An epic read: The Stand
June 06, 2019
Overview: The Stand by Stephen King
At over 1400 pages long The Stand written by Stephen King, was a long but worthy read. I am committed to taking my reading goal seriously for the year by reading at least one book a month. The Stand did take me a little over a month to complete as it was tough to get through all of it in just 4 weeks given how long the book is but i’ll catch up. I am able to read for about an hour in the morning before work and an hour in the evenings & will sometimes read a bit on the weekends if i’m not too busy. This book definitely took commitment to complete. I’d say I put in approximately 50 hours or so to finish the unabridged version of the novel (there is a shorter one with less scenes) but I wanted the full experience. A lot of people think there isn’t much time to read a book with working & a busy lifestyle but i’d say if you are able to binge watch the Game of Thrones series (about 65 hours) you probably could manage to read this one. With that said, during this post i’d like to go over some of the details of the novel and why I decided to read it in the first place. The Stand makes a lot of interesting points on humanity, political movements, & other topics that are very much relevant today for a book that was published back in 1978.
Why Read The Stand
I know Stephen King is a prolific author and the only book that I have read prior to The Stand was The Green Mile, so I wanted to explore some of his other novels. I purchased several of his books online (great website for used books => https://www.betterworldbooks.com/ which also donates to charities for every book you buy).
As someone who does a lot of research before investing into things; I searched around for what readers thought were some of his best works as he has about 60 published novels with another one coming out later this year in 2019 (The Institute: A Novel). Most articles kept bringing up The Stand as being his magnum opus and given how long the novel is; I was initially concerned I wouldn’t be able to finish it but thought theoretically; if I can get through this, I could probably read any of his other books.
Overall, I did enjoy it with it’s complex character development and storyline, but there were a lot of scenes that didn’t really add much depth to the novel and could probably have been left out which is why the initial published book was around 800 pages and this one at 1400+ does make it a bit of a difficult read or at least takes some determination to get through it all. I found the story to be intriguing and King makes this book tough to put down from the start.
Synopsis
I can’t really write about this book without giving spoilers, so if you haven’t read it i’d suggest picking it up before reading this.
The story starts off with a worker (Charles Campion) at a U.S Army base working on a strain of Influenza known as “Project Blue”. He accidentally is infected with the strain & Charles sets off the plague, the disease is to be known as “Captain Trips” or the superflu with a high communicability it wipes out 99.4% of the worlds population.
There is total destruction of society in this post apocalyptic thriller & King illustrates on the length the government could go to hide a secret they ultimately caused. The scenes of civil unrest and the Army gunning down innocent civilians and the media are extremely graphic. There are several immune survivors you will follow across the country once the initial chaos is over & the majority of the population has deceased. There are two sides of the spectrum in which the characters will ultimately fight at the end (hence the title name The Stand). The leaders of good & evil are Mother Abagail - a 108 year old woman and evil follow Randall Flagg who is also known as the dark man. It seems a bit odd at first how the characters are drawn together. The survivors have both nightmares and dreams about the two leaders and that is how they are able to locate where the leaders are. King brings an incredible amount of imagination to the plot that makes it almost plausible.
The good side end up making Boulder, Colorado their home and Randall Flagg’s people take over the appropriate city of Las Vegas. The book goes in depth on the Free Zone in Colorado & how they build up their society and government (The Free Zone Committee) to handle the amount of people who are coming into the city each day & other issues such as turning the power on, getting rid of the left over bodies, and what to do about the dark man Randall Flagg & his people. The book states how many were wiped out from the disease & that would leave about a million people left in the U.S population. For a long time the book generally focuses on Mother Abagail and Boulder, Colorado. At a point in the story Mother Abagail decides for some reason or another to go into the woods and leaves the Free Zone for 2 weeks making the free zone left to fend for themselves without their leader.
Inside Boulder there are two people who will end up working for the dark man; Harold Emery Lauder and Nadine Cross. They come up with a plan to cripple the Free Zone in the form of a bomb that they detonate on a committee meeting. After the fact, Mother Abagail who has returned from her hiatus in the Colorado woods; rounds together a group from the Free Zone to go after Randall Flagg.
I was expecting more of a battle to occur but the only real fight scene was with the Judge’s gunfight. The fight of good and evil seems to end when Las Vegas is succumbed to a nuclear bomb & most of the group that left Colorado taken with it.
Final Thoughts
Although the whole good & evil last stand towards the end of the book is a bit over-exaggerated and it seems to culminate into a quick ending for such a long read, a disease outbreak is a genuine concern. The shifting antigen base of this particular virus is a horrifying thought & with such a high communicability, if something of this were to actually occur would society be ready for the ramifications? I thought the book made some really interesting points on how people would act & where morals would be broken. I’ll be reading more King novels in the future as the Stand was a solid read but to give it a rating I would give it a 3.9/5 as the ending just wasn’t what I was hoping for.
Personal blog by Alex Virdee, 