by Sydney King ’26 on October 9, 2025
Arts & Entertainment
Stephen King—or the deemed “father of horror”—wrote his novel, The Long Walk (1979), at age 19 as a freshman in college. While most college freshmen are dreading their assigned reading and writing assignments, King managed to craft a complexly horrific and emotional allegory for the draft during the Vietnam War that I have yet to see any other modern allegorical novel match. When I heard that they were making a film and that it was to be released this fall, I excitedly called my mom, who was a fan of the book in her youth and has claimed that the book has stuck with her despite having read it decades ago. So, when I sat down in theaters last Sunday and watched the film, I went in expecting to be scared and tense. I left, however, having cried twice, and feeling as though the events of the film were real and that I was involved in them firsthand.
The concept of The Long Walk is simple—50 boys (100 in the novel) selected from each state voluntarily put their names in a lottery to be selected for the annual Long Walk, a contest that starts in Maine and has no official endpoint. The walk is based on one essential rule: you must keep a pace of three miles per hour. If you drop below this, you get one warning, if you stay under for 10 seconds, you get a second warning, and if you stay under for another 10 seconds, you get your ticket. If you go off the road, you get your ticket with no warning. The usage of “warning” is intentional to minimize the actual punishment of the walk, the ticket, which means being shot to death by the soldiers that accompany the boys in tanks beside them.
There is something so uniquely straightforward yet sinister about making 50 young men, from ages 18 through their early 20s (13–18 in the novel), walk themselves to death. While the walk is presented as entirely optional to the participants, even giving them until the day before to back out, they are driven by the reward of an endless amount of money and to have one wish granted. Not only that, but the boys are motivated to participate because of the affirmations and reassurance given to them about their strength and bravery. The tragic beauty of this story is that it is a doomed narrative—as the boys walk, they form intense friendships with each other that are bound to end in suffering and trauma. As the days go on, the boys’ expressions seem to shift from fear and panic to relief whenever they are approaching their deaths. For the sake of not wanting to spoil the relatively new film, I will leave out the specifics of the deaths, but just know before starting the film that the deaths all result from complications that are completely human.
The Vietnam War metaphor is not to be forgotten while watching the film. The frustrations and grief that come with signing up for something presented as rewarding and masculine, only to be left with internal emptiness and external abandonment, are directly reflected in the boys on the walk. The saddest aspect about this film, however, is that despite it being written in the 1960s, it holds just as much relevance today, given the current climate of our country.