Stephen King

Stephen King

Long Walk / Thinner

The Long Walk: In the near future, where America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The game is simple - maintain a steady pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings, and you're shot to death.
Thinner: Billy Halleck commits vehicular homicide when his lack of attention to driving results in the death of an old lady on the street. Overweigh Halleck is a lawyer with connections, though, and gets off with a slap on the wrist. After his trial, a gypsy curses him with a single word, "Thinner." Halleck begins to lose weight uncontrollably and must pursue the band of gypsies who are responsible for his dwindling condition.


Sunday, January 11, 2015

Chapters 6-7: Meeting With Doctor Houston

In these chapters, Billy Halleck met with Doctor Houston to discuss his weight loss. Through blood testing, the Doctor was able to confirm that Billy did not have cancer like he thought he did. Houston couldn't find any reason that could have caused the loss. Instead of being worried over this, however, he just said that things happen that he can't explain all the time. He tells him a story about a boy who had almost no brain whatsoever, but was still top of his class at George Washington University, and another story about an 88 year old woman growing a third set of teeth, and tries to relate Halleck's situation to theirs.
I would think that a Doctor should be more concerned if someone as overweight as Billy just randomly lost a lot of weight without trying to. The Doctor really didn't seem to care about anything though; he even offered Billy cocaine which seems really strange for a Doctor of all people to do.
Before leaving, Billy says, "You don't know why I'm losing weight." Houston says "Nope," sounding "pleased by the fact" (60). He says that sometimes he just gives people a diet to lose a few pounds, but they end up losing a lot more than that and that's probably similar to what happened to Billy (61).
I guess I can't blame Doctor Houston for not being able to diagnose that Halleck was cursed by a Gypsy, but I at least think he should have cared more. 
Billy claimed that the meeting made him feel so much better, but all of chapter 7 is just Billy having a nightmare involving Houston as a skeleton chasing him, trying to offer him the toot-sweet he did at their meeting, so clearly he's still worried after the meeting.
Houston also claimed that Billy's weight loss was going to start tapering off, but we know that that's not going to happen.
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 11, 2015 at 3:31 PM

    Maybe the doctor is a gypsie too. It seems like all of them have this little cult going on. I wouldn't be surprised that the doctor would be in on it too.

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    1. UnknownJanuary 11, 2015 at 4:14 PM

      I don't think so. The gypsies tend to move around and they only stay in a community for a few days at a time, but the Doctor has been there forever. Plus, the Doctor was never affiliated with any of other gypsies. He definetly didn't know Billy's weight loss was caused by a gypsy's curse; he thought it was something that happened inexplicably.

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