The Stand, by Stephen King, his classic epic novel about a plague that wipes out 99% of the world and divides the survivors into camps of good and evil.I started re-reading this in March, Bob Held Hostage Day 13. Back then, I thought that by the time I finished the book, things would be back to normal.
The Stand was written in 1978 and takes place in 1980. A Department of Defense mistake in a lab unleashes a devastating plague on the world, killing 99.4 % of the population.
Survivors share a cosmic connection as they find each other at the beginning in Maine, New York City, Vermont, and end up in either Boulder CO, or Las Vegas NV, depending on whether you’re with the good guys or the bad guys. The Rockies are good; Las Vegas is bad, sort of like now.
People moved west on motorcycles, in cars, by foot, on bikes. Living off the land was pretty easy – gasoline, food, lodging, medicine are available if you just avoid the hundreds of millions of dead bodies throughout the land.
Mother Abigail, a very old Black woman, is the spiritual leader of the good folks.
Randall Flagg, aka The Walking Dude, is pure evil and white. Both are telepathic and communicate with lots of people by just thinking.
There is a huge cast of characters – a deaf mute, a developmentally challenged guy, a gay woman, an incipient rock star, a pill popping rich lady, a pyrotechnic genius, an unwed mom, a judge, doctor, engineers, all of whom play major roles in the epic.
There’s a lot of sacrifice involved as the plot unwinds. People volunteer to scout out the bad guys and you know that will not end well for them, at least in terms of staying alive.
In a post- apocalyptic world, redemption is a major theme.
Bob in the Basement’s Take
– I really enjoyed this when I read it 40 years ago and I really liked rereading it. Today it’s much more relevant due to the virus.
– It’s very well written and it’s more edgy than scary. Stephen King’s The Shining, set in a snowbound Rocky Mountain Hotel with a crazy Jack Nicholson as the lead, is scary.
– What gives this novel the edge over your conventional horror story with ghosts and such, is that this story is plausible. These people simply caught the flu, a really bad strain of the flu.
– The Stand is similar to Les Misérables in that lots of major characters die. In Les Mis, they show up in the final scene – not so here.
– At the end, two of the few protagonists who are left alive muse about how perhaps humans should not organize big communities that will inevitably do stupid stuff like create a plague.
