The Running Man

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This article is about the novel by Stephen King. For the film loosely based on the book, see The Running Man (film).
The Running Man
Author Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Science Fiction novel
Publisher Signet
Released 1982
Media Type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 336 pp
ISBN ISBN 0-451-19796-8

The Running Man (1982) is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. In 1987, the novel was loosely adapted into a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story is about a man who competes in a deadly game show. Some critics draw parallels between The Running Man and current reality shows such as Survivor or Fear Factor.

A similar kind of concept of the novel/movie was used by Williams for its video game Smash TV and more recently by Insomniac Games for Ratchet: Deadlocked.

Stephen King stated in "Why I Was Bachman" that the entire novel was written in the space of seventy-two hours.

Contents

[edit] Novel

[edit] Context

The dystopian theme of the book resembles that of another of King's books written as Bachman, The Long Walk. Both books appear in King's novel collection The Bachman Books.

The game show in the book bears a resemblance to a game show posited in the 1958 Robert Sheckley short story "The Prize of Peril" (that story was itself the basis for two movies, the 1970 German TV movie Das Millionenspiel and the 1983 French film Le Prix du Danger). It has been speculated that the short story was the inspiration for The Running Man, though King has not confirmed this.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The protagonist, Ben Richards, needs money for medicine for his gravely ill daughter, Cathy. Not wanting his wife Sheila to continue prostitution to pay the bills, Richards turns to the Games Federation, the creators of several violent TV game shows seen on the Network. Show contestants win money according to whether, or for how long, they manage to survive their appointed tasks (for example, Treadmill to Bucks, where a person with a heart condition runs on a treadmill). After rigorous testing, both physical and mental, Richards is selected for the most elite and publicly popular of these games, The Running Man.

To play the game, Richards is deemed an enemy of the state and then released to the outside world. He is given a twelve hour head start before an elite group called "the Hunters" (essentially gladiators) begins their search-and-kill mission. The contestant and his family earn one hundred dollars per hour they remain alive, an additional hundred for each law enforcement officer or Hunter he kills, and a billion dollars should he manage to survive the entire month (which no player has even approached—the current record is 8 days and 3 hours). However, the game is not limited only to these players—the Network (which appears to be very intertwined with the government and big business in general) pays civilians for confirmed sightings of the fugitive, and ups the ante for sightings that lead directly to a kill. The "runner" can travel anywhere in the world, if they can afford and arrange anonymous transport. Every day the runner must videotape two messages, which he must send (by pre-paid, overnight mail) to the TV show. Failure to do so will result in a default of the prize money. Herein lies the secret behind the failures of previous contestants: despite the producer's claims to the contrary, as soon as the Network receives a videotaped message, the hunters immediately know (from the postmark) the runner's approximate location. If or when the runner is caught, he or she is killed live on TV. Generally, there are two contestants released at the same time, with one in reserve in the event one of the contestants is killed too soon.

Richards manages to elude the hunters for more than ten days, traveling through New York to Boston. In Boston, Richards takes shelter in a run-down YMCA building, but is tracked by the Hunters and only manages to escape by breaking into the basement, setting the building's oil tanks to explode, and then crawling through an extremely tight sewer pipe. When he emerges blocks away he meets a poor black child, Stacey, who along with his big brother, Bradley, hides him in their small home in the Boston ghetto. Racial divisions are very prominent in the novel; despite a "Racial Act" passed by Congress, slurs such as "nigger" and "honky" are used liberally. Stacey accepts some money from Richards to buy "some stuff" to make his 5-year-old, cancer-ridden and pain-stricken sister Cassie calm down and not make as much noise.

Bradley befriends Richards quickly, explaining to him that the outside air, especially in the cities, has become polluted on a massive scale. Since libraries require proof of $5,000 per year in income, he and his gang stole a library card and take turns going to the library to read books, the only reliable source of information. "Everybody knows" that the air is dangerous, but Bradley knows why; the air is heavily polluted from unrestrained industry. It is stated that the government used to make industries stop production when the air pollution got to a rating of twelve (out of twenty), but stopped in 1987. Now the rating in Boston, on a "good day," is twenty; on a bad day, forty-two. General Atomics, a corporation featured prominently throughout the novel, sells "nose filters" for six thousand "new" dollars each; Bradley and his gang make ones just as effective for ten new dollars each. Bradley explains that the Network does not want the lower classes to be in good or even moderate health. The poor are also given the Free-Vee to keep them indoors and apathetic about the truth regarding their poor living conditions.

At this point that Richards starts to care about more than himself and his family. Bradley explains that "asthma" is frequently listed as the cause of death for people that just "breathe to death." He asks Richards if he knows what emphysema is, then explains that it is what is really causing widespread cancer, bronchitis, and other breathing ailments and claims that, according to a book, that lung cancer is up a stunning 700% since 2015. Richards begins to use his twice-daily tapes to explain the pollution to Free-Vee viewers, but the audio is doctored by the Network.

Bradley smuggles Richards to his next destination, Manchester, in the back of a stolen car, past several police checkpoints, at one of which Richards is nearly caught. Arriving in the city, Bradley presents Richards with the elaborate disguise of an eldery, half-blind priest (an anachronism in the "day of limited legalized murder, germ warfare in Egypt and South America, and the notorious have-one-kill-one Nevada abortion law" - the Pope's humanitarian edicts are regarded as quite funny), which he keeps up for two days. Richards manages to evade detection by Hunters via the postmarks on his tapes through a remailing service set up by Bradley. During this time, the man released at the same time as him, Laughlin, is found and killed.

After terrifying nightmares in which Bradley gives up Richards' identity and location under brutal torture, Richards decides that he can no longer stay in Manchester. He gets the car Bradley left for him and goes to a safehouse in Portland. Elton, Bradley's "pollution club" friend, takes Richards in, but his mentally unbalanced mother calls the authorities. Elton and Richards are forced to flee for their lives, and during the pursuit Richards takes out two police cars before Elton crashes in an alley. Richards, with a gunshot wound in his arm and a broken ankle, allows the mortally wounded Elton to draw the police away and hides in a partially finished shopping center.

The next morning, Richards awakens only to realize that he has overslept and only has until noon to mail his tapes, and that he has to send them directly to the Network, though not through Bradley, who is on the run from the authorities. He manages to convince a young boy walking through the woods to mail them, and then runs to the highway, posing as a hitchhiker at an intersection to steal a car. Richards is successful, and takes a hostage, Amelia Williams, to secure his safety to the Voigt Jetport, near Derry, Maine. Before the authorities are able to dispatch both Richards and Amelia cleanly, Richards informs the media of the situation, to ensure that "the eyes of the world are watching," preventing the government from killing an innocent civilian (especially a well-off person such as Amelia). Though Amelia is afraid of Richards and refuses to believe his truths about the disparity between the haves and have-nots, she assists him to prolong his survival, and, as Richards explains, hers as well.

Richards holds a lengthy standoff against the chief of the Hunters, Evan McCone, in an attempt to secure an airplane, claiming he has a large amount of a powerful explosive hidden in a handbag. He manages to bluff his way onto the plane and into the sky (with Amelia and McCone as hostages) before Killian, executive producer of the show, calls the plane, and reveals that the Network has known since Richards boarded that he did not have any explosives. McCone, having been cowed by Richards' numerous threats, immediately wants to shoot Richards, but Killian states that if he does so, he will be killed himself.

Killian knows that McCone has been "broken" by Richards, and makes the offer that Richards work for the Network, replacing McCone. He presents Richards with the logic that if the Network wanted to betray Richards, McCone could have simply shot him as soon as he boarded the plane and it was known he was bluffing. Richards senses that Killian is holding something back, however, and he is; Richard's wife and daughter were brutally murdered ten days earlier, shortly after Richards began running. Killian offers Richards the opportunity to use his new position to hunt down his family's attackers, and Richards accepts.

Richards, thinking of his slain wife and child, changes his mind. He overpowers the flight crew and has a shootout with McCone, in which McCone is killed and Richards seriously wounded, in the shoulder and gut. Richards gets Amelia out of the plane using a parachute, then struggles to reach the pilot's compartment with his intestines dragging behind him from his stomach wound. Along the way, he finally realizes that he is going to die and is horrified. With his last bits of strength, he overrides the plane's autopilot and sets the plane to fly right into the Games Building, home of the Network and "The Running Man."

The last thing Killian sees is Richards in the cockpit of the plane, flying directly at his office and giving him the finger while grinning. Richards' plane slams into the building, the plane's fuel tanks nearly full, and the resulting explosion obliterates the upper floors, exacting Richards' vengeance on Killian and the Network.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Editions

[edit] See also


Stephen King
Bibliography
Novels: Carrie (1974) • ’Salem's Lot (1975) • Rage (as Richard Bachman) (1977) • The Shining (1977) • Night Shift (stories) (1978) • The Stand (1978) • The Dead Zone (1979) • The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman) (1979) • Firestarter (1980) • Cujo (1981) • Roadwork (as Richard Bachman) (1981) • The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (1982) • Different Seasons (novellas) (1982) • The Running Man (as Richard Bachman) (1982) • Christine (1983) • Pet Sematary (1983) • Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) • The Talisman (written with Peter Straub) (1984) • Thinner (as Richard Bachman) (1984) • Skeleton Crew (stories) (1985) • The Bachman Books (novel collection) (1985) • It (1986) • The Eyes of the Dragon (1987) • Misery (1987) • The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) • The Tommyknockers (1988) • Dark Visions (cowritten with George R. R. Martin and Dan Simmons) (1988) • The Dark Half (1989) • Dolan's Cadillac (1989) • My Pretty Pony (1989) • The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition (1990) • Four Past Midnight (stories) (1990) • Needful Things (1990) • The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991) • Gerald's Game (1992) • Dolores Claiborne (1993) • Nightmares & Dreamscapes (stories) (1993) • Insomnia (1994) • Rose Madder (1995) • Umney's Last Case (1995) • The Green Mile (1996) • Desperation (1996) • The Regulators (as Richard Bachman) (1996) • Six Stories (stories) (1997) • The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) • Bag of Bones (1998) • The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) • The New Lieutenant's Rap (1999) • Hearts in Atlantis (1999) • Dreamcatcher (2001) • Black House (sequel to The Talisman; written with Peter Straub) (2001) • From a Buick 8 (2002) • Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales (stories) (2002) • The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (revised edition) (2003) • The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) • The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) • The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004) • The Colorado Kid (2005)
Cell (2006) • Lisey's Story (2006)
Non-fiction: • Danse Macabre (1981) • Nightmares in the Sky (1988) • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) • Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season (cowritten with Stewart O'Nan) (2005)
Original ebooks: Riding the Bullet (2000) • The Plant: Book 1-Zenith Rising (2000)
Audio Recordings
Audiobooks: L.T.'s Theory of Pets • Blood and Smoke (2000) • Stationary Bike (2006)
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