The protagonist of Stephen King's The Long Walk is Ray Garraty. Ray is a sixteen-year-old contestant whose perspective guides the reader through the lethal contest.
His full name is Raymond Davis Garraty, and he is Walker number 47. He comes from Pownal, Maine, and arrives at the starting point on the Canada–Maine border for the annual Long Walk. The competitors must keep moving at a prescribed pace; after repeated warnings for slowing down, a Walker is shot by the soldiers supervising the event.
Ray is often confused with the other prominent Walkers around him. Peter McVries becomes his closest companion, Stebbins is the enigmatic finalist, and Hank Olson is another early companion, but none of them is the protagonist. Ray's relationships with these boys provide the novel's human focus as exhaustion, fear, and the rules of the dictatorship gradually strip away the contest's appearance of sport.