If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.
I got sick time coming.
Stephen King, The Stand
This is the book that got me into reading King in the first place. This is also my first time reading it.
Allow me to explain. When I was younger (be weird if I wasn’t), I went with my parents to visit a friend of theirs. Somewhere, somehow, I came across a copy of The Stand, and the friend of my Dad’s said that I was probably at the right age to read King. He was wrong, I was too young, but then I think everyone who has ever read King and has a deep abiding love of him read him too young. As mentioned in my Night Shift post, this book was perhaps a bit big and intimidating to read at 13, and then I just never really got round to it. I did attempt the audiobook once, but that never really stuck either. As such, this has been one of the gaps I’ve had in my King reading that doing this little project has allowed me to plug.
When it was written in the 70s, smallpox vaccinations were winding down having effectively wiped it out, though there had been outbreaks of Russian and Swine flu; in the 90s when it was expanded and republished, we were in the middle of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that was ignored as much as possible. Now reading those early chapters of the downfall of America to Captain Trips heading into Year 4 of the 21st Century Pandemic is perhaps more haunting than any other time it could have been read. Yet strangely, I found a lot of people, particularly early in the pandemic, were rereading it and at the time I could not understand that. Having read it now myself, i get it. Despite its subject matter, it’s strangely comforting tale of Good and Evil.
There was a certain experience in reading a couple chapters, what I think of as sketch chapters, that must hit differently now. Chapter 8 and 38, describing the spread of the superflu and second wave of deaths of more natural causes, is King at his most haunting. Chapter 38 shows off King’s talent for sketching believable, real characters in a few lines and then killing them just as quick – particularly haunting is the small child who falls down the well and dies a couple of days later. But in a pandemic world, reading about how easily the virus transmits across America is easily more terrifying than anything Flagg will do later in the novel. I got a real sense of dread reading, seeing how the virus spread so easily and having been forced to learn about how transmission works in the wake of COVID. Reading that, as well the vignettes of America’s societal collapse are haunting, and it’s almost a shame the book has to move on from that to get back to the story, as hopeful as the second half is. Though if it didn’t do that, the book would be even longer.
The Stand is a very big book. It is in fact King’s longest book, Dark Tower series excepted. When first published in 1978, the book was too big to published; that many pages would make the book unwieldy and, more importantly, too expensive for the market and so King cut around four hundred pages. By 1990, with a firm, constant audience the book was updated a second time to be set in 1990 itself, (having been updated for the paperback release to 1985) and much of the cut material restored. This is the version I read.
A book this big is bound to have many themes throughout to be discussed. One I think was most interesting is Responsibility.
One of the major faults of the novel is that the two characters who emerge as the protagonists, with a large supporting cast, are also generally the least interesting. Frannie I’ll save for a separate discussion, but Stu Redman is a particularly aggravating choice. His early chapters, locked away in the Stovington CDC are tense and brilliant, and his escape brilliant also. Then once free in the outside world, and especially by the time he reaches Boulder, he reverts to a generic character who doesn’t even impact the plot too much. It’s then you realise that, in retrospect, those CDC scenes were so great not necessarily because of Stu but for the situation he was in. He doesn’t even get to impact the plot that much, leaving it to Larry, Ralph and Glen to face down the Walkin Dude. Sure, he has responsibility to Frannie, but he deals with it fairly well, having lived a hard life with a dead wife backstory already that doesn’t leave him much place to grow or go.
This is especially annoying in that early in the book it seems like King is setting up three characters in particular as leads: Stu, Fran and Larry Underwood. I feel for Larry, who gets somewhat neglected in Boulder too, but his character doesn’t stop being interesting and fits into that theme of taking Responsibility far more than many. Throughout, he is constantly haunted by the man he was and whom he wants to be. As the book progresses, he gains a surrogate son, a wife, a community. When given the choice to throw it all away on Nadine, he stands resolute and shoulders that Responsibility. He has grown up from the party boy who ran away from everywhere and starts to put down roots. Stu goes to Vegas because he was told to, but Larry I feel, for all his similarities, goes to Vegas because it is his responsibility to do so. He owes that to everyone he loves, but also importantly to himself. That he ultimately loses his life in the doing is what makes his story a tragedy, because we get that sense of growth into a better, if still flawed, man. His mother I think would be proud of who he became.
Similarly, Harold Laudner is one of the most interesting characters for almost the opposite reason. King has played about with characters who ‘deserve’ women in Night Shift‘s I Know What You Need, but here we get to see it play out to its tragical end from inside his head. Harold is almost a proto-incel, and even dies technically a virgin (I mean, depending on your definition – by his, yes, certainly not by mine). That Harold begins to realise the path he is on is one of hatred and not love but stays on it out of pride is all part of his fatal flaw. In his dying moments, far too late to make a difference, he does take on that responsibility and accept that he could have been loved makes for one of King’s most interesting and human villains. We even get that hint of how things could have gone if he accepted being Hawk instead. He takes on a sort of false responsibility of youthful arrogance masquerading as maturity, but misses the fact he actually could be the mature pillar of Boulder others perceive him to be.
(Quickly want to take the opportunity to say that King is slowly improving his representation with a couple of my other favourite characters. Three disabled characters in Nick Andros, Tom Cullen and Trashcan Man, a black woman in Mother Abigail and a bisexual woman in Dayna Jurgens. Are they all treated well and fairly? Well, sometimes, it’s just nice to know they’ve made an effort.)
Of course, there’s only one main villain we’re all interested in: Randall Flagg. What an impact he makes. His introductory chapter is a lot of telling us who he is, but we get enough of his actual evil throughout the novel to match it. Perhaps his scariest scene is after the murder of the Judge where he appears to Bobby Terry grinning and hunting him down. He disappears for much of the novel when we focus on building the Boulder Free Zone, but his reputation only grows, and when he loses his power later it doesn’t feel like depowering a villain who is otherwise unbeatable. A recurring theme of King’s villains is how their evil is self-serving and pathetic in the end. Sure, Flagg has to be defeated by the literal Hand of God blowing him up with an A bomb, but he has been losing ground long before then. He overestimates himself, and that confidence in his own abilities rejects the responsibility of caring for people. He is American evil incarnate, and even if he didn’t crop up in other books down the line, the ‘newly’ added epilogue of Flagg amongst the tribes people shows that his brand of American evil never quite goes away, just colonises somewhere new. Heck, the armed sentries at Boulder shows that evil might just be an outgrowth of human nature anyway, sociologically speaking as Glen might add.
By contrast, Mother Abigail is one who has nothing but responsibility. She has a huge family pre-superflu, and then with prophetic dreams gains an even bigger one. The one time she indulges in pride, she pays for it with her life. Abigail is also literally the mother of the characters (bit on the nose that), in that many of the characters like Frannie, Larry, Nick or Tom, are like children she needs to raise and guide to adult responsibility. She is also, by contrast to Flagg, quite a dull character. Despite it being over a thousand pages, The Stand clips along at a fair old pace. The most noticeable sag is King giving Abigail her backstory. He never quite gets the character right. But at least thematically, she represents the American good Christian: talks the talk and relies on God to do the hard work kind, motherly and loving.
There’s a fair bit of twinning throughout the book. The most obvious is Flagg and Abigail, though I think an argument could be made that once Abigail disappears Stu steps into that particular dichotomy. But there are others sprinkled throughout on both sides: Lloyd Henreid, Flagg’s second-in-command and Larry Underwood, both of whom are men with low opinions of themselves though where Lloyd attaches himself to Flagg, Larry makes the attempt to improve; Nadine and Fran, both carrying children that could mean the saviour or damnation of mankind; Trashcan Man and Tom Cullen, both men with disabilities, one who demonstrates his growth through love, the other who dies still seeking it. With all of that, it feels to a certain extent that the novel could have been even longer had it expanded on those connections, though it is perhaps for the best that King chose not to do a full Lord of the Rings pastiche (it’s enough that four men make their way into what is essentially Mordor) and go for three books of it. After all, we have a Dark Tower to get to eventually.
Finally though, I’d like to talk a bit about the title. The novel is not only about taking responsibility, but the responsibility for taking a stand in your beliefs. It could be argued that Larry, Ralph and Glen don’t actually achieve much in Vegas, but that’s missing the point. The point is they take the stand against evil. Flagg only ever defines himself in opposition to that ideal. He has no morals of his own to stand up for, just himself. The Boulder Free Zone stands up in believing in right, good, order and that recurring King theme, love. Love, again and again, comes through and wins out. King is an optimist (and hippy) at heart I think, where despite him putting his characters through absolute hell they do mostly survive on the power of love. A quick glance at his bibliography so far shows that. Love, not fear, will see you through. Stand up against fear and hate: stand for kindness, fairness and love. It seems like that is what King believes will ultimately save mankind.
Observations and Connections
Though ‘Salem’s Lot introduces our first major character who will return, The Stand features many references and features in others besides. We’re starting to get the sense of a wider King universe, which is funny in what is his one of his most apocalyptic novels. Other worlds than these.
First, having now read it, much of the superflu in this certainly does not jibe properly with Night Surf in Night Shift. There’s some attempt in that short to weld the stories together, but it doesn’t quite work. Maybe on another level Captain Trips was a lot more virulent and did wipe out mankind. Nevermind. Like I say – other worlds.
Speaking of, a couple locations crop up from before. Boulder and Stovington both are important places in the early parts of of The Shining. Towards the end of the novel, Fran mentions about going back to Maine where there are some beautiful places, including Castle Rock. Frannie, I cannot stress this enough: don’t. Go. To. Castle Rock. Mother Abigail’s hometown of Hemingford Home is just down the road from Gatlin, location for Children of the Corn. Corn in fact comes up a lot in King’s works, and I get a bit more of a sense of how Flagg can be He Who Walks Behind the Rows, using Gatlin as a dry run for what happens in Vegas. Still not fully convinced, but reading The Stand does at least make that connection a bit more clear.
One of the more prominent references is thanks to Mother Abigail’s grandmother. During the otherwise dull biography of Abigail, we get mention of prophetic dreams being described as ‘the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shine.’ Abigail probably isn’t related to Dick Halloran, but it’s fun to entertain the notion. I also suspect that Leo/Joe has a touch of the shine about him considering his reactions to Harold, though he may not realise it.
Another prominent first is a brief reference to The Shop. The Shop are a shady government body that gets its most prominent appearance in Firestarter later, and is so explained in more detail in that essay. However, as I am reading the 1990 remix, I’m not sure if this is a reference added after the fact to knit the King universe together a bit more closely, or if it was present in the original text. If added later, it actually is one of the last references to The Shop from King himself, with it only really appearing in the brief King-written series Golden Years and a couple of adaptations of his books in the 90s. There is some discussion from King fans that later book The Institute is another version of The Shop, but your mileage may vary with that.
There will be plenty of time to talk about Flagg at another point, but there are a couple things to note about him here though. King hasn’t quite fleshed him out yet, and so bolsters his evil reputation with a couple other names that Glen comes up: Nyarlthotep, Astaroth (which may be a corruption of Azathoth) and R’yelah (surely a corruption of R’lyeh), all Lovecraft references with Nyarlthotep being particularly potent. Flagg collects names like others collect books. Flagg gives his minions a black stone with a red flaw in its centre their changes meaning depending who looks sounds very much like the evil marble from Lord of the Rings, but also probably Flagg’s link with the Crimson King. The red flaw could be the Crimson King’s sigil, but its multiple interpretations also recalls the strange symbol on the door in It.
Finally, the Judge on his journey west notes a crow that he suspects is Flagg or Flagg’s familiar. Here we get our first mention of ka, something that will become much more important in The Dark Tower books. Unsure if this was added in the later editions or was there in ’78, but interesting to note it’s there reading in this order at least.
UP NEXT: Back to Bachmann, we’re going on The Long Walk.
Deeper Thoughts for the Horror Inclined 