The Running Man by Stephen King Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Running Man
Book Review: Before Survivor and the WTC attack
Summary: 5 Stars
The Running Man is a fascinating account of a future America in which game shows are reality and people who hate the government attack 100 story buildings with jumbo jets.I've just read the book for the 4th time and this has been the most depressing read of them all. All along I felt the end of the book was justifiable, but events of recent weeks have made me rethink.
Of course, it's easy to see why it seems justifiable in the book. The government is a giant TV network and they require everyone to own a television so that they can watch undesirables be dispatched at an alarming rate on the many game shows that run all day. The poor are treated as villains and there is no regard for basic human rights. It's Jesse Helms' dream of America.
Ben Richards enters the top show, The Running Man, to try to win enough money to get his daughter a doctor and cure her pneumonia. As he runs, he realizes that far more is at stake than his daughter's well being and he becomes a crusader for the downtrodden.
Of course, the network distorts his messages and vilifies him. But clearly the tide is turning as people actually find themselves rooting for him to win against incredible odds.
His final act is heroic and liberating. You see that the world will forever be changed and that it will be for the better. But now you have to stop and think that the terrorists on September 11th were thinking the same exact thing. Clearly violence is never the best solution, but to some it seems like the only way to deliver their message.
Over the 15 or so years since I first read the Bachman Books I've seen many things in our society that make me refer back to two of them. Rage involves a student who goes on a shooting rampage. It's now become an all to common occurrence. When Survivor premiered I thought, "Here we go, Stephen King was hitting the nail right on the head."
After the World Trade Center attack, everyone was saying, "I never thought somebody would actually crash a jet into a building." I did. I don't know how many times I sat in a stadium, or looked at a high rise, and thought how easy it would be. Stephen King put it into words that made it seem all too plausible.
King wasn't the first to come up with something like that. Years earlier, in Black Sunday, Thomas Harris described crashing a blimp into a stadium. After the WTC attacks people started thinking about that and worrying that blimps shouldn't fly over sporting events. Maybe they should have been thinking about these things all along. After all, clearly some people were.
Book Review: Bleak, Vivid Future
Summary: 4 Stars
It is once again the future, as seen from the early Reagan Years, and life in the United States stinks. Children of five years old die of lung cancer because of the air pollution. There's enough war to keep things stirred up, but not enough to keep everyone employed. If the government has a plan to solve the nation's problems, we don't hear about it. We only see their plan to keep the people in place: television.Ben Richards, formerly employed by General Atomics, is unemployed and desperate. His daughter is deathly ill and his wife has to sneak out and turn tricks to care for her. Even so, the medicine she can buy is all but useless. It takes serious money to get anything approaching real medical attention, and Ben's unemployment precludes any hope for cash or insurance. Finally convinced that there's no other chance, he tries to get on a game show -- they're a staple of the massive military-industrial-entertainment complex's television agenda. Their pay is decent and the mortality rate isn't too high.
For better or for worse, Richards manages to end up on "The Running Man." It's the network's highest rated show. If Richards can elude capture for thirty days, hiding wherever he can in regulated and totalitarian America, he'll win big. If not, he's dead.
The book's mood is bleak. Ben Richards is not a lone hero fighting for change in a corrupt society. He is an angry young man who wants to take care of his family in a world that seems to be conspiring to make that impossible. If there is any hope for this future America, it is not mentioned. At best, there is hope for Richard's daughter, and that seems like an unlikely prospect. Every character in this book is either corrupt or desperate. It is a dark, gritty future, and the reader can easily be pulled in.
The name on the cover, "Richard Bachman" is Stephen King's pen name, under which he published a few books in the early eighties. This book, along with his other futuristic Bachman book, "The Long Walk" make me wonder why he abandoned the future has since stuck with the present and the past. The Running Man is short and intense, and is one of the less self-indulgent of King's revenge stories. Given the books's small size and small cost, it's a good read for anyone with a few hours to spare.
Book Review: Boring quite a bit of the time, but okay overall.
Summary: 3 Stars
This book took a long time to get moving. So much time was wasted with the main character Ben Richards going through physicals and other inane activities, that it took over 80 pages to get moving. I still gave it 3 stars for one reason though: the ending. I though the ending was pretty good and wasn't one of your typical "happily ever after" ending (like the one in the film, yeccch!) It had a really dark ending with a bit of victory on the main character's part (not the type of victory you're probably thinking of.)
Bottom line: worth a single reading, but the reread value is zero, in my opinion. Rent it from your library if you're going to read it. If you're going to purchase a King book, steer clear of the Richard Bachman books (except for Thinner, that was pretty good.) If you're gonna purchase a King book,buy The Dead Zone, Christine, Thinner, Pet Semetary, The Stand, It, Different Seasons, Everything's Eventual, or Night Shift (my favorite.)
Book Review: Did not like it
Summary: 1 Stars
The Running Man may have a plausible future, it may have a realistic character, and it does have suspense. But I didn't like it one bit. It is not a book you can enjoy. If you have to check it out, go to your local library instead.Book Review: Disturbing...
Summary: 5 Stars
At the same time, I found this both to be one of the most enjoyable, and one of the most disturbing, of Stephen King's books. It is definitely Richard Bachman style over King's usual subtle psychological horror. The book is also much better than the movie.The events take place in the future, when the television networks have more or less taken over political power. The economic distinction between classes is much more stark, and the only opportunity for the poor to rise through the socio-economic ranks is to volunteer for life-threatening game shows.
The protagonist, a married victim of the old economy who is unable to find suitable employment, is unable to pay for basic medication that would save his infant daughter's life. And so the financial allure of the games tempt him.
The story is well-told, but brutal in its telling.