In many ways, The Long Walk seems like one of King’s easiest works to situate geographically within the scope of our real, physical world. After all, he clearly outlines the route the Walkers take: they start on US Route 1 near the border between Maine and Canada, walk south until they hit Interstate 95, and stay on I-95 until the end of the walk, which comes this year in Danvers, Massachusetts. The geographical and highway infrastructure details of King’s dystopian future coincide with our own, making the Walkers’ path relatively easy to follow. 

Throughout the novella, Ray Garraty also becomes a kind of embodied reference and guide for his fellow Walkers. As several signs and legions of cheering spectators remind us throughout the duration of the Long Walk, Garraty is “Maine’s Own,” a home-state hero. His fellow Walkers regularly turn to Garraty to give them a sense of where they are and to geographically situate them within this nightmare, asking him what town’s coming up next on the route and how far down the road it is. Garraty is willing to share what he knows, but in the early stages of the Walk, he is nearly as placeless as they are, having never been so far north before the start of the Walk and having no frame of reference or experience to orient himself. Once they get south to Oldtown, though, “he knew the route. He could have traced it on the palm of his hand”(251). Later, when a fellow Walker grumbles that Ray’s estimates of distance were off the mark, he retorts that “I’m not a walking roadmap” (268), tiring of the other boys’ reliance on him and his geographical knowledge as they work to label and demarcate their walk into oblivion. 

Garraty and his fellow Walkers’ experience of the places through which they pass is inevitably colored by the fatalistic situation in which they find themselves, as well as each young man’s physical and emotional state. A Walker from Arizona, Scramm, is optimistic about his chances of winning (and a Vegas odds-on favorite before he gets pneumonia) and he loves the land through which they walk. As he tells some of his fellow Walkers, “I’d like to build a house up here … Build it right up here with my own two hands, and look at the view every morning … Maybe I will someday, when this is all over” (212). Of course, the likelihood of Scramm surviving to see this dream realized are infinitesimal, but in this moment, he can clearly see the life he would like to have, concretely situated in the landscape which surrounds him. As the Walk drags on, the Walkers’ estimation of the places through which they pass becomes less generous as they endure cold rains, steep hills, screaming spectators, and the sheer unending horror of it all. 

In the early stages of the Long Walk, the space through which the Walkers move feels close and intimate. Similarly, the reader’s connection of these geographic details with their own lived experience—and the dissonance which separates them—is central to the story early on. A sign reading 50 miles to Augusta may not mean much when you’re cruising by it at 60 miles an hour, but if you have to get there on your two feet, that’s just the start of the journey, and you’ll be killed if you fail, that’s a whole different story. These highways are a staple of the American infrastructure, traveled by millions, but The Long Walk requires the reader to fundamentally reconsider and reframe their understanding of and relationship with these places and spaces. 

As the Walk continues, this immediacy fades and the intensity of this connection wanes. As the Walk goes on, the crowds begin to feel far away even as they grow larger and closer. The separation between the Walkers and the rest of humanity becomes insurmountable as the Walkers’ awareness and focus narrow down to the pavement in front of them. Garraty notes that “there’s a wall” (288) between the Walkers and those who come to watch them. The wall may not be physical, but it bars these young men from the rest of the world and humanity just the same. They can’t climb over or break through that wall. They will never be part of the “real world” on either side of the road again. In the final miles of the Walk, the Walkers could be anywhere or nowhere at all, and the horror of endurance, survival, and death would be just the same. 

While the Long Walkers’ route is relatively easy to map, the journey that takes them from life to death and ever further into themselves with each passing step is unchartable. 

Map image from Google Maps

[Page numbers are from 1985 Plume Edition of The Bachman Books]