The boys’ sexuality is something both liberating and disempowering, humanizing and dehumanizing. What is the chief function of depictions of sexuality during the Walk, and how do these depictions reinforce or subvert Stephen King’s claim about what it means to come of age in a dystopia?

The novel depicts female characters through three lenses: Garraty’s internal monologue, diegetic action, and the narrator’s perspective. To what extent do the female characters have agency as opposed to remaining objectified? How does one of the three aforementioned lenses support your claim?

King offers little explicit worldbuilding; the reader never learns about the origin of the Walk, how long it has been going on, or why people continue to support it. How does this choice support the theme of Resisting Oppression?