I dunno, from the snippets I remember of the boys talking about their lives, things seem rough. Didn’t Garraty mention a brother who’d died in infancy and express some guilty gratitude, because if he’d survived, he’s not sure his family would have made it? DeVries (I think that was the name of the kid Garraty bonds most closely to, the second runner-up) talks about working in a textile mill for what sounded like Great Depression-era wages and even then having to live with multiple roommates and such.
Further, there are occasional references to people being “Squaded”, i.e. hauled off by squads of secret police, never to be seen again.
One of the boys (I forget which) quotes the essay he wrote for his application to the Long Walk, in which he described himself as a “useless SOB” and generally described his existence as bleak and pointless, with the gross rewards of the Prize promising at least a chance at something resembling happiness.
I gather life in the Long Walk universe, at least for the underclass of boys who would apply for the Long Walk in the first place, ain’t all that sunny.
How many teenagers commit suicide every year? As in, not undergoing a merely risky activity, but one that they’re pretty sure will kill them? And how many of them would be dissuaded from suicide by unlimited material wealth? For anyone in such a situation, the Walk would seem like a win-win: Either you die, or you don’t need to any more.
That may be true; but it’s my understanding that most people who (nearly) commit suicide do so pretty impulsively. This article quotes studies suggesting that the vast majority of people wait less than a day, so it may be hard to get them to hang around for an average of 6 months.
Still, unlimited material weath sounds pretty darn tempting. And you only need to find 100 suicidally-overconfident teenagers a year.
Furthermore, most suicides look for a relatively painless and private method, and the Long Walk is neither. You have testimonial dinners beforehand. Then you get gunned down in public, typically after pushing your body way beyond its limits. One of the walkers mentions an earllier Walk in which the final two looked as if they had been crucified and had to keep walking with the nails in their feet.
Of course, you can make it easier if you want to–just walk a few miles (or even a few feet) and sit down. But if The Major suspects slacking, he may take it out on your family.
Plus there aren’t many details, but there is some sort of screening interview, and they probably weed out the overtly suicidal or depressed. They want recklessness, not resignation.
This is one aspect of the book I always found interesting: that the boys had to write essays, and that all of the boys seemed to be “useless SOBs.”
In other words, we don’t have the popular high school kids with high GPAs and extracurricular success behind them; instead, we’ve got a lot of guys that might be called “bad influences” or “somebody who will never make anything of themselves”: Garraty’s father had been Squaded, McVries had been unsuccessful at everything he tried, Barkovitch was just plain sour, Collie Parker was combative, Percy was weak and wimpy, Stebbins had an anti-Major message to send, and so on. These are not the kinds of people that the Major would want in his society. So, the essays help to choose the Walkers (I can almost hear the Major saying, “Pick the losers”), and the Long Walk weeds out these undesirables. Presumably, there are other ways that the Major has to accomplish this objective, but the Long Walk is both socially acceptable and entertaining.
They do have psych screening (mentioned by at least one character), but they don’t seem to do too well at weeding out those with at least some suicidal motivation, McVries being an example of that.