The Stand by: Stephen King

How does one really discuss a novel like The Stand?  Do you try to summarize the hefty plot or go into depth on the characters and themes employed by Stephen King in what could easily be considered his magnum opus (until The Dark Tower)?  Do you attempt to build a case on the basis of the deep mythology King creates?  Any of these methods would be valid and this review is going to be sort of a mashup of all the possible ways of discussing The Stand.  Stephen King has published two versions of the novel, the first in 1978 which ran 823 pages in hardcover, a hefty tome to be sure, but the second version is the one this review looks at.  The Stand: Complete and Uncut Edition was published in 1990 after King had reinstated nearly 400 pages now running in paperback at 1,439 pages.  Unlike other tomes by King, The Stand defies any real restriction on genre.  Most classify the novel as a horror novel, but it equally qualifies as political thriller, dark fantasy, a dystopia, and theology.  Above all else, The Stand perhaps should be described as a quest for meaning in an uncaring world and standing for something.  While King meant The Dark Tower to be his version of The Lord of the Rings yet that title really should go to The Stand.  Like The Lord of the Rings, The Stand is one story told in three books (yet only ever published in one volume).  The first book is about characters being uprooted from their normal lives and are forced to head to an elderly authority figure while a sinister figure begins raising an army like The Fellowship of the Ring, the second book is about preparing and dealing with corruption while finding a position to fight back in like The Two Towers, and the third book is about the final confrontation and defeat of the great evil like The Return of the King.  This is by no means a criticism against King, as the structure of the novel reads more like an homage than a rip-off of Tolkein’s style and story.

The novel opens with 400 pages detailing the fall of society and the scattered survivors attempting to find others who are still alive.  The premise of The Stand is that the United States Government had been secretly working on a strain of influenza known as Project Blue or Captain Tripps with a 99.4% rate of effectiveness at infecting and killing, which due to bureaucracy and human negligence, escapes and of course kills most of the population of the Earth.  The sequence of events in this section of the novel flash across the United States of America as King chronicles what normal citizens are doing as the epidemic hits, how exactly it hits, and how they react as the world falls apart.  This is perhaps the most formulaic portion of the novel, going from scene to scene, introducing a character, giving the reader a glimpse into their lives to sympathize with their struggles and enjoy their triumphs, have either them or someone close to them get the superflu, and slowly chronicle their death.  King does intercut these stories with each other which allows much of the formulaic nature of this section of the novel to be spiced with different stories being told.  King also does an excellent job of introducing a mix of important characters, unimportant characters, main characters, supporting characters, and minor characters with each of them having some time in the forefront.  There is a sense that any of the characters introduced in this part could have become important characters had they been lucky in surviving the plague.  This is also the section of the novel which is the most down to Earth, following human characters dealing with very human conflicts.  If there was to be a singular protagonist who is the main character throughout the novel, from beginning to end, it would be Stu Redman, introduced early on as patient zero of the superflu drives and dies in his town, yet throughout this section of the novel Stu is either a background character or under the jurisdiction of the United States Government for his immunity to the superflu.  The more interesting characters are Larry Underwood and Frannie Goldsmith.  Larry is a singer who is down on his luck and has to move back in with his mother at the beginning of his mother and throughout the novel his arc involves coming to term with being given power and having to learn to lead.  He has to find a purpose and is introduced as a character who doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing with his life and his story ends making a final stand for justice and freedom.  The middle of the novel isn’t kind to Larry as he doesn’t get as much to do while things move on, but King still manages to make him an interesting character.  Frannie Goldsmith is perhaps less interesting as much of her role is to be the standard love interest for Stu past the first third of the novel.  Her backstory is interesting, with King going a long way to destigmatize a woman becoming pregnant out of wedlock and deciding to have the child.  Her conflict with her abusive and controlling mother ends when her mother dies from the superflu with her father and she has to perform a burial.

For much of the middle of the novel she acts as the narrator as the plot shifts from post-apocalyptic horror to a political telling of the rebuilding of some sort of society from the survivors.  Frannie acts as secretary and member of the committee in charge of running a community in Boulder, Colorado along with the other protagonists for the novel.  The community is run initially by Mother Abigail Freemantle, an elderly woman who represents the side of good and God in King’s allegory of good vs. evil.  Mother Abigail is one of King’s most memorable characters, who doesn’t actually appear in any of his other books.  She exhibits telepathic powers and points of real magic as she can heal the sick, which she believes are provided by God.  She implants dreams in survivors to attract them to her, and while in any other story this would be the set up for a twist where it is revealed Abigail is the villain.  King subverts expectations and makes Mother Abigail a kindly old woman with no ulterior motives except genuinely wanting to see society rebuilt.  Once her community is set up, she goes out to find herself, only returning to save the day before a tragic end of second act death.  The middle of the novel is also where we really get to see the novel’s main villain, Randall Flagg, who is essentially an evil wizard.  Flagg is a character who delights in his evil deeds, creating his own community full of thugs and run as a fascist regime in Las Vegas, Nevada.  There is delightful glee taken in the way which King writes for Flagg as a character, as he tempts people over to his authoritarian regime through promises of riches and magic.  King contrasts the glee with downright dark and upsetting imagery of crucifixion, whippings, and other gruesome executions.

Flagg’s villainy builds up to the final part of the novel where King brings everything to a head and ends on both an uplifting and deeply troubling note.  King added a second ending to this novel in the 1990 expansion which adds the troubling note retheming the book to once of the cyclic nature of the battle between good and evil.  There is something almost misanthropic in this epilogue which is only about two pages long, and something that might just reflect King’s outlook at the time of publishing.  The third part of the novel is really where Stuart Redman gets to be the main character.  When Mother Abigail leaves, Stuart is the character we follow the most as people rally around him.  Stu is not a character who is completely well spoken, but he is still a symbol of hope for the community of Boulder, even when Flagg influences a member of the community to blow up a hospital killing seven members of the community.  Stu is also not the typical hero (it’s Flagg’s own hubris which brings him down), being a leader who doesn’t even make it to the final confrontation with the villain.  Stu’s story is one of becoming a leader and returning triumphant as a bringer of hope, months after going to confront Flagg and being disabled with a broken leg.  The real hero may be the mentally handicapped Tom Cullen whose condition seems to make him believe everything is spelled MOON, who is sent to spy on Flagg and is an emotional center for the later half of the novel.  Or perhaps deaf and mute Nick Andros is the true hero of The Stand who is killed near the end in an explosion and whose spirit allows Tom to save Stu’s life.  Or maybe it’s Glen Bateman who shows defiance against Flagg up to his final moments.  The Stand is a book where the hero figure isn’t really that clear and that is one of its greatest aspects.  All of the human characters show the strengths of humanity and all of its villains show its weaknesses, from pride, to lust, to sadism, King writes a story that weaves in and out of humanity and explores what that means.  This isn’t a novel that should be read quickly, with time taken to enjoy everything, and as far as I’m concerned it is one of King’s best 10/10.