The Stand
Author: Stephen King
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were
there... and still on your feet. –Narrator
I'm going to see him in Heaven. Tom Cullen is going to see him there,
and he'll be able to talk and I'll be able to think. –Tom Cullen
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the
person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There
are no maps of the change. You just… come out the other side. Or you don't.
–Larry Underwood, internally
Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two
and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing
we call 'society.' Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and
they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give
me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in
the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite
number, and is always trying to get back home. –Glen Bateman
Amazon.com's book description for The Stand:
Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.
A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world's population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious "Dark Man," who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
This was my first Stephen King novel (though to be honest, I used an
audiobook for this one). I've seen several of his movies and have listened to him
read one of his short stories. But until I listened to The Stand, I'd never experienced one of his novels. I want to make
that clear before I start talking about my experience with this book; I don't
know if this is his typical style or something out of the ordinary for him.
Overall, I enjoyed the story. I thought there was a lot of good and
well-thought-out turmoil both amongst and inside the characters. I liked that
some of them struggled with their decision to go to the light or dark sides,
and I liked that many of them didn't struggle at all. I liked that King made
some of the "bad" characters rather likeable or at the very least, pitiable.
What I didn't like about the book was the climax. I thought there was
such great character development and lead-up that when the men actually made it
to Las Vegas to confront the Dark Man – to have their stand, in essence – I felt
disappointed by the sudden and quick destruction of all the hard work that went
into getting this scene set up. I felt let down, really. And it wasn't the
deaths of so many characters – on both sides – that left me empty. I expected
death, for how can you have war without death? For me, the scene where Flagg is
preparing to publicly quarter the Boulder Free Zone ambassadors, where men are
beginning to question their decision to side with Flagg, where Larry and Ralph are
awaiting their fate, ready to accept death, should have been something bigger
than it was. Or rather, it should have gone on longer or had more meat. I just
felt that once the bomb exploded and killed everyone, it was just… whelp, it's over!
The reincarnation of Flagg, both in physical form on an island and in spiritual
form in Stu's dreams and premonitions, made me feel a bit better about the way Las
Vegas went down. I like the message that evil can never truly be wiped out; it
can be only momentarily repressed and re-positioned. And I like the reappearance
of Nick to Tom, reinforcing his childlike faith: "The Lord is my Shepherd… I
shall not want for nothing." His faith allowed God to work through an
apparition of Nick to heal Stu and lead them back to Boulder.
This book really is a story of good vs evil, light vs dark, hero vs villain,
God vs Satan (depending on your amount of religiosity). And King does a good
job of portraying the gray in the the black and white. The characters' internal
struggles with their own shortcomings and with their desires to find a place in
which they feel they belong made it an incredibly interesting story, even as I
was a bit let down by the climax.
I have a feeling I'm in the minority here when I say I was somewhat let
down by the climax. And that's fine. We're all aware that our opinions are just
that – personal preferences that are apt to be different from others'. And maybe my
listening to it via audiobook instead of reading it via the more traditional
method played a part. I certainly don't regret reading it, and would even go so
far as to recommend it to others, if for no other reason than my own desire to
hear someone else completely contradict my take on it.
My takeaway: My perception of a clear-cut black vs white situation is not
necessarily mirrored in everyone else's moral compass, even if he or she seems
like a good person – or a bad person, for that matter. And M-O-O-N spells so much more
than just "moon."
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