Real Rating: 4.5, but I am feeling obliged to give it a 5 because I just can't not.
MILD SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. While reading this book, I kept thinking aReal Rating: 4.5, but I am feeling obliged to give it a 5 because I just can't not.
MILD SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. While reading this book, I kept thinking about what I would do, had I encountered the virus. Where would I bury my family members (the soccer field behind the gas station), where I would get my food (the co-op behind my house), and where I’d get electricity and gas, (re: gas station), etc. The question consumed me; I know that I have zero survival skills, and I wondered if I should rectify it. I used to scoff at people (Americans) who have zombie survival skills... but now I kind of got it. It got to the point where I was asking other family members about what they’d do. My mom said she’d pack a couple bags, one on her front and one to her back, full of food, and head to her family’s house, wanting to see if anyone survived there or on the way. Dad said he’d climb on higher ground and see if he could see anyone there, and then he’d start packing and set off, anywhere. Abdullah said he’d drive around in his car until there were no more gas in the gas stations in Kuwait. From their answers, I can maybe sort of tell who would be swayed by Mother Abigail and who might be inclined to head East to the dark man.
Stephen King's novels engross me, wholly, and this book is no different. The reason I took off that half star for this book is because of the characters. I loved most of the main and secondary characters, but the more I read, the more I realized it was only the male characters that I loved, that got to be so whole and fleshed out. The female characters started off strong and became tropes. Frannie, who had such potential, who I loved and admired so much and whose line at Book one is still on my mind:
"Stop backing away from it!" she shouted furiously in the the empty kitchen. "Who's going to buryhim?" And at the sound of her own voice, the answer came. It was perfectly clear. She was, of course. Who else. She was.
But then that strength seemed to fade away from her, as she got accustomed to being with Harold and then with Stu, and God, did I start getting tired of seeing her crying in every chapter. I realize that she was pregnant and it was a very tough time, but when she becomes, literally, your only token female character, the one who has been there from the start, then it really starts getting tiring. Also, the purpose of all the women is to get pregnant it seems. I sort of understand; it is a new world, but it just made the whole thing feel so archaic and caveman-ish.
On to what I loved about this book. Glen Bateman, the sociology professor, was a delight. I loved seeing what he thought about what was happening, loved gleefully realizing that I could understand some of the ideas that he was saying, and loved even more knowing that I had no idea how complex and complicated Society, as an idea and a literal community in front of us, was. Perion (I think her name was) another professor, talks about how most of the people around them, the people who were seeking Mother Abigail, were liberal arts types, and how all they could do was think and how utterly useless it was in their current circumstances. But what I also saw in the Boulder Free Zone was people heading to libraries to read and study up on their survival, and people who were still praying to God, believing that a higher power to help them, and they were still hoping to set up a democracy and believed in certain ideals of freedom and self-sufficiency. True, maybe liberal arts people did cotton around all day, and really liked hearing the sound of their - our - voice, but we also really want to learn and, I hope, will never be too proud and full of our own self-importance to not ask for help. Or, more importantly, to realize that someone who may not have the same credentials that we do can be more intelligent and resourceful in other ways.
Insanity and sanity are also huge themes in this book. Everything and everyone is on the table: children and feeble-minded people becoming attuned to God and certain messages that they shouldn’t be aware of, dreams that are shared with people around the States, and an old woman who seems to be a late prophet. People often think they’re dreaming when they are told things in their dreams, and refusing to follow those can lead to disaster. But moving on from that, I think Harold and Nadine’s relationship with sanity is also interesting because it ties up with the idea of guilt and fear. Harold feels insane, and he knows how guilty he is, but he is looking forward to seeing the dark man, because he thinks his sanity will come back as soon as he sees him. Nadine is racked with guilt and loathes the idea of taking another life, but is looking forward to losing her sanity when she joins the dark man because then she won’t have to think about anything anymore. It is a struggle against entropy or towards entropy, which is what most of these characters are looking forward to or looking to avoid.
It is also fascinating, reading this book right after reading On Writing, because I realize that King mentions The Stand in that, and that he wanted to leave this book with no moral. I do think part of that is true. As a reader, I was looking around at the Free Zoners, and some of the things they were doing, and wondering why they were doing things this way; didn't they understand they were just regressing to the old ways? Like turning the TVs on, and creating an armed police, and "leaving all these things lying around, waiting to be picked up". The four men who made the pilgrimage to the East talk about how good it was to purge themselves of the reliance on these technologies, and Fran and Stu also seem to realize who important it becomes to get away from this large group of people and society before it draws them in too much. Like Fran and Stu, I don’t know if we ever really learn from our mistakes, but getting the nitty gritty of that philosophical question isn’t the point of The Stand. Stephen King knows that, and he doesn’t sit down and pontificate about how this would happen, and he knows that our lives happen in these little vicious cycles. Even the last chapter shows that all this, all of the evil and, hopefully, good in life is a cycle in motion, just waiting to be picked up and started all over again.
The Stand is about doing just that, taking a stand against evil for as long as you can even when you know that this will happen again, that evil and bad people will never be fully gone. How soon before the Boulder Free Zone becomes like the old United States, before democracy becomes a joke once again and people die for causes they never wanted to fight for? This book is about how multi-faceted people are: Nadine Cross cane be the woman who feared for Joe’s life, and the woman who desires the dark man, and finally renounces him. Harold can be the mild teenage asshole that he is, and also be a hero to Larry Underwood for helping him cross the country, to becoming the fucking bastard that he later becomes until he embraces his Hawkness. Larry can feel like a bastard all his life, and still be a hero and redeem himself. Redemption against entropy, maybe that's what this book is all about.
Loading...
