The Running Man Summary: Plot, Characters and Themes of Stephen King's Dystopian Thriller
What The Running Man is about
The Running Man is a dystopian thriller by Stephen King. He published it in 1982 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, as a paperback original. In 1985 it was collected in the omnibus The Bachman Books.
The story is set in the United States in 2025. The economy is in ruins and world violence is rising. The country has become a totalitarian state. Television is run by the government-operated Network, and one of its stations, the Games, airs violent game shows.
Ben Richards is 28 and lives in Co-Op City. He has been blacklisted and cannot find work. His daughter is ill and needs medication. His wife has turned to prostitution to keep the family going. With no other options left, Richards applies to the Games.
After intense physical and mental tests he is picked for The Running Man, the Network's most dangerous programme. The rules are brutal. Contestants are declared enemies of the state and given a twelve-hour head start. Then the Hunters, elite assassins employed by the Network, are sent to kill them. A contestant earns $100 for every hour alive and another $100 for every Hunter or police officer killed. Surviving thirty days wins $1 billion. Viewers can win cash by reporting where the contestant is. Contestants must also mail two video messages to the Network each day. If they stop, they will be hunted indefinitely.
Richards starts with $4,800 and a pocket video camera. He heads for Boston with the Hunters behind him. The chase then moves through Manchester, Portland and Derry. He relies on disguises, safe houses and the help of strangers to stay alive, and he is betrayed more than once along the way.
The main characters
Ben Richards is the protagonist. He is a desperate man who enters the show to save his family. As the hunt goes on, he grows angrier at the system that put him there.
Sheila and Cathy are his wife and daughter. They stay behind, and they are the reason he runs.
Dan Killian is the executive producer of The Running Man. He explains the rules to Richards and tells him that no contestant has ever survived to claim the grand prize.
Bradley Throckmorton is a gang member who hides Richards in a Boston ghetto. He tells him about the city's severe pollution and the treatment of its poor. Later he smuggles Richards past a government checkpoint into Manchester. He gives him a car, a gun and a new disguise. He also hands over mailing labels that stop the Network tracing him through postmarks.
Evan McCone is the lead Hunter. Amelia Williams is a woman Richards carjacks and takes hostage late in the book.
The themes
Survival drives every page. The prize money is counted in hours, so simply staying alive is the whole game. Richards spends three days in Manchester disguised as a half-blind priest. He sleeps rough at an abandoned construction site after being wounded.
Class sits underneath the chase. Richards is poor, blacklisted and unable to pay for his daughter's medicine. In Boston he learns how badly pollution harms the poor. The show pays ordinary viewers to report on him, which turns the poor against one another for small rewards.
Corruption shows up in how the Network handles the truth. When Richards tries to use his videos to tell viewers about the pollution and the lives of the poor, the Network censors him. It dubs over his words with obscenities and threats.
The dystopia itself is built from these pieces. A ruined economy, a totalitarian government and entertainment based on killing all feed one another. The idea of a televised manhunt had appeared before. Robert Sheckley's 1958 short story The Prize of Peril features a contestant hunted by professionals across a city for cash.
Why it still matters
The novel imagined 2025 from the vantage point of 1982. That year has now arrived, which gives the book's picture of a broken economy and violent television an extra edge for new readers. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1987 and again in 2025. Each version has brought fresh attention to the original.
It also matters as part of King's work under the Bachman name. Those books were gathered together in The Bachman Books in 1985. They show a harder and bleaker side of the author.
The book suits readers who like dystopian fiction with a fast chase at its centre. It will also appeal to anyone interested in stories about the media, class and power. King readers curious about his Bachman novels will find it a natural place to start.
The ending (spoilers)
Stop here if you want the ending to stay a surprise.
In Derry, Richards faces both police and McCone at the airport. He bluffs his way onto a plane by claiming to carry an explosive charge strong enough to destroy the facility. By now he has broken the show's survival record of 197 hours. His success sparks a revolt by the oppressed lower class against the elite, and the authorities are overwhelmed.
On the plane, Richards holds McCone and Amelia hostage and flies low to avoid being shot down. Killian calls him. He reveals he knows there are no explosives and offers Richards McCone's job. Richards then learns that Sheila and Cathy have been dead for more than ten days. He accepts the offer. He then kills the flight crew and McCone, and he is mortally wounded in the struggle. He makes Amelia jump with a parachute. With his remaining strength he overrides the autopilot and flies toward the Network's headquarters.
The plane crashes into the tower and kills both Richards and Killian. The book closes with the line: "The explosion was tremendous, lighting up the night like the wrath of God, and it rained fire twenty blocks away."
