LA Larga Marcha/the Long Walk

Rating:
Summary: Stephen King takes all the fun out of going for a long walk
Review: "The Long Walk" is one of the Richard Bachman novels that has a clear distinction from the rest of Stephen King's body of work. Like "The Running Man," it is essentially a dystopian novel, which is extremely rare in King's fiction because his greatest strength as a horror writer has always been that he could take the fantastic and put it in the world of the commonplace. King's horrors are always around the corner or in the near future (each edition of "The Stand" is revised towards just that end) and they usually happen to relatively normal persons. But even though "The Long Walk" takes place in some sort of fascist America, this not a warning in the tradition of "Fahrenheit 451" or "The Handmaid's Tale." It is simple the world that King needed to construct in order to tell his story.

The Long Walk takes place each year and only 100 applicants, selected from around the country, are allowed to participate. The prize, which speaks to the nature of the world in which it takes place, is everything you want for the rest of your life. Evita did something similar to this to distract the people of Argentina from the fact the thievery of the Perons, but there is a key difference in that she just granted wishes at her whim while the Long Walk consists of a competition. The basic rule is simple: whoever walks the farthest wins. The conditions of the competition are what makes this a horror story: the participants must walk four miles an hour and not stop. Failing to do so results in a warning. Three warnings and you are shot.

The story works because who has not had to keep on walking when they wanted to stop, sit down, and rest? The difference is that nobody is going to put a bullet in our head when we do so. But for Ray Garrity and the other Long Walkers that is going to happen to every single one of them save the winner. The reasons why these young men would spend their lives on such a desperate gamble are second to the Long Walk itself. In the end the story turns out to be vintage King, where he displays the horrors of the journey and milks it for everything it is worth.

I will end with my strongest recommendation that you read "The Long Walk" in a single sitting. Ray and the others do not have a respite during their walk and I really think you lose something essential to the experience otherwise and the book is closer to a novella than an epic novel.

Rating:
Summary: Stephen King takes all the fun out of going for a long walk
Review: "The Long Walk" is one of the Richard Bachman novels that has a clear distinction from the rest of Stephen King's body of work. Like "The Running Man," it is essentially a dystopian novel, which is extremely rare in King's fiction because his greatest strength as a horror writer has always been that he could take the fantastic and put it in the world of the commonplace. King's horrors are always around the corner or in the near future (each edition of "The Stand" is revised towards just that end) and they usually happen to relatively normal persons. But even though "The Long Walk" takes place in some sort of fascist America, this not a warning in the tradition of "Fahrenheit 451" or "The Handmaid's Tale." It is simple the world that King needed to construct in order to tell his story.

The Long Walk takes place each year and only 100 applicants, selected from around the country, are allowed to participate. The prize, which speaks to the nature of the world in which it takes place, is everything you want for the rest of your life. Evita did something similar to this to distract the people of Argentina from the fact the thievery of the Perons, but there is a key difference in that she just granted wishes at her whim while the Long Walk consists of a competition. The basic rule is simple: whoever walks the farthest wins. The conditions of the competition are what makes this a horror story: the participants must walk four miles an hour and not stop. Failing to do so results in a warning. Three warnings and you are shot.

The story works because who has not had to keep on walking when they wanted to stop, sit down, and rest? The difference is that nobody is going to put a bullet in our head when we do so. But for Ray Garrity and the other Long Walkers that is going to happen to every single one of them save the winner. The reasons why these young men would spend their lives on such a desperate gamble are second to the Long Walk itself. In the end the story turns out to be vintage King, where he displays the horrors of the journey and milks it for everything it is worth.

I will end with my strongest recommendation that you read "The Long Walk" in a single sitting. Ray and the others do not have a respite during their walk and I really think you lose something essential to the experience otherwise and the book is closer to a novella than an epic novel.

Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST SHORT STORIES EVER.
Review: THIS WAS ONE OF THE FIRST KING OFFERINGS THAT I READ. IT WAS ALSO ONE OF THE BEST. KING KEPT THE PRESSURE ON EVERY "STEP" OF THE WAY. THE SMALL DETAILS INCLUDED IN THE STORY LINE ABOUT EACH OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS ADDED TO THE OVERALL ENJOYMENT OF THE STORY.