The Stand

Rating: 3/5 Payday wrappers

The Stand by Stephen King is a classic good-vs.-evil story, set during and immediately following a highly contagious and lethal flu kills most of the population. The beginning of the book follows how the flu spreads. Perhaps it has to do with living in a pandemic, but reading about this flu spreading was incredibly creepy. It hit close to home, and King perfectly captured the anxiety and fear felt in the early days of the pandemic. (Which still isn’t over! Wear a mask!) Fortunately for us, COVID is much less deadly than the flu imagined by King.

In The Stand, some people are immune to the flu, and these survivors have odd dreams. They dream of a kind older woman named Mother Abagail, who seems safe, caring, and warm. But they also dream of a more nefarious presence: Randall Flagg, AKA the dark man. The survivors know that these dreams are not mere dreams; they’re messages. They can join Mother Abagail or Randall Flagg in the post-flu United States. 

Mother Abagail’s love and peace draws some survivors in, while Randall’s use of violence and fear pulls others. The Stand asks if in a world completely reimagined, do good and evil still exist? Will good triumph over evil, or will people always choose their survival over their morals? 

The Stand would have been rated higher had it been shorter. My copy was just over 1,100 pages. The first 700 pages or so are a lot of exposition and background on all of the survivors. Some action happens, but it’s akin to the beginning of a meeting when you’re doing an extravagant icebreaker activity and you just want it to be over so you can discuss budgets or whatever. While it’s necessary to know the characters’ backstory and motivations, there was no need to spend so much time on exposition. (I honestly didn’t enjoy the first 700 pages, but then it got good.) 

Typically, King rightfully doesn’t get credit for the way he writes people of color and women. This book was originally published in 1978. We can say that times have changed and that people are more aware of racial microaggressions while still acknowledging that elements of this book don’t hold up well. King writes obsessively about one character’s “odd Chinese eyes.” That’s a direct quote. And he mentions that character’s odd Chinese eyes multiple times. (No, I’m not being too sensitive. I read this around the time that multiple innocent Asian people in Atlanta were murdered. Microaggressions are symptoms of a deeper, systemic issue. Not calling out this tomfoolery would make me part of the problem.) 

Overall, The Stand is an interesting story about good vs. evil, and a super-flu kicking off the events leading to the ultimate stand between good and evil makes for a fascinating backdrop. King does a phenomenal job tying together the stories of seemingly unconnected people. Had The Stand been shorter or gotten to the big showdown between good forces and evil forces sooner, I’d highly recommend it.