Book Review: The Long Walk by Stephen King

By Katy Kelleher

Long before Katniss Everdeen picked up her bow and boldly aimed at the bureaucratic villains of The Hunger Games, there was Ray Garrity, a child sacrificed by the United States of America for the entertainment of its blood thirsty citizens. Of course, before that came Shirley Jackson's chilling tale of ritualized mob violence "The Lottery," and before that we had gladiators squaring off against starving beasts in ancient Rome. Human sacrifice is a theme as old as the written word, so it makes perfect sense that Stephen King, being an obsessive documentarian of the darker si...