg was the EVIL in the good vs evil in the Stand. He was also the Major and he is a major character in all the King books.
All of Kings books are really just one very large, very long story.
You never read The Stand? It’s probably King’s best. Certainly a better use of your time than, say, Cujo, which King said in On Writing he doesn’t even remember writing.
Once you read The Stand, Randall Flagg will be a bit harder to forget.
I always read The Long Walk as you did, though – the dark figure at the end was just a hallucination, whether Garraty died on his own or got shot.
I read this at least yearly; stuff like Pet Sematary just make me laugh, but this one gives me chills, because I can easily see it coming to pass. On MTV, of course, with idiots from the Real World and Road Rules.
Anywhoo.
Stebbins, who is going insane himself at the end, tells Garraty about his bastard status and calls himself “The Rabbit,” like the metal rabbits the dogs chase at the track. All Stebbins wants when he wins is to be taken into his father’s home, and by the end of the race I think he is defeated by two very true thoughts: 1) the Major knows very well who he is and will never care; and 2) Garraty is walking for no damn good reason, and persists in surviving.
As for Garraty living or dying, the hopeful me wants him to live happily ever after with good-natured Polish Jan, but the real part of me thinks the deaths of McVries and Stebbins unhinge him and he either drops dead of a brain hemorrhage or ends up in a mental institution.
I think your interpretation is valid, and I’ve always thought that McVries’s comment that nobody wins, they just take the winner behind a barn and shoot him, too, was really significant.
Stebbins says that he’s the “rabbit” like at the dog track, and the Major put him there to make everyone walk farther, so while it never outright says he’s a ringer, it’s implied (because, obviously, if he’s so much stronger than everyone else that he can keep the race going, he’d probably be the last one walking).
The Randall Flagg idea is mostly the result of people trying to connect every Stephen King book to the Dark Tower series, after King said in an interview that all his books are from the same universe. (RF is in The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Dark Tower, and gets a small mention in Hearts and Atlantis, but without The Dark Tower you’d have no idea that it’s all the same guy.)
I’ve never read The Long Walk, but I can tell you that you absolutely know how Randall Flagg is. He’s The Big Bad, recurring evil in King’s works, starting with The Stand. Jamey Sheridan played him in the miniseries.
(Happy Birthday!)
Flagg was a pretty major character in “The Eyes of the Dragon” and “The Stand,” if I remember right. There might be others that I’m missing. In “Dragon” he plays the role of an evil wizard type; in “Stand” he’s more of a post-apocalyptic antiChrist sort of guy.
Haven’t read “Walk” recently enough to say anything intelligent there, though.
I’ve read “The Long Walk” several times — it’s my favorite of the Bachman Books — and I can say that it’s worth a re-read. It goes really fast — you should be able to cover it in a couple of hours.
Of all the times I read it, I never interpreted the figure at the end as Randall Flagg (he’s the villain of “The Stand,” if you don’t remember him, and many later King books). I think that, if anything, it’s just a generic Death figure, like you said. I don’t think, at that point in his career, King was really trying to tie a lot of books together, like he later did with the ‘Dark Tower’ series.
As for the (not) winner of the Walk…the “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” interpretation had never occurred to me. I always assumed that there was a winner, but that the physical exertion of the Walk, not to mention the mental trauma watching 99 other kids get murdered, was enough to push the ‘winners’ over the edge. That is, there really is a winner, but winning is never enough to make up for what you had to go through to get there.
King spends a lot of time describing the huge crowds who show up along the entire course of the Walk, and especially at the end. It’s an extremely popular event, and everyone seems to be aware of what the winner gets as a prize. If, in reality, the winner ended up getting shot, it seems like this fact would have to be common knowledge, given all of the spectators. That might work for one year, but it might be difficult to get contestants for subsequent Walks.
I love this book!! I have read it many times. This is so interesting. I definitely had a different interpretation of the ending. I certainly imagined the dark figure to be a hallucination. The point being that even if you “win” you are left completely damaged and traumatized. The example being the past winner who had walked without his shoes for so long that in the end his feet were destroyed and he could never walk again. Having to live with that kind of torture and torment. Additionally, since all of the walkers would have to have some percentage of a death wish, “winning” would really be the ultimate punishment. Not only are they left to live out the lives that they were really unhappy in, but they have to do it with the physical and mental pain that they endured from participating in The Walk. That was always the saddest part to me. Imagining Garraty having to live out the rest of his life as an utterly broken person. It’s the ultimate form of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Had to comment since “The Long Walk” is probably my all-time favorite thing written by Stephen King. I honestly always had a different interpretation of the ending – that Garraty’s mind had simply snapped, he was hallucinating the figure ahead, which compelled him to keep walking. When the walkers described some of the previous walks they witnessed, there was a strong suggestion that the “winner” always either died (due to the strain) or that they went insane. One of the walkers (Garraty himself? can’t remember) had seen a race finish where one of the walkers fell and died and the “winner” had then simply sat beside him, leaning in and talking into the dead boys chest.
I can see the interpretation that the winners are actually killed as well, but I always found it more fitting with the general grimness of the story that the winner’s prize WOULD be granted – except that they couldn’t take advantage of it because they were either dead from exhaustion or had gone bonkers.
*flexes nerd muscles* Randall Flagg (RF) is featured most prominently, as I recall, in “The Stand” & in “The Eyes of the Dragon.” In Eyes of the Dragon he is a powerful wizard; in The Stand he is an archetypal evil man in black who sides with the Vegas contingent. I think most people posit his appearance in more King books than are meant because a) King has so many archetypal men in black (i.e. Marten from the Gunslinger books is also said to be Flagg) and b) King himself mixes & matches characters between novels (Callahan from Salem’s Lot becomes important to Wolves of the Calla).
Interestingly, the Long Walk & The Stand were published only a year apart. I wonder if that had something to do with peoples’ perceptions. I’ll have to go dig my copy of the Long Walk out of my closet … I loved it when I was a teenager but that was a long time ago :)
I freaking love The Long Walk — I honestly think it’s the best thing King’s ever written. I always interpreted the ending to mean that Garraty had just gone insane, that even though Garraty’s won, it was all for naught. The Prize and all that comes with it are worthless because they’re no good to a crazy person.
As for Randall Flagg, he’s the main baddy from The Stand, who is also a big villian in The Dark Tower series *SPOILER* (he’s “The Man in Black” that the Gunslinger is following at the top of the first book, although King doesn’t tell us he’s Flagg until the 4th book, in a move that stinks of reconning). I don’t think there’s anything in TLW to suggest that the figure Garraty sees is Flagg, least of all because TLW was written before The Stand (wasn’t it?). It was only later on that King started putting elements from the Dark Tower into his other works (and vice versa), so I think to retroactively imagine Flagg in TLW is a stretch.
Get thee to “The Stand” forthwith, woman. “I don’t know from Randall Flagg” — goodness gracious.
I gave up King in the mid-nineties because I was too busy reading feminist manifestos (manifesti? no quick answer on google) and theorists while taking myself entirely too seriously. I did try to read the Dark Tower stuff a couple of years ago. Couldn’t do it. But I do remember Randall Flagg as the evil-monster-beastman from The Stand.
There could be a King Revival coming during my summer vacation. Could be an interesting companion to God’s Problem, which I’ve just started.
I’m such a geek.
I agree almost entirely with your assessment. I’m not sure King was thinking in Giant Stupid Mythos terms back then, and really, interpreting every single bad guy in his books as a Flagg surrogate is tiresome even when he does it (or especially when he does it).
The “almost” means that I think Garraty probably isn’t going to get shot, because he’s going to drop dead on his own. I also think that, since the Long Walk ends in front of tens of thousands of cheering people, the winner probably wouldn’t get executed until they could get him off alone. The walkers wouldn’t sign up if everybody in the world saw the “winner” get shot.
Randall Flagg is the big bad man of The Stand and the Dark Tower series, and he’s essentially the Devil in (semi) human form. He shows up a lot more in later books as King starts cannibalizing his own work and trying to tie everything into the Dark Tower thing. I deliberately avoided the last three books of that series because I was getting sick of that and also because I had a pretty good idea how they would end (and I was totally right, too).
Randall Flagg is the Big Bad from “The Stand”, so if you skipped that monster of a book, it could explain why you aren’t familiar with the name.
I gather that he turns up in “Hearts in Atlantis”, but I have not read that one.
He IS hinted at throughout the Dark Tower series, traveling under many different names – Marten, Walter, John Farson — until he appears again as Randall Flagg.
Even in “The Stand” he’s also known as the Man in Black, the Walkin’ Dude, and probably some other names I can’t think of just now.
I know there are some people who really hate the whole Dark Tower series – I expected to be one of them, but I’m just not. I have some minor (and some major) quibbles with it, which I won’t go into here, but in general, I think each book gets better than the one before. Kind of like seasons of “Lost”.
I remember that, toward the end of “The Long Walk”, Garraty starts theorizing that Stebbins is a “rabbit”–like the lure in greyhound races. There’s talk of him being the Major’s son, also, but I don’t remember if that was ever confirmed within the story. It seems like it was one of the rumors that sprouted up among the walkers during the course of the race.
I do remember the figure at the end, though. I always assumed that Garraty was so far gone that he was hallucinating a figure walking ahead of him. There wasn’t any indication that it was “the Dark Man” in any of his various incarnations, though. As much of a King freak as I was when I read this at 12 or 13, I think I would have jumped on any insinuation that Flagg played a part in this particular story.
I have in fact read The Stand, but it was 20 years ago and I remember almost nothing about it but the premise; for whatever reason it just didn’t stick with me the way some of his other stuff did. I was a huuuuuuge King fan and read everything up through Gerald’s Game, but haven’t read much that came after that and skipped the Dark Tower stuff completely, although I’m told I’d like it.
I always interpreted the figure at the end of a race as a hallucination, brought on by the physical and mental pain of the Walk. I don’t feel like the winner gets a “ticket” at the end, but surely he doesn’t live happily ever after, either, Prize or no Prize.
To me, that dark figure is just Death, but it’s super-ambigious whether he’s paying a call on Garraty, or just passing through on his way back from dealing with Stebbins or any of the other 98. Never connected him to Flagg, although I’ve read The Stand a bunch of times, and the whole Dark Tower series, and Hearts in Atlantis, and Eye of the Dragon. Even Insomnia, which references the actual physical Dark Tower (can’t remember if it directly references Flagg).
I stopped reading King around Hearts in Atlantis (except to finish the Dark Tower series) so I can’t say what’s been happening in the SK omniverse/mythos over the last ~9 years… but it *does* feel like an artifact of later King, which reaches back to bring in older books where it can (like Wolves of the Calla reaching back for Salem’s Lot, as mentioned above), but didn’t really exist in 1979 when The Long Walk was written.
And keep in mind, The Long Walk was one of 5 SK books published with a fake name and a fake author photo before SK was outed (fun trivia fact: Misery was going to be #6). It’s not that he couldn’t have tied in King characters in the Bachman work if he’d been so inclined, but doing so would’ve been kind of goofy, I’d think.
All that said: I can see why SK fans would have a lot of fun playing connect-the-dots, and I can see why SK would not feel the need to dissuade anyone from doing so.
I know there are some people who really hate the whole Dark Tower series – I expected to be one of them, but I’m just not. I have some minor (and some major) quibbles with it, which I won’t go into here, but in general, I think each book gets better than the one before.
Word, although when King wrote himself into the story I took several steps back — I thought to myself, “Okay, he’s gone and jumped the damn shark.” I quit reading for a while after that happened (in Song of Susannah), but eventually picked the books back up and was (mostly) glad I did.
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that while I loved The Long Walk when I read it, I don’t remember the details particularly well and so have nothing to contribute to the discussion about its ending. That’s what I get for losing my copy of The Backman Books ten years ago. I think I’ll pick up a copy this week and re-read, if Sars can tolerate some extremely late comments. :P
Wikipedia has a decent page on Randall Flagg. I’d swear that he makes more appearances than Wiki lists, but that could be a product of my reading more into a character than is actually there. I will probably, at some point, go through all of King’s books that I have and see if I can verify Flagg’s appearances. I have no life, no life at all. Basically, if there’s a bad guy — usually one who’s only alluded to briefly and vaguely — who goes by the initials R.F. or is prone to wearing worn-down boots and rambling about, he’s an incarnation of Flagg. Apparently King wrote a poem about him in 1969, so he didn’t only start appearing after the Dark Tower series was published.
Hee, The Backman Books — in which our hero, Wally, struggles to hit .250 while getting in scuffles with teammates.
@ Elizabeth and Sara: I agree with you about the last three DT books. I was LIVID when King wrote himself in as a character (make that “character”). The overall effect was that of the photographer jamming his big old face into every frame of your wedding pictures. He did that, and then he (SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER) killed off three of the most beloved characters in the DT books, seemingly with the attitude of “Right, then. Better cut these loose threads.” I wanted to run him over myself after that.
But that would be cruel.
OH, DAMN. Why can’t I type when I comment here?
Bachman. Bachman. Not Backman. I have no idea what that was about; in fact, it wasn’t even my comment. Someone… else… left that comment. Yes.
I think what I hated most, Jaybird, was the addition of an extra character all of a damn sudden and the fact that the new character made it to the Tower while the old characters got abracadabra’d out of the picture. Well, that and the cheap “cliffhanger” “ending.” I know it was supposed to give a sense that the story is eternal, but it mostly gave a sense that King didn’t know how to wrap his shit up properly.
(Okay, I almost typed “mistly,” but I fixed it. Problem solved.)
Oohhhh, I forgot about the extra character. So cheap, so tacky, so badly done.
Another (yes, ANOTHER) thing that irks me about King: His assertion that if you don’t love something he’s done, it’s because you just don’t “get it”. Yeah, I’m sure the lack of worldwide adoration for the likes of “Cell” is due only to our collective non-hipness, not to the fact that the book SUCKS OUT LOUD, in front of your mom and everything.
I used to love this guy’s work; I used to argue that if he wrote historical fiction instead of horror, he’d be widely beloved and taught in Lit 101 courses. Now I feel like I used to peddle Furbys or something. Feh.
Agreeing with the general opinion that while the dark figure could be retconned as Flagg, it probably wasn’t written that way. And also, The Long Walk is at least one of my top three King novels.
As for the Dark Tower, I think it suffers from typical fantasy epic feature-creeping, but I do love it – and I love the ending. LOVE. I can see how people might not, but I can’t for the life of me think of any other way to end it that wouldn’t suck. Anyone buying the comics, btw?
I tend to think King has three distinct types – the short stories (which I adore,) the short novels (which I generally loathe – see Cujo, The Cell, anything from his coke-binge years,) and his big fat novels (Insomnia, The Stand, and on an epic scale, the Dark Tower series) which I generally adore. I’d be curious to hear if people’s likes/dislikes tend to fall into the same patterns, or if it’s just me.
I used to love Stephen King’s works. I still, unfailingly, pick up each new book as it hits the market, with the hope that his latest opus will impress me as much as the products of his first ten or so years of writing did. Loved Carrie ( I read it for the first time during the long sleepless night before my wedding, back in 1976—which marriage ended in divorce…not that I’m connecting Stephen King to THAT horror-show, mind you…) Loved The Shining, loved The Stand, loved ‘Salem’s Lot, loved Misery, loved Dolores Claiborne, loved It, loved The Regulators. Was never able to get into any of the Dark Tower series. Ehhhh for Cujo, and Pet Sematary. Loved most of the Bachman work. Shawshank!! The Body!! Awesome stuff.
Also liked his non-fiction efforts.
Very lukewarm about most of his subsequent stuff. I think for me, it was the sense of self-conscious cuteness in his characters’ internal dialogues which finally annoyed me past the point of being able to overlook it for the sake of the overall book. He lost what I used to think of as his “subtlety”…and for me, a lot of the effectiveness of his writing was the ability to reduce me to quivering goosebumps with a modicum of gore, or weird gibberishy vocal-non-verbal interludes. Having said that, hope still springs eternal that he’ll live up to the expectations that he created in his earlier writing. In the meantime, I can still pull out the old tattered copies of what I like to think of as the Castle Rock Goodies.
God, I so agree with you, Jaybird. I was a HUGE SK fan. I think he turned the corner around the time Tommyknockers came out. I continued to buy his books, hardbound, as soon as they were released, for about fifteen YEARS after that. I kept thinking, “This one will be good!” But it never was. I loved the first three books of the Dark Tower series, but it took a sharp dive after that (the third was published shortly before Tommyknockers, come to think of it), and the last three books were so bad I just kept thinking that he cranked them out just to be done with the damn thing. The last book in particular was incredibly anticlimactic. (I mean, WTF with the Crimson King? THAT is what they’d been terrorized by? What a fucking ripoff.) About two years ago I finally stopped buying his books altogether. But it took so long for me to get to that point…the point where I realized that I was being consistently cheated, of my money & my time, whenever I picked up one of his books. Now if I get the urge occasionally to read some King, I’ll pick up The Talisman (my absolute favorite) or It.
On topic – I always thought that it was Garraty hallucinating another walker ahead of him. I figured he’d just lost his damn mind. IMHO, leaving him to live with the constant fear – for the rest of his life! – of getting shot if he slows down was much more horrific than just taking the poor boy out behind a barn and putting him out of his misery. I figured they most definitely DID let the “winner” live…and that the winner either died from the physical trauma of the race or committed suicide or whatever, shortly after the race ended.
@ Jaybird, I felt exactly like you– I defended King for years, and then soured on him completely for multiple reasons in multiple books, largely because of SPOILER. (Grr.) I also felt like he was phoning it in for more than a while there (hello, Cell?), and that annoyed the crap out of me.
Then I read Lisey’s Story, and… damn. It’s a remarkable book. When he’s on, he’s on. I can’t remember if there was any Flagg in it or not, though. I will have to re-read (except for one scene so graphic I will NEVER read it again).
I read and loved everything King wrote up to and including The Tommyknockers but the TV adaptation of that book, complete with Tracy Lords and her green-glowing Lipstick Tube of Annihilation, made me reassess an author with an unfortunate (and creepy (and annoying)) habit of calling himself Uncle Stevie.
I think I read two linear feet of King books before that.
Jumping on the bitterness bandwagon here. I started reading King in 1975. 1975, people. And the gradual descent into suckage just became more than I could take.
I did TRY to read Cell, because it was a gift, and I didn’t want any self-imposed guilt to deal with. But damn. Had to toss it half-way through; that thing sucked so bad, it blew.
I think the last book he wrote that I actually read all the way through was Insomnia. I haven’t seen it mentioned here, but I didn’t hate it.
What a sparkling review – I didn’t hate it. Meh.
I’m in the middle of re-reading “The Long Walk” now; I don’t have the book right near me, but I think it’s McVries who speculates/insists that the winners get taken away and shot — not right at the end of the race, but later, away from the crowds.
I used to love King too; I would get into arguments with people who dismissed him as lowbrow crap, because he’s not Lahiri, but he used to be quite good at what he did. Reading “It” was almost not even reading — I felt like I was on this mission with these kids. I don’t know if it would hold up today (and I’ve been meaning to re-read that one, too), but I thought so highly of that book that I quoted it on my damn yearbook page.
But there did come a point, I think, where he stopped thinking of himself as a guy who told scary ripping stories, and started to see himself as a great man of letters, and I bet he would deny this — the persistent folksiness in his EW columns and elsewhere suggests, to me, that in spite of his outsized opinion of his own influence, he’s afraid to be considered pretentious — but there’s a carelessness to some of the more recent fiction, and a condescension in the other stuff, that makes me think Uncle Stevie (…uch) now regards himself as a literary lion. An approachable one who knows how to use iTunes, but still.
And his accomplishments are not insignificant. I could just do without the sermon-on-the-mount, “I don’t have to try anymore” attitude.
I was going to weigh in on the Misery post, but it seemed too late. I too am/was a huge King fan. I jumped on the band wagon a little after Cindi, but not by much. Probably about 1980 or so. Started with Salem’s Lot, I think, and was hooked. I absolutely love his early work. As someone mentioned a long time ago (I think it was you, Sars) his characters were very relatable. As a kid (or even as an adult, for that matter) these were very scary books because “Stevie” was still being subtle enough that you were led down an imaginary path that was worse/more frightening than having the blood and gore splashed all over the pages for you to see. Kinda like how you said that the baby-killer scrapbook wasn’t necessary in Misery–some things are best left to the imagination.
I loved King so much that I got the 100+ year-old nun that taught honors English at my high school to give me the highest points allotted to a book review. For The Stand. Pitched how it was the whole good vs. evil classic epic with mucho gusto. But I still stand (ha ha) by my glowing assessment. It was/is a great book. I agree with Snarkmeister, Talisman is my favorite so far, too. I bawled like a baby for quite a while when a certain character died.
Some of the more recent works though…meh. I didn’t HATE Cell, but far from loved it. Lisey’s Story, pretty good, but he dragged it out for WAY too long if you ask me. Never read Gerald’s Game by recommendation (or should I say UNrecommendation) of my sister whose tastes run parallel to mine. I liked Bag of Bones, the mystery aspect of it was appealing.
Anyway, sorry no on-topic comments as it has been a good 20+ years since I’ve read TLW. I think I need to go reread. I just couldn’t resist commenting on King.
Heh. “Two linear feet” of King books equals…about two books, given King’s pop-War-and-Peace syndrome.
Just walk away, Jaybird…clean break, here. Cleansing breaths and whatnot.
I loved loved loved King all the time I grew up, though I found that some stories (for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, *do not* re-read It, it suffers badly on the re-read) didn’t survive the test of time, and some of them sucked right from the get-go, either because they were phoned in, or because he was trying too hard with his folksiness and his tying characters from different stories together-ness. But, I picked up Duma Key, and really enjoyed that in the way I enjoyed his pre-phoned-in books–it was creepy and mysterious in all the right ways. I also loved The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and though I think he could have used a *slightly* smaller anvil with that one, it was still a good allegory.
It’s been a long time since I read The Long Walk, and I’ve lost my copy of The Bachman Books — I had the paperback in my purse when I went on a water ride at a theme park! — but I remember wondering WHY the walk was put on, in the first place: Why did the government want these 99 kids to die? Was it a form of population control? Does anyone remember if this was ever addressed?
Ditto to the majority of comments here on loving SK at one point, then not loving him to the point of hating him.
“Sucks out loud.” Heh. I gave up slightly around “Pet Sematary.” I always considered that the first bad thing he did, and I’ve never recovered. There have been flashes and some enjoyable passages in his later works, but either I grew up or he changed or both.
Much love on the “It” (which is really a character study, not so much a novel) and “The Stand.” But almost everything in recent years, including and almost most especially the Dark Tower latter books, HATE HATE HATE.
The Bachman stuff I return to frquently; I have a book with three of the novels (including the sadly prescient “Rage”) and I often think of The Long Walk. To add my own speculation:
I think the dark figure may be an incipient Randall Flagg, but honestly I just figured Garrity went insane and lived babbling or barely coherent the rest of his days after that, due to physical stress and trauma.
But isn’t there some place in the story where someone says that you don’t just get a prize — you get whatever you want, anon?
Every time I read The Long Walk I always hope the end will change, and Garrity will be sane and say, “Do I get my wish? Then abolish The Walk.”
And then they shoot him.
If you’ll read King’s book ‘THE STAND, (also a mini-series on the SCI-FI channel) you will find as much about Randall Flagg (AKA: the walking dude) as you might want to know.
“I think it’s McVries who speculates/insists that the winners get taken away and shot — not right at the end of the race, but later, away from the crowds.”
It’s a bit of a long shot, but I can’t help thinking that this Winning Isn’t What You Think aspect is a reference to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” King’s on record as an admirer of hers.
Okay, I finished the book, and I still think it’s amazing work, but the ending feels really, really rushed. McVries’s death in particular…it’s odd, but it’s like King didn’t feel he could do it justice because we’d really gotten to know, and formed opinions about, both McVries and Stebbins, so he just…didn’t. From McVries’s death to the end is, I think, two pages and change, and while there’s an argument to be made that Garraty is numb and losing it at that point and can’t really process, I think it’s more that King just bailed on the follow-through. (In his defense, I believe he wrote the story as a college freshman.)
I don’t know how else I would have done it, honestly, and by that time most readers are probably eager to see how everything turns out. But it’s kind of abrupt.
“Duma Key.” Seriously — as a King fan who fell away because I felt King got too full of himself as a writer — it’s got some of his best characterizations.
I picked it up an a whim, and read iot straight through in 14 hours. That has not happened since “It.”
I always thought that the end of the Long Walk meant that Garraty won and chose, as his prize, being shot or killed in some other way. I wonder if I’d still see that if I reread it.
Cindi, I had to finish “Insomnia” while holding it above my head so I could see through my tears. SK is one of my favorites & I am awfully forgiving of the guy, but his characters just suck me into the story & hold on with both hands til the last page. I can’t say I notice the craft of his writing so much because I’m so wrapped up in the stories.
Speaking of characters & stories I can’t let go of…Sars, is there any more to the giant girl story? How about the girl & the ax-fighters? (Sorry to nag you but I wonder how it’s going for these people…)
I love The Long Walk. I love Stephen King. I have books of his I hate (Cell, I mean reallyyyyyy……oy) and ones I love (IT, Bag Of Bones), but story wise, this is my favorite, by far. I think that the dark shadow is insanity catching up to Garrity in the end, and that he runs until he dies. I don’t think that the “winner” is ever shot, that wouldn’t give the bloodthirsty crowds the full value for their dollar would it? I mean it is much more popular to let them watch his descent, isn’t that what we all like to do? Watch the one who has what we don’t (fame, money, power, whatever it is) fall in the end? The boys talk about the winner who went nuts after the Walk was over and I think that this is what happens to all of them, in the end. The Walk drives them insane and to death in the end. Ultimately there is no winner.
I have never thought of the shadow as Flagg, this was before the start of the giant spiderweb that is Kingland. I also never thought that Stebbins was suppose to win. I figured out early in the story who he was, and I think that he was there to prove a point to his father, the Major, not as the one to out walk. Stebbins is a sad character for me because I see him as a kid who wants the love and approval of a father who is a Company man and doesn’t give a shit about anything except his career and image. I think that it is McVries who enters the Walk with the something to prove, and when he sits down at the end, I (like) to believe that he has made peace with himself. It’s his way of cleaning his soul and ending it all.
Anyway, now that I have rambled on, I will say that the new book, Duma Key, was a nice change from the crap that Stephen has been putting out lately, and it is worth a read.
I re-read The Long Walk as a result of these posts, and I agree, the ending feels rushed. Then again, that’s one of the biggest nits I’ve have with SK’s books overall. The man simply does NOT know how to end a story. In some cases, the endings are OK or even sort of good (I’m thinking Carrie, The Stand, Salem’s Lot, Dolores Claibourne). For the most part, though, I am disappointed when I get to the end of SK’s books. My favorite all-time SK book is “It,” and I thought the ending to that book SUCKED.
As for the dark character at the end of The Long Walk, I generally assumed it was a hallucination as well, or perhaps the ghosts of Ray’s dead friends come to claim him.
I love the Long Walk. I never thought he was shot at the end, I thought he was just hallucinating. The dark figure was just what he thought – his mind didn’t want to accept that all his friends were dead for nothing, for a contest, for a shitty booby prize, so he hallucinated someone up ahead and rushed to catch up.
“That is, there really is a winner, but winning is never enough to make up for what you had to go through to get there.”
That’s my interpretation also.
FYI I don’t think you can buy the Bachman books as a set anymore, because of the purging of Rage. Unless you can find a used copy mouldering somewhere, like I did (got it on Midway Island. Loooong story). But you can buy The Long Walk, The Running Man, and Roadwork as separate paperbacks.
I hate Salem’s Lot. I’ve read it three times just be sure, and I hated it every single time. Am I alone in this?
I didn’t love Bag of Bones either, but to be fair I never read it but rather listened to the unabridged audio book during a mind numbingly boring summer data entry job. Having to listen to narrated graphic rape scenes at work? NOT GOOD. VERY OF THE BAD. Which may have something to do with how I feel about the book, if I’m honest.
I can understand the complaints of most people on the bitterness train, but I’ve developed the habit, probably out of being a really really fast reader, where I can easily skip over stuff I hate. I can usually skim right over the annoying tics and only take the parts of the book I like. It’s a talent I developed over years of reading His Eminent Hackness Dean Koontz, who is also extremely hit or miss (Odd Thomas and the sequels, Life Expectancy? AWESOME. The Husband? The Good Guy? Made of Suck!). I enjoy Koontz, too, when he hits, with the caveat that if I have to read him waxing rhapsodies about the beauties of the night wind in Southern California and how the spiky black wings of the shadows of the palmettos slice the pavement in the susurrations of said wind or endless descriptions of So Cal stucco and architecture one more time, I’d shoot myself in the head. So I developed the ability to skim right over his endless repetitive scenery blathering I-Love-California masturbatory bullshit. Same goes for King. Also, I have a feeling another reason I’m less bitter is because Koontz has a significantly worse problem with closing a story, compared with King. (“it’s because there’s an ALIEN SPACESHIP. Under the POND. Except when there ISN’T, because it’s ALL IN YOUR MIND! In Russia! With SPIES!! and MIND CONTROL!” Seriously, Dean? Seriously?!?!?!!)
“Sars, is there any more to the giant girl story? How about the girl & the ax-fighters? (Sorry to nag you but I wonder how it’s going for these people…)”
Yes! What about the spider!? Lucille? What of Lucille????????
Hot damn, I love The Long Walk. In fact I think I prefer King-as-Bachman more than King himself, some days. I even like the King book that *deals* with being Bachman (The Dark Half). I admit that I’m burnt out on him too–out of what I thought was a sure deal, I picked up a paperback of Lisey’s Story, read it on the plane to Japan, suffering.
It has its merits, yes, but dear god all the folksy Maineisms and King’s approximation of a sassy dame, or worse, a cluster of sassy dames gets horrifyingly rote and I can tell you there are repeated makebelieve words that set my teeth on edge even now–(“bool”)
Ah yes, Koontz angst. He still wrote one of my favorite popular stories ever (“Fear Nothing”) and despite following it up with the Sequel of Uselessness (“Seize the Night”) I’m still rooting for a continuation of the Christopher Snow series. Or a really fantastic Darabont-level movie adaptation. But fuck “False Memory” in the ear. Fuck it. His dialogue may be minty fresh clean wit compared to King’s Amerigarble but it gets triter quicker.
But back to the dark figure. I figured Garratty just kept walking his ass on, now completely cleansed of the need to pick up the prize, and you know, possibly never stopped. I think TLW is one of my favorite examples of a relatively realistic story descending seamless into ghost narrative.
Aurorasbored – hee. False Memory is one of those ones where you get to play “patch the puzzle book” and try and figure out how many of his other books he’s ripping off at once. It indeed sucks out loud, though for my money “House of Thunder” is the suckiest suck that ever sucked. Oh, wait, I forgot about “The Taking” for a second… and “The Bad Place”… gosh it’s so hard to pick!
Also he’d done the chemical + hypnosis + handler “password” = mind control before, in Night Chills.
I have no recollection of “Fear Nothing”, need to read it again. But Seize the Night was annoying. The smart/killer monkeys + smart dogs was done far better in Watchers. Although I did really enjoy the contrast in STN of the very smart and can communicate with humans CAT. Mungojerrie was the only redeeming feature of that book. “Cats know.” Hee.
Oooh I almost forgot how in almost every book someone steals a car, drives somewhere, and steals a different car’s plates. It’s like a drinking game at this point.
Etc. Yawn. Hee. Oh Koontz, you’re the hackiest.
Granted you can play that game with King, too. I don’t notice it when I read the books far apart. I recently reread Rose Madder, then started rereading Duma Key and got annoyed at a few things that seemed to have carried over.
I didn’t mind “bool” in Lisey’s story, but it bugged me when it popped up in another book (Blaze, maybe?) because it was supposed to be something made up by Scott’s brother/dad. Also I can no longer remember what it was, but there was some turn of phrase in Roadwork or Running Man, when I reread it recently, that absolutely reeked of his “Amerigarble” business and I remember thinking on behalf of his pre-outed self “way to broadcast to the universe that you, R. Bachman, are actually King, GENIUS.” Hee!
I kind of skim over the verbal tics/folksy Maineisms in King as easily as I skim over the blah blah california blah blah palms blah blah desert wind in Koontz. Heh.
I was going to amuse myself compiling more examples of Koontz ripping himself off, when I Wikipedia conveniently has a section in his entry titled “common elements”. Ha! So I’ll save myself some time and just read that and giggle. AND they have his number one Hack on there: “An irredeemable, sociopathic antagonist… who considers his or her warped, often delusional worldview to be philosophically transcendent.” WORD!
Hm. Loved King (especially It), except for the aforementioned coke-binge period, because…Tommyknockers. What? Don’t mind the Maineisms, like the length–hey, I read fast and take a lot of trips–but the made-up words bug. And the One Random Thing That’s Wicked Symbolic and Magical started to grate around Black House.
Koontz…enh. I go back and forth. He’s best when he’s humorous (Ticktock) and worst when he’s trying to make a point (From the Corner of His Fucking Eye….Dean, okay, you’re Christian now, WE GET IT. Really, we do. Now shut up and stop writing sermons.) Also, I tend to like his books in direct proportion to how much the core heroes differ from his standard Emotionally Wounded Tough Guy and Girl Who Was Traumatized By Once Seeing a Penis. (Shut up, chick from Odd Thomas. I do not care.)
Liked Seize the Night, though. I have a weakness for scientifically-opened portals to Hell, for which I blame Half-Life.
To the person who Commented on The Talisman being their fave SK book: Marry Me.
It encompasses all the things you love about the Dark Tower with none of the stuff you hate. His best work, best coming-of-age story, EVER.
As far as Long Walk goes, I always thought that the winner did in fact get capped in the end, and that the audience knew they would all along. I think he tends to write spectator crowds as sort of bloodthirsty (Running Man, anyone?).
I have been a fan of King since I read Salem’s Lot to avoid writing a term paper one night in 1976. Yes, later output has not been as great as earlier items. I WILL read Duma Key ASAP, though, based on advice received here. It has been languishing on the shelf like a couple other books of his. It used to be that I saved King up to read when I had lots of time, but the last 10 years I have been putting it off in case he disappoints me.
My SK geek cred. point: I had all the Bachman books before he announced they were his. I found The Long Walk by chance, and tracked down the rest.
The last line of the book is IIRC, “And at the end, he found the strength to run.” I have always interpreted as Garraty running toward what he saw at the finish line, and keeping running, right out of his life and into the void when he saw the lie that was his “prize.” To me the dark figure is just The Major, the prime representative of a basically fascist government. The Major is set up as a father figure many of the boys seem to love, fear, and aspire to please. And the Father is never really what we imagine him to be when we are 12.
I always thought that Garraty sort of crossed over into a fantasy world. The dark figure is fantastic, probably not ‘real’, but at the same time, Garraty and the other walkers have been walking in a fantasy world for much of the time anyway – the crowd ceases to be people and becomes Crowd, Stebbins is the Rabbit, the Hopi twin and the other guy sit speaking in different languages to each other before they die. For some reason I’m happier thinking that than that Garraty has gone insane, or that he’ll be shot, or that he dies from exhaustion. King always leaves that fantasy world door a little open in everything he writes, so it seems natural to me that Garraty walks through.