“We could have done it:” Fanaticism in The Long Walk Sarah Montague 12th Grade

In Stephen King’s novel The Long Walk, 100 teenage boys walk the border of Canada and the United States in the ultimate game. If these boys slow down too many times, or stop walking, they are shot until only one is left, upon which he is the winner of the ultimate prize. This prize is only described as “Anything you want, for the rest of your life,” (305) something that draws many boys to apply. The event is public, and draws a large crowd. Is is due to this crowd’s fanaticism that the Long Walk continues, and they are thereby culpable for the ritualistic murders of 99 boys on the Walk. Stephen King uses the crowd to highlight the horrors that a mindset of winners and losers can enable in real life events.

The crowd’s fanaticism can be seen in several situations, one of the first being a crowd seen shortly after Curley’s death. Due to Curley being the first walker to “buy his ticket,” when the news reaches the crowd “for some reason they began to cheer more loudly.” (35) The horribly violent way that Curley met his end was met with cheers and whistles from a crowd desperate for blood. This is not the only crowd that is eager to see someone fall, Garraty compares a farmer and his family watching the walkers to “...Western movies...