One of the mothers of the walkers tries to take her son out of the walk multiple times, and would have been shot by the soldiers if local police hadn't intervened. The general public can also be warned or receive an interference ticket for disrupting the walk or trying to help the walkers.
#YEAR WALK MEANING PLUS#
The last competitor remaining alive is the winner, and he receives "The Prize": whatever he wants for the rest of his life, plus a large sum of money, the amount of which is not specified. Certain serious violations, such as leaving the road for any reason or attacking a soldier or halftrack, result in immediate ticketing.
The meaning of being ticketed is not given at the beginning of the book, but it is soon made clear after the walk begins that "buying a ticket" means being shot by one or more soldiers with army-type heavy-caliber carbine rifles with gas-tipped slugs. Undoing a warning means their timer resets back to 60, 90, or 120, for second, first or no warnings. A walker can undo a warning if he walks for an hour without receiving a fresh warning. These "penalty" warnings cause the walker's timer to instantly drop to the warning thresholds of 90, 60, 30, for first, second or third warning, or ticket at 0.
Warnings can also be given to walkers who try to impede the progress of other walkers or walk in the opposite direction. A walker's timer can be displayed to a soldier on a stainless-steel pocket chronometer, so they know when to issue a ticket. They are given warnings when their timer reaches 90 (first warning), 60 (second warning), and 30 (third warning), then a "ticket" at 0. Each walker's timer is maintained by a computer on the halftrack, which drives alongside the walkers. The speed of the walkers is measured to the fourth decimal point by toy-sized radar dishes mounted on the front and back of the halftrack. If their speed in the correct direction drops below four miles per hour, their timer counts down. The route starts at the border of Canada and Maine and ends where the last walker remains standing.Įach walker has a timer initially set to 120 seconds. Once the walk starts, no outside help from the crowd is allowed, although walkers may help each other provided they stay above four miles per hour. The walkers are allowed to bring anything with them, including food, although food concentrates are handed out once a day. The walk never stops for any reason, including bad weather (it is commented by Stebbins "It stops every year. During this contest, one hundred teenage boys, picked at random from a large pool of applicants, walk as far as possible without stopping at a minimum pace of four miles per hour. Every year on May 1st, a competition called the Long Walk begins. A man only known as "The Major" seems to be the leading figure of the country. In an alternate United States (references to "April 31st", "fifty-one" states, "Popular Mechanix", and "the German air-blitz of the American East Coast" are made), there has been an apparent military takeover of the country, turning it into a totalitarian dystopia.
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