The Long Walk

Picture yourself going on a journey - a long journey with nothing but what you can carry and you have to walk for as long as you can. If you fall behind the required speed, if you stop for any reason, or if you are injured and cannot walk anymore, you will be killed. The person at the end who stays walking the longest wins the prize, essentially money or whatever they wish and their life.  This is the basis for The Long Walk, the 2nd Bachman Book.

This has always been one of my favorites because the idea of forcing children to participate in a walk like this, with armed guards at the ready with their warnings and meriting out punishments, and with spectators cheering on their favorites is so disturbing and fascinating.  Why would people watch, why would they participate, what they hell happened that we would allow such an event?  I picture these boys walking side by side, eating their homemade sandwiches, trying to have jovial conversations, while knowing that their are marching to their death and imagined the terror that each must feel. That drive to just outlast those next to them. That disregard for someone else who has been shot down, because you are thankful it is not you. That agonizing boredom of one foot after another. The horror of it all is unbearable, almost.

Bachman masterfully moves the story onward across Maine as we witness these 100 boys basically walk through their shoes down to their socks.  We feel them going crazy slowly and cringe as they meet their fate. And we root for the one who we know is going to win in the end. Ah, but does he? That is the question you are left with at the end of this book.