Stephen King: The Running Man

Hi guys. I want to talk about books today because I’m starting to feel like I am the only one who reads anymore. If I want to talk to someone about a video game plot or what happened on Scandal last week then they are a dime a dozen but after I went on my latest book bender, I found myself lacking someone I could share my thoughts and have a discussion with. I bought 27 books and no one I know has read any of them.

It’s a bit of a bummer to be honest.

However read on at your own risk. I’m not promising spoilers or any context but I’d like to talk about some of the books I’ve recently read. Let’s start with Stephen King’s book, The Running Man.

The Running Man is a wonderful dystopia about an over populated world filled with devastating poverty and a man who is willing to risk his life to save his child, stop his wife from earning rent on her back, and be gainfully employed. However to get the money he needs to save his family our protagonist applies for a set of lethal game shows that pay based on how difficult it is to survive. Obviously he gets into one of the games or there would not be a plot.

I think one of my favorite aspects of the book is the honesty of the protagonist to himself the whole time. As I read the book I kept waiting for him to realize he was wrong about his beliefs and I adored the part of the book where I finally came to terms that he was right. As you read about the world he lives in I found myself wanting it to all be a lie but our protagonist is no superman in a cape.  

This is the point where hubby and I start to disagree. I see the protagonist joining the game as a way of finally embracing the dystopian society as all his rebelling did was drive them into poverty. My husband sees it as him rebelling because he is snarky and takes out his anger on those in wealthier positions.

If you are confused or intrigued at this point I’d recommend you go buy the book. Brand new it’s $8. I don’t know about you but I found my copy used for $1.50. Just throwing that out there.

Anyway, as the story progress I found the point where I saw him to be rebelling occurred much later in the plot. You know after stuff happens and he is challenged on many levels. I am also at this point just going to throw out there that I am a bit torn between revealing oodles of spoilers or hoping I intrigued people enough to go read the book and pose some questions we can talk about. I’ll start.

1.     Do you think our protagonist is rebelling against the system from the get go? Yes, No, Maybe so?

2.     What do you think actually happened to his daughter?

3.     Do you think he was justified in his actions?

4.     What about the games corporation? What events do you see occurring that could lead a society to a place where they would try and kill people for a game show?

If you haven’t read the book and this all sounds interesting I would like to place a challenge out there for you. Just one hour a day where you would watch tv, play a video game, putz on your phone and text people about what you want to do before giving up. Just stop and read a book for an hour. Or just one chapter at a time when you have a little to spare. It’s fun, honest. Who knows, if I can get enough people reading then maybe I will have someone to talk about books with.