Another book called "The Running Man" by Stephen King is a book about a society in which there is something on TV called the Games. Contestants win many different things in these games, but the cost if you lose is high. There is one specific game that only takes people with chronic lung or heart diseases. You start on a treadmill and are asked questions. The more you get wrong, the faster the treadmill goes. Most of the people that go on the show have Heart attacks, or in severe cases, death. Richards enters to apply for the games on the network because his daughter is extremely sick and will die if she doesn't get the proper medical assistance, and he needs the money. He goes through the physical and the psychological exam, and he gets his results. Because of his test results, he is scheduled to go on the show The Running Man. This is the most popular show, and no one has left it alive. You are given a certain amount of money in the beginning, and you can go anywhere in the world. You are given a 12 hour head start, and then the Hunters come and kill you. For every hour you stay alive, a certain amount of money is sent to the person you choose to send it too.If you survive 30 days, you get a billion dollars. The longest anyone has survived on the show was 8 says. You have to send a video of yourself to the show every night with a camera they provide you through out the chase. If you miss a video, they stop sending you money, but the chase still continues. Your face is broadcasted on the TV and viewers will report sightings of you for the money. I believe that Stephen King is trying to talk about the selfishness that humans have and the entertainment that we find in violence and how it may escalade in the future.
Stephen King was trying to talk about the selfishness that we as a society show and the entertainment that we find for violence. Flipping through the T.V., you can find a reality show on one channel and then clips of the war in Iraq on another. Something so savage, clipped down and sanitized for our living rooms. Television is something that has created things such as murder and rape into an action packed sport of some sort. Even something such as war, which is one of the most terrifying and traumatic events that one can go through, has been constructed to some strange, twisted, reality script.I feel as if the more of this that we see on TV, the harder it will be to decipher script from reality. In "The Running Man," viewers watching from home are allowed to turn in the guy and hint the program where he is so they can hunt him and kill him. That in itself represents the people in this society and the pleasure that they find from watching something being hunted down and killed. It isn't just the rich people turning them in, but it is also the poor people turning their own kind in because they need the money. It is as if they forgetting that they are in fact human, despite their class level, not a mouse being dropped into your pet snakes tank. Another example of selfishness is in the book, there is no uprising. It is as if everyone in the book and community as accepted that that is how things are. The rich people enjoy it, and the poorer people simply accept it and play along. They don't band together and try and stop something so that they can prevent there children from living what they are living, they just go along with it.This is what Stephen King was trying to say about the world that we live in.
Stephen King was trying to talk about the selfishness that we as a society show and the entertainment that we find for violence. Flipping through the T.V., you can find a reality show on one channel and then clips of the war in Iraq on another. Something so savage, clipped down and sanitized for our living rooms. Television is something that has created things such as murder and rape into an action packed sport of some sort. Even something such as war, which is one of the most terrifying and traumatic events that one can go through, has been constructed to some strange, twisted, reality script.I feel as if the more of this that we see on TV, the harder it will be to decipher script from reality. In "The Running Man," viewers watching from home are allowed to turn in the guy and hint the program where he is so they can hunt him and kill him. That in itself represents the people in this society and the pleasure that they find from watching something being hunted down and killed. It isn't just the rich people turning them in, but it is also the poor people turning their own kind in because they need the money. It is as if they forgetting that they are in fact human, despite their class level, not a mouse being dropped into your pet snakes tank. Another example of selfishness is in the book, there is no uprising. It is as if everyone in the book and community as accepted that that is how things are. The rich people enjoy it, and the poorer people simply accept it and play along. They don't band together and try and stop something so that they can prevent there children from living what they are living, they just go along with it.This is what Stephen King was trying to say about the world that we live in.
Stephen King was trying to talk about the selfishness and the violence of humans. I often wonder how the people in my life would react to living in such a world. Although I wish the people in the book responded differently, I understand why they responded the way that they did. The whole idea behind such a scheme would be to scare and intimidate the lower class into not saying anything. I feel as if the Government was trying to frighten them shut, and it worked. In a place like that, you never know what the people in power could do to you. The best thing in their eyes is just to go along with what everyone is doing and not question it. I also believe that TV has a big impact on peoples lives, and that they should be aware of the type of things that they watch and put on for others to watch, because it definitely can influence. The things we watch say a lot about who we are as people.
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