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

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Going Down the Road”

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary

Abraham and Baker make a game out of betting on coin flips. Garraty’s leg suddenly freezes with pain, and he receives a warning. He struggles to massage out the charley horse. He receives a third warning and counts the seconds as he considers just sitting. He imagines letting himself be shot. He suddenly pulls himself up. Since he received three warnings, he can’t afford any more violations.

McVries and Garraty try to move toward the front of the pack. McVries helps Garraty focus. The crowd jeers. Garraty recalls learning that he’d join the Walk. He was pleased to receive the letter. People from his hometown were excited that he’d represent them, and he felt peer pressure not to back out by the allotted dates. Even his mother and her boyfriend were excited at first. Jan offered to barter her virginity for Garraty backing out. When the second blackout date passed, his mother’s boyfriend tried to persuade him to back out. Garraty reflects that his mother was probably enamored by the prospect of the Prize.

McVries shares that he was accepted only as a backup; he found out that he was a final Walker just 10 hours before he had to be at the starting line. Soldiers whisked him and his family off to Maine.

A soldier shoots a dog that approaches the Walkers. The crowd grows restless as it grows colder. McVries and Garraty decide that they’ll walk into Augusta with Baker as “the original Three Musketeers” (246).

Abraham recalls the qualification tests for the Walk. He decided to join on the spur of the moment. He intentionally wrote a foolish essay but was still chosen. His family and friends acted like the Walk was a joke, and now he regrets his choices.

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary

In Augusta, the crowd again seems like one monstrous entity. To Garraty, it feels like a god demanding sacrifice. The Walkers are all mentally deteriorating, and they decide to join the crowd in cheers. They seem unable to stop until a boy named Milligan is shot; this sobers them up, and they feel less delirious.

McVries tells Garraty that Parker thinks they have a crush on each other. McVries wonders if he does have a crush on Garraty. Garraty is uncomfortable about McVries’s advances even though he isn’t sure if McVries is joking.

Pearson loses his shoes. The boys are all in considerable pain. Garraty reflects that he and his fellow Walkers all look like concentration camp survivors. Barkovitch is stumbling and receives three warnings. Garraty feels certain that he’ll die soon. He has a delirious conversation with Barkovitch. Barkovitch yells and sobs. They all feel like they’re losing their minds. Garraty tells the boys about the towns that are coming up. He’s motivated by the thought of seeing his mom and Jan.

Barkovitch suddenly rips out his own throat. The boys are horrified. Garraty imagines Baker’s aunt smiling at death.

Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary

Only 26 Walkers remain. Stebbins is holding strong. Spectators chant for Garraty. Stebbins taunts him and says that Jan won’t be in Freeport. Garraty kicks off his shoes, and spectators fight over it as a souvenir. Baker thinks he’ll die soon and reminisces about his past.

A boy ahead of them thinks he has appendicitis. Garraty doubts himself. He feels great anticipation as they approach the spot where his mother and Jan said they’d meet him.

He doesn’t see them and feels ready to pass out and give up. When he catches sight of them, he sprints toward them, about to dive into the crowd. He receives a warning and McVries pulls him back. He struggles forward to hold hands with his mom and Jan, and McVries pulls him back, reminding him that if he stays there too long, he’ll be murdered in front of them. He allows himself to be dragged away after the third warning.

Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary

Tubbins has lost his mind, and yells out a babbling sermon. Garraty feels shame for being indebted to McVries again but, after seeing his mother and Jan, also feels motivated to win. Abraham’s Oxford shoes weigh him down. Abraham tells Garraty that the boys are forming a pact: They won’t continue with their alliances or support each other anymore. Garraty maintains that he owes McVries a few favors. McVries overhears this but doesn’t argue. Garraty agrees with Abraham’s pact. It grows colder, and Abraham, who is shirtless, struggles.

Garraty wonders if he hurt his mother’s feelings because he paid more attention to Jan when he saw them in Freeport. He contemplates the several instances in which McVries saved him and feels that McVries is very grown-up, not just for saving him but also for being motivated to help Jan and Cathy even though he’ll never meet them.

The crowd screams, and Garraty looks up to see that Collie Parker is standing on top of the half-track, holding a gun. He has shot a soldier. Parker tries to rally the other Walkers, but he’s shot in the back. Firing the gun again, he tries to say something as he dies.

McVries tells Garraty that Parker wanted them all to join him, and Garraty is chilled by the thought of the ramifications of rebellion. Abraham, still cold and shirtless, is in great pain. Baker fantasizes about his coffin. As they climb a steep hill, many of the boys receive warnings. Abraham develops a terrible cough.

Baker falls around 2am. Garraty immediately tries to go to him, but McVries holds him back. Baker rises after his third warning and continues forward.

They cross into New Hampshire, where they’re greeted by a raucous fireworks display that includes a depiction of the Major’s face. Garraty dozes, becoming more delirious. He remembers his father being led to an unmarked van. Stebbins taunts Garraty and McVries. Three boys fall just before dawn.

Part 2, Chapters 13-16 Analysis

The importance and potential sanctuary of male camaraderie becomes more evident as the boys turn to community rather than isolation. Even though the boys are pawns in this game, they find a way to make a game out of their own exploitation, relying on the pennies for entertainment. As the Walk draws to a close and the boys must decide if they’ll proceed alone or together, their decision to finish as musketeers establishes the power of friendship, supporting the theme of Male Friendship and Masculinity, and highlights the strength that can be found in numbers.

Highlighting the theme of Coming of Age in a Dystopian World, the boys must accept the difference between expectations and reality. Garraty’s worries about seeing his mom and Jan partly because he fears they won’t live up to his expectations. He knows that the Walk is affecting his perception of reality. Seeing his mom and Jan is a major coming-of-age moment; he must choose between maternal/childlike comfort and romantic/sexualized comfort. (McVries’s advances complicate his sexual feelings, since Garraty doesn’t know how to navigate this sexual tension and attempts to quell it through learned internalized beliefs about sexual orientation.) He ultimately chooses Jan over his mom but worries that he has hurt his mom’s feelings. In addition, he matures as he reflects on the parallels between himself and his father and consciously chooses to diverge from these parallels. Garraty learned from his father’s mistakes and is determined not to fall victim to the same forces of oppression by attempting to resist them before he’s fully prepared.

The theme of Resisting Oppression again comes into play. Collie Parker’s attempt at resistance, reminiscent of Olson’s earlier attempt, is similarly futile. McVries notes that the boys’ attempts at insurrection might have been successful had they tried earlier in the Walk, but now that they’re exhausted and sore, their attempts are less successful. As they mature as Walkers, they understand the gravity of their past mistakes.

The Walkers’ antipathy for the spectators grows as they become more aware of the spectators’ willing dehumanization of them. Baker describes his aunt, whose macabre enjoyment of funerals and tendencies toward schadenfreude underscores the violent human capacity for watching others suffer.

The confusion over false idols amplifies the Walk’s demonized version of religion. The Major was previously described as the most godlike figure, but now the crowd is described as a godlike entity. Further complicating the boys’ sense of what’s right and wrong to worship are their attempts to dethrone false idols and direct their sense of worship toward a deserving recipient. Tubbins’s religious rant demonstrates the boys’ absolute lack of religious centering; a system that used to provide order for them now provides total chaos and misdirection.

The tension of unreliable narration mounts as the boys grow more delirious, and Garraty’s narratorial trustworthiness becomes questionable. Since the narrative provides knowledge of this dystopian world through the filter of Garraty’s perspective, the perception of it relies solely on his ability to determine what’s real and what is the product of his rapid disillusionment and delirium. As more of Garraty’s backstory is revealed, Stephen King’s decision to offer this information in small pieces rather than chronologically suggests that such suspenseful worldbuilding is achieved through inviting readers to draw their own conclusions.