The Long Walk

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1979

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2, Chapters 3-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-16

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Going Down the Road”

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary

Garraty is fascinated by Scramm, who is married. He tells Garraty about his life back home; he married Cathy when he was 15. She’s pregnant, and Scramm is optimistic that his child will go to college. Scramm is also confident that he’ll finish the Walk. Garraty marvels at this optimism.

Two girls cheer them on from the side of the road. Gribble breaks from the pack and runs to them. He frantically kisses one of the girls, receiving three warnings in the process. He’s soon shot. Garraty is so aroused by the scene that he ejaculates in his pants.

He feels rage toward Stebbins, who is tailing the pack like a vulture. Scramm is developing a cold. Harkness, who planned to write a book about the Walk, is shot.

Baker tells the boys about his uncle, an undertaker. They contemplate the philosophical question of who buries the undertaker. Olson begs a soldier to let him rest. Percy edges toward the shoulder, watching the soldiers. He makes a break for it and is immediately shot. McVries begins praying, and Abraham begs him to stop.

A spectator gives the Walkers the finger, and Garraty points out that the Walk has interrupted the trucker’s route, so he might lose his job. He tells the other boys that his father was Squaded. He contemplates how his father was removed from his home after he was too vocal about his political dissidence. Baker shares that he was a night-rider but feels ashamed about it after realizing that many of their activities were similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Pearson has been tracking the number of dead boys by transferring pennies to his other pocket. Garraty fantasizes about food. As they watch another group of spectators watching them, McVries reminds Garraty that, historically, spectacles of death were acceptable forms of entertainment. He’s convinced that people who partake in this form of entertainment are animals but is adamant that it doesn’t automatically elevate the Walkers to the status of human; they all signed up for this. McVries maintains that everyone who signed up for the Walk wants to die.

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary

The boys are all hungry. Garraty consumes a tube of chicken concentrate, then throws the tube to the side of the road. Two spectators race to claim it as a souvenir. McVries tells Garraty that he thinks Garraty will win.

A huge crowd cheers for the Walkers. Garraty, exhausted, becomes hysterical with laughter, drawing a warning. He can’t stop himself from laughing. McVries drags him away. The crowd watches with anticipation. It reminds Garraty of a Ray Bradbury story that depicts crowds gathering at fatal accidents. Olson curses out McVries for saving Garraty.

The day grows hotter, and the crowd seems to merge into one large entity: “Crowd Face.” Garraty grows tired of the crowd and wishes he could thank McVries for saving him.

Scramm’s cold worsens. The tension between McVries and Barkovitch grows. The boys in Garraty’s group seem to be ignoring him, so he lets himself fall back until he’s next to Stebbins. Stebbins seems to know a lot about the Walk, sharing cryptic hints. Garraty tells him that he resembles the caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but Stebbins considers himself more like the White Rabbit.

As it grows hotter, the soldiers open an umbrella for themselves, which frustrates the Walkers. Since Garraty has three warnings, he pushes himself to go faster. As the main character of his own story, he considers his death unfathomable.

A sobbing boy gets run over by the soldiers, and Garraty has a breakdown. McVries once again saves him, bringing him back to reality through conversation. He offers to tell Garraty about his scar, which Garraty has wondered about since the beginning of the Walk. He tells Garraty about his ex-girlfriend, Priscilla. They moved to New Jersey together and found work in a pajama factory. Priscilla thrived and made a lot of money; McVries was a slow worker and didn’t make much money. He got into a fight with her, and she cut his face with a letter-opener, which resulted in his scar.

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary

They’ve walked 115 miles and have 150 miles to go before they reach Freeport. More boys are shot as they struggle with the heat. Scramm is getting sicker. A screaming woman fights with the cops on the side of the road, and Garraty recognizes her as Percy’s mother. Garraty remembers telling Jan that he signed up for the Walk and regrets that he went even though she begged him not to.

The temperature reaches 80 degrees. Scramm has a terrible fever. The boys lament Maine’s weather and topography.

Dom L’Antio, an Italian man on the side of the road, has a cooler full of watermelon that he offers to the Walkers. Several run toward him. A crowd gathers around Dom, and the cops physically restrain him from sharing the watermelon. He struggles against them and throws the watermelon slices toward the Walkers. Collie Parker catches a slice and shares his with Garraty, who shares his with McVries.

The thunderstorm resumes, and the boys struggle to keep pace in the torrential rain. An old woman cheers on the Walkers; she reminds Baker of his Aunt Hattie, who went to funerals for fun. Baker tells Garraty more about his family’s undertaking business. The boys contemplate what kind of coffin they’d like to be buried in.

Part 2, Chapters 7-9 Analysis

These chapters continue to highlight the themes of Coming of Age in a Dystopian World and Resisting Oppression (and the futility of doing so). The cultural tensions among the boys rise as they realize the differences in their upbringings and values. Mounting racial tensions make it more difficult for the boys to establish points of unification, which makes it harder for the Walkers to collectively resist their oppressive overlords. Presumably, few Walkers of color speak, since Stephen King only identifies three Walkers of color. The only Walker who is explicitly identified as Black is Ewing, who dies early on and whose death elicits only a comment about how the color of his blood is “the same” as that of the others. Joe and Mike are Hopi brothers with whom Scramm identifies because they’re all from Arizona. Baker, who hails from the South, admits that he spent time as a “night-rider,” which culturally links to the KKK, but laments his racist past and admits that he found the exercises pointless and harmful.

The overbearing influence of money and capitalism on people’s daily lives is evident as the trucker flips off the Walkers because they’re impeding his route, which will spoil the goods that he carries. Some of the Walkers laugh at his reaction, but small-town Garraty understands that missing one delivery like this can have major implications for any working-class person. Pearson’s choice of using coins to count bodies clarifies the relationship between capitalism and the Walk; each body is literally reduced to one penny as he transfers it from the “living” pocket to the “dead” pocket.

McVries’s invocation of the entrenchment of violence as a form of entertainment shows that the concept of “bread and circuses” still prevails. His conviction that everyone who signed up for the Walk has a death wish employs Freud’s theory of the death drive, which states that everyone has a death wish that is expressed through aggression and acts of self-destruction. McVries reminds Garraty that both the French and Roman aristocracy saw violent entertainment as an aphrodisiac. The sexuality of the boys, particularly Garraty, becomes a key component of their coming-of-age experience. No one questions that Gribble would rather kiss a stranger for a few seconds than prevent his own death.

The relationship between the spectators and the Walkers takes on a revolting new dimension as the spectators rush to claim “souvenirs” that are merely discarded trash, such as an empty tube of food concentrate. Garraty’s consideration of the spectators as one entity called “Crowd Face” functions as both synecdoche and personification. The crowd, monstrous and unforgiving, bays for blood, hoping that the boys fall to enable its entertainment.

Foregrounding the theme of Male Friendship and Masculinity, the boys enjoy a rare moment of camaraderie as they split the watermelon, and Garraty is pleasantly surprised to benefit from the generosity of the boys around him. In the darkest of times, rare moments of warmth enable feelings of sanctuary.