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r/TheLongWalk

▲ 65 r/TheLongWalk

Water in the canteens

Hello, everyone.

I recently watched The Long Walk movie and really loved it, way more than I could have expected, actually, so I then decided to also read the book.

I am now about 1/3 into it and so far 2 things struck me as odd. First is the walking speed of 4 miles per hour instead of 3 like in the movie. Though enough has already been said about that: King simply made a mistake and actually asked the filmmakers to change the speed to 3 m/h.

The other thing I noticed was that the canteens given to the Walkers actually contained distilled water, which I think is an odd choice. Distilled water doesn't contain any minerals which are extremely important during such an exhausting ordeal as the Long Walk. And I doubt the concentrated rations they were given would really counterbalance that.

But here's the thing: as opposed to the 4 m/h thing, I'm not so sure this was a mistake on King's part. I think this might have actually been a deliberate in-universe choice by the military to tire the contestants quicker and to make them start dying sooner. It could also explain some of the cramps and muscle issues pretty early on into the Walk that some of the boys had. They were simply depleted of minerals.

Thoughts?

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u/Hurley815 — 7 days ago
▲ 64 r/TheLongWalk

Stebbins inspired tatoo

Saw someone post their rabbit here so decided to share as well

Wanted to add a text as well, but we changed the tattoo location so it is how it is

u/Odd_Rush831 — 7 days ago
▲ 49 r/TheLongWalk

The Major in the book feels more like a symbol of the system while the movie major feels more like an actual person.

As a result it was both good and had its downs

In the book the Major isn’t really a major character no pun intended, throughout he occasionally appears and gives tiny speeches, but aside from the reveal of him being Stebbins father there isn’t much else to say about him and he doesn’t die.

The movie Major is given a more expanded role in the beginning he has a whole monologue speech to the boys and appears more often after Curley dies and tells the boys to keep walking as tribute for him and some other appearances the part where Garraty tells him to shut up and the Major hypes him up was also made for the movie that never happened in the book. The biggest departure tho was the Major killing Garratys dad in front of him this resulting in Garraty joining the walk to get revenge on the Major.

In the book this never happened at all in fact Garraty doesn’t even see or know if his father died the squads took him and that was the end of the story the major was not involved and because of this it makes the major feel more like a traditional villain and his death my McVries in the end only enforces that.

If you ask me while I liked the additional scenes of the major I still don’t know how to feel about him killing Garratys dad while it did provide more motive for him to join the walk to me it felt slightly forced in for the sake of having the major be more antagonistic his presence in the book was effective because the major doesn’t do anything that makes the reader hate him. The Major is just someone in the system who enforces it.

Overall what do you think?

u/Overall_Spite4271 — 7 days ago