You misread.
The book doesn’t say who murdered this wife and child, but it happened the first day (they’d been dead for ten days by the time he’s told about it), so it’s very unlikely to have been the crowd.
Next is the important question:
How do we turn it into a game show today and make lots of $$?
But that’s for another thread.
Random question, when in the mailing process does a package get postmarked? Is it before or after the address is checked? If you put the network address as the return address, put a “bad” address on it and put it in the mailbox when it got “returned” to the network would it have a postmark?
Yes, I believe they are marked on arrival to the sorting facility. However, you could conceivably send made-up letters to other companies and ask for catalogues or promo materials and such, and include a reply envelope addressed to the network with the postage paid and a tape stuck to the bottom. Sure, they’d know where it came from and be able to track it down, but most companies probably don’t keep random envelopes around for several days so it could well have been disposed of by the time they get there to investigate, and in either case you’ll have gotten plenty of time to move on from where you sent it in the first place.
I really doubt the dystopian state would let such an organization or company exist for long. And if it did, it would surely be infiltrated by undercover hunters.
Haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but:
Why is the running man required to send in two tapes? Why not just one?
And is it possible they lied to him when they told him
that his wife and son had been murdered, just to make him lose hope and/or give up?
They don’t really say why the two tapes, other than “thems the rules”.
And to your second question:
[spoiler]Nope. They ask him to join their team as a Hunter, since he was so good at it.
He says his family will be in danger if he becomes a Hunter. The network informs him they’re already dead. He quickly dismisses it as a trick, because he could find out on his own easily enough.
He doesn’t join their team.[/spoiler]
By FAR my favorite idea mentioned. “In other news, we finally have our first Running Man winner. He hid out for a month dressed as a weenie tot handing out corn dogs.”
I was encouraged to read The Running Man because of this thread. One thing we’re forgetting is that the game is rigged from the very beginning. Potential running men are subject to a battery of physical and psychological testing. You’re not going to be selected if you’re the type of person with a strong network of contacts you can rely on. You’re not going to be selected if you’re well educated. (Richards had intelligence but no real education.) You’re not going to be selected if you’re not part of the lower class.
The only way to win The Running Man is not to play.
In the book, Richards guessed that the Network would stage his death and then quietly continue to hunt him if he made it to 25 days. There really is no winning.
And especially not in Richards’ case, because he’s only doing it for his wife’s sake; once he learns she is dead . . .
I read someone quoting this book in a newspaper, so I search about it. It looks interesting, but I was not about to read it simply because my library doesn’t have this book. It is actually this thread that push me into buying the book. I read the first half and the ending, and I’m glad to have found it.
I think all the running men know this game is rigged, and they are going to die. They just want to earn as much as possible for their family. If they have a choice, they won’t play the game.
I think the game was rigged to make it impossible for the contestant to win. The end of the novel really made that perfectly clear, I think. The protagonist must have known it was hopeless, which is why he killed himself in an act of destruction that eerily predicted 9/11.
Except that the protagonist won. He could have survived and became the head hunter for the Network but he chose a different path.