Opinion: The Long Walk is a Stiry About Toxic Masculinity

The film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk, directed by Francis Lawrence, will be released in theaters on September 12. This will make it one of the longest gaps ever between a King publication and a film version, but there is no better time because of the toxic state of masculinity,

The Long Walk is set in a fascist dystopia sometime in the near future similar to The Running Man. Every year, 100 teenage boys are selected from a group of volunteers to participate in the titular walk. The rules are simple: you walk until you die. Fall below a certain speed three times in three hours, and a soldier shoots you. The last one still walking wins an absurd amount of money and a single wish, anything that can possibly be granted.

King published The Long Walk in July 1979 under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, but it’s actually one of King’s first novels. He wrote it in 1966-67, a teenage boy himself and a freshman at the University of Maine. Understanding what happened in that decade-ish gap offers a lot of insight into what the book is actually about.

When King was writing the book he had two things on his mind; girls and the Vietnam War. MIllions of boys were being drafted into battle, often returning traumatized and maimed if they were lucky to get back at all. And yet, there was a potent sense of the masculine surrounding the doomed conflict. Sure, Charlie might kill you. but think of the unimpeachable machismo that you would earn! You were a blooded man, not some namby-pamby commie. 

It wasn’t until I watched a YouTube essay by The Book & Movie Guy called “The Emasculation of King” that I remembered just how obsessed with masculinity The Long Walk is. It had been at least a decade since I read it, but I still recalled the constant homosexual undertones among the boys as they bonded over the death march. The video pointed out main character Ray’s constant thoughts of sex, and how part of the reason he joined the walk was to prove his manhood to his girlfriend, a strict Catholic who believed in abstinence before marriage.

Ray is mirrored by the friend he makes on the walk, Pete. Pete is also suffering from a conscience of masculinity. An attempt to run away with his girlfriend and start new lives led only to poverty and mutual hatred. Pete says she made him feel like a failure, and that’s why he’s on the walk. He has something to prove.

The Vietnam War and its ravenous appetite for boys may be long over, but that twisted sense of masculinity is back stronger than ever. More than 90 percent of mass shooters are straight cis men, and the overwhelming majority of them have histories of violence or antipathy toward women. Whether it’s incel ideology, fear of race mixing and white genocide, or some other reason, mass shootings in America are continuously linked to the idea of men needing to assert themselves as dominant and strong.

This is also shown in the rise of masculinity grifters like Andrew Tate. Millions of teenage boys flock to Tate and others like him, drawn to the idea that violence and domination will restore feelings of masculinity. Boys don’t feel like men. Gun manufacturers, extremists, and grifters are willing to sell them that feeling, or at least an illusion of it.

The Long Walk is a potent allegory for this time in history. Almost all of the boys on the walk are trying to be something they feel society is denying them. The fascist dystopia makes life hard and people poor. Times are tough, and the next generation of men feel like losers denied their birthright. Sound familiar, here in the hospice era of capitalism and oligarchy?

So the boys participate in this barbaric ritual, all entirely of their free will. They sell their lives and their bodies for a fleeting moment of adulation and the promise of power over others. If they outwalk the other 99, they will have the money and the clout to never feel emasculated again. If they don’t, they’ll die a hero.

That mindset is lurking in the fevered mind of every cryptobro and daily grind mindset guru. It’s what makes people being hurt by Trump policies wave a MAGA flag despite that pain. This bottomless need for masculinity affirmation is dragging the entire world behind it on metaphorical long walk, and people are dropping like flies to justify it.

I doubt that The Long Walk will change many minds or help men see that chasing masculinity is fool’s deal. It is, however, a story from a half century past that is even more meaningful today. Maybe, just maybe, someone will see the reflection of our world in its terrifying story and step off the road.