The Stand
The Stand is an epic post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novel written by American author Stephen King and first published in 1978 by Doubleday. The plot centers on a deadly pandemic of weaponized influenza and its aftermath, in which some of the few surviving humans gather into factions that are each led by a personification of either good or evil and seem fated to clash with each other. King started writing the story in February 1975, seeking to create an epic in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings. The book was difficult for him to write because of the large number of characters and storylines. The novel marks the first appearance of Randall Flagg, King's recurring antagonist, whom King would reintroduce several times in his later writings.
In 1990, The Stand was reprinted as The Complete & Uncut Edition. King restored over 400 pages of text that had been removed from his original manuscript, revised the order of the chapters, shifted the novel's setting 10 years forward from 1980 to 1990, and accordingly corrected a number of cultural references. The Complete and Uncut Edition of The Stand is Stephen King's longest stand-alone work at 1,152 pages, surpassing It, a novel of 1,138 pages. The book became a #1 bestseller and sold 4.5 million copies.
The Stand was highly acclaimed by critics and is considered one of King's best novels. It has been included in lists of the best books of all time by Rolling Stone, Time, the Modern Library, Amazon and the BBC. A television miniseries of the same name based on the novel was broadcast on ABC in 1994. From 2008 to 2012, Marvel Comics published a series of comics written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Mike Perkins. Another miniseries debuted on CBS All Access in December 2020, and finished airing in February 2021.
Plot
An extremely contagious and lethal strain of influenza, resistant to antibodies and vaccines, is developed as a biological weapon within a secret DoD installation in the Mojave Desert, and is accidentally released. The laboratory staff dies, but security guard Charles Campion manages to escape and takes his family out of state. After a couple of days, his car crashes at a gas station in Arnette, Texas. All of those involved at the scene – the gas station owner and his visitors, plus the ambulance attendants – are exposed to the virus. The gas station owner infects his cousin, a traffic cop, and the virus rapidly spreads from there.The US Army attempts to isolate Arnette, going as far as to execute unarmed civilians. Still, the efforts are in vain – the virus, christened by journalists as the "superflu," "tubeneck," or, most commonly "Captain Tripps", spreads across the country and travels beyond its borders, triggering a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. Approximately 99.4% of the world's population is infected and killed within a month. A prism of several personal tragedies describes the collapse of society, explosions of violence, the inability of the government and martial law to stop the pandemic, and the near-extinction of humanity. Many survivors of the virus also die, unable to accept the loss of their loved ones or survive in a world where they must fend for themselves.
Stuart Redman, one of the people present at the gas station when Campion crashes his car, proves immune to the virus. He is forcibly held in specialized centers at Atlanta, Georgia, then Stovington, Vermont, in the hope that a treatment can be made. Redman escapes after the virus disables the Stovington center's staff, and he is forced to kill one of the members in self-defense. He meets with sociology professor Glen Bateman and his Irish Setter Kojak, pregnant college student Frannie Goldsmith, and teenage outcast Harold Lauder. Larry Underwood, a disillusioned pop singer, joins the group in the wake of his mother's death, along with Nadine Cross, a teacher from New Hampshire, and a young boy she found alone, who she calls "Joe", due to his refusal to speak. Stuart and Frannie are drawn to each other and become lovers, to Harold's disappointment and resentment.
The group shares a common dream of an 108-year-old woman living in Hemingford Home, Nebraska. The woman, Abagail Freemantle – better known as "Mother Abagail" – becomes the group's spiritual leader. Upon arriving in Nebraska and meeting Abigail, "Joe" begins to speak, introducing himself as Leo Rockway, which upsets Nadine, whom Mother Abigail deems to have a dark presence within her. Mother Abigail guides the group to Boulder, Colorado, where other survivors are drawn by her telepathic appeals. New additions to the group include Nick Andros, a deaf-mute deputy from Shoyo, Arkansas; Tom Cullen, a kind-hearted, intellectually disabled man from May, Oklahoma; and Ralph Brentner, a good-natured farmer from Oklahoma. The group attempts to build a new society. They call their land the "Free Zone", organize funeral brigades, and restore electricity.
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Randall Flagg, the "dark man", who possesses supernatural abilities, creates his own society from people called by his visions. The people worship Flagg as a messiah and joyfully submit to his fascist dictatorship, in which undesirables are crucified. Flagg rescues spree killer Lloyd Henreid from prison and makes him his lieutenant. A pyromaniac nicknamed "The Trashcan Man", after destroying oil tanks in Gary, Indiana and meeting a power-hungry madman named "The Kid", joins Flagg's group and becomes a weapons specialist. Flagg prepares for war with Boulder.
Mother Abagail, believing she has been too prideful in watching the Zone grow, goes into self-imposed exile. During her absence, the Free Zone's leadership committee secretly sends three people to Flagg's territory to act as spies: Dayna Jurgens, a woman rescued by a group of former soldiers kidnapping women; Judge Ferris, a retired judge from Illinois; and Tom Cullen. Harold and Nadine, who have both been tempted by Flagg through their dreams, stage an attack on the committee with a bomb. The explosion kills several people, including Nick, but most of the committee members avoid the explosion thanks to Mother Abagail's return. Before dying of exhaustion, Mother Abagail reports God's will – Stuart, Glen, Larry, and Ralph must go to Las Vegas and destroy Flagg.
As Harold and Nadine flee, Flagg causes Harold's motorcycle to crash, and he falls over the edge of a cliff, severely breaking his leg. As his leg turns gangrenous, he realizes the harm he has done, writes a note of apology, and commits suicide. Nadine leaves Harold for dead and meets Flagg in the desert, where he rapes and impregnates her while revealing his true demonic form, an experience that leaves her semi-catatonic. The Trashcan Man has a psychotic episode and destroys Flagg's air force before Flagg can destroy Boulder. He then leaves Las Vegas to atone by finding a more powerful weapon for Flagg. When Tom's fleeting presence in Las Vegas as the sole surviving spy belatedly comes to light, Nadine takes advantage of Flagg's unsettled state to goad him into killing her and her unborn child.
Stuart breaks his leg en route and persuades the others to go on without him, telling them that God will provide for him if that is what is meant to happen. Leaving Kojak with Stu, the remaining three are soon taken prisoner by Flagg's army. Lloyd kills Glen for refusing to grovel before Flagg, who gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of Ralph and Larry. Moments before they are to be killed, the Trashcan Man arrives with a nuclear warhead. Flagg conjures a magical ball of energy to silence a dissenter. Still, it is transformed into a giant glowing hand – "the Hand of God" – which detonates the bomb, destroying Las Vegas and killing all of Flagg's followers, along with Larry and Ralph.
Tom finds Stu near death, but hears Nick's voice directing him to a supply of antibiotics, and saves his life. After nursing Stu back to health and helping his leg heal, the two travel back to Boulder, where Frannie has given birth to her son after a caesarean section. The baby, named Peter after Frannie's late father, manages to fight off the superflu. Four months later, Stuart and Frannie decide to leave Boulder and move to Ogunquit as society slowly reestablishes itself. The extended edition includes an epilogue in which Flagg wakes up somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Regaining his former strength and calling himself Russell Faraday, he begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people.
Characters
Background
In Danse Macabre, King writes about the origins of The Stand at some length. One source was Patty Hearst's case. The original idea was to create a novel about the episode because "it seemed that only a novel might really succeed in explaining all the contradictions". The author also mentions George R. Stewart's novel Earth Abides, which describes the odyssey of one of the last human survivors after the population is nearly annihilated by a plague, as one of the main inspirations:
With my Patty Hearst book, I never found the right way in... and during that entire six-week period, something else was nagging very quietly at the back of my mind. It was a news story I had read about an accidental spill in Utah. This article called up memories of a novel called Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.
and one day while sitting at my typewriter, I wrote—just to write something: The world comes to an end but everybody in the SLA is somehow immune. Snake bit them. I looked at that for a while and then typed: No more gas shortages. That was sort of cheerful, in a horrible sort of way.
The Stand was also planned by King as an epic story akin to The Lord of the Rings in a contemporary American setting:
For a long time—ten years, at least—I had wanted to write a fantasy epic like The Lord of the Rings, only with an American setting. I just couldn't figure out how to do it. Then... after my wife and kids and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, I saw a 60 Minutes segment on CBW. I never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less. That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah, that killed a bunch of sheep. I remembered a news reporter saying, 'If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City.' This incident later served as the basis of a movie called Rage, starring George C. Scott, but before it was released, I was deep into The Stand, finally writing my American fantasy epic, set in a plague-decimated USA. Only instead of a hobbit, my hero was a Texan named Stu Redman, and instead of a Dark Lord, my villain was a ruthless drifter and supernatural madman named Randall Flagg. The land of Mordor was played by Las Vegas.
While writing The Stand, King nearly stopped because of writer's block. Eventually, he reached the conclusion that the heroes were becoming too complacent, and were beginning to repeat all the same mistakes of their old society. In an attempt to resolve this, he added the part of the storyline where Harold and Nadine construct a bomb, which explodes in a Free Zone committee meeting, killing Nick Andros, Chad Norris, and Susan Stern. Later, Mother Abagail explains on her deathbed that God permitted the bombing out of dissatisfaction with the heroes' focus on petty politics, and not on the ultimate quest of destroying Flagg. King sardonically observed that the bomb saved the book, and that he only had to kill half of the core cast to do this. According to King, Blue Öyster Cult's 1976 song " The Reaper" also served as a source of inspiration for the novel.