The Running Man
by Stephen King
Contents
…Minus 095 and COUNTING… When the R’s went through the door u
Overview
Richards passes through the Games Building’s invasive physical examination, enduring humiliation while many other desperate applicants are disqualified or forcibly removed. The chapter emphasizes how the Network reduces poor contestants to bodies to be tested, sorted, and controlled.
Richards’s anger sharpens when his daughter’s illness is treated as a bureaucratic risk rather than a family crisis, but he restrains himself and continues because Cathy’s need for money leaves him no real choice. By the end, he has survived the medical screening and is moved into a dormitory for the next stage.
Summary
After hours of waiting, Ben Richards and the other applicants whose names begin with R are sent into a long, tiled examination room that resembles an assembly line. The applicants are ordered to strip, hang up their clothes, and carry their cards from station to station while doctors and police supervise them.
Richards moves through a series of impersonal medical checks: mouth, eyes, ears, chest, blood pressure, genitals, temperature, saliva, rectal exam, urine, vision, hearing, weight, arches, and fluoroscope. The process is humiliating and mechanical, and several applicants are removed from the line when they fail. One rejected man resists and is knocked down by a policeman using a move-along.
During the medical history portion, Richards mentions that his young daughter has influenza. The doctor sharply questions whether Richards has been immunized, and Richards suppresses a violent impulse when the doctor treats him with suspicion and contempt.
At the final station, a severe woman doctor asks Richards about homosexuality, felony arrests, phobias, drug use, and anti-government relatives. Richards answers curtly, signs a loyalty oath and Games Commission release form, then retrieves his clothes from an orderly and dresses.
The surviving applicants are taken by elevator to the third floor, where they are assigned cots in a vast, dim dormitory. Richards receives bed 940, lies down on the too-short cot, and stares at the ceiling, physically cleared but still trapped in the Network’s dehumanizing process.
Who Appears
- Ben RichardsEndures the invasive physical exam, suppresses anger, and passes to the dormitory stage.
- Cathy RichardsRichards’s sick daughter; her influenza is disclosed and motivates his continued submission.
- Games Building doctorsConduct impersonal medical tests, disqualify applicants, and question Richards about health and loyalty.
- Games Building policeGuard the examination process and violently subdue a rejected applicant who resists.
- Buck-toothed orderlyReturns applicants’ clothes after the examination and receives Richards’s hook number.
- Rejected applicantsFail medical screening, protest removal, and show the stakes for desperate contestants.