The Stand
Encyclopedia
The Stand is a post-apocalyptic
horror
/fantasy
novel
by American
author
Stephen King
. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf
. The novel was originally published in 1978 and was later re-released in 1990 as The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition; King restored some text originally cut for brevity, added and revised sections, changed the setting
of the story from 1980 (which in turn was changed to 1985 for the original paperback release in 1980) to 1990, and updated a few pop culture references accordingly. The Stand was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
in 1979, and was adapted into both a television miniseries
for ABC and a graphic novel
published by Marvel Comics
.
The book is dedicated to King's wife, Tabitha
: "For my wife Tabitha: This dark chest of wonders."
, a superflu (influenza
) virus
known formally as "Project Blue" but most commonly as "Captain Trips" (among some other colloquialisms). The virus is developed at a U.S. Army base, where it is released. While the base tries to shut down before any infected person can escape, a security malfunction allows a guard and his family to sneak out. Unfortunately, they are already infected, and release an epidemic
, which quickly turns into a pandemic
, that leads directly to the death of an estimated 99.4% of the world's human and animal population.
King outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence, the failure of martial law
to contain the outbreak, and eventually the death of virtually the entire population. The human toll is also dealt with, as the few survivors must care for their families and friends, dealing with confusion and grief as their loved ones succumb to the flu.
The expanded edition opens with a prologue titled "The Circle Opens" that offers greater detail into the circumstances surrounding the development of the virus and the security breach that allowed its escape from the secret laboratory compound where it was created.
, Nebraska
whom they see as a refuge and a representation of good in the struggle of good versus evil. This woman, Abagail Freemantle (known as "Mother Abagail"), becomes the spiritual leader of this group of survivors, directing them to Boulder, Colorado
, referred to as "the Free Zone", where they begin to reestablish a democratic
society. Much of this section of the book involves the struggles to create an orderly society reinstating the United States Constitution
and Bill of Rights
as a basis (with modifications). Boulder is found to be hosting considerably fewer dead bodies of plague victims than other cities, due to an exodus following a false rumor in the early stages of the plague that the outbreak originated in the Boulder Air Test Center.
Meanwhile, another group of survivors (party of 10, but with more interesting nick names like "The Trashcan Man" and "Ace High" along with normal ones like "Carl Hough") are drawn to Las Vegas, Nevada
by Randall Flagg
(known as "the Dark Man", among other nefarious names), who is an evil being with supernatural powers; he exists in the story to represent the opposite influence of Mother Abagail. Flagg’s governance is tyrannical and brutal, using crucifixion
, dismemberment
and other forms of torture
as punishment for those who are disloyal and disobedient. His group is able to quickly reorganize their society, restore power to Las Vegas, and rebuild the city as many technical professionals have migrated to the city. The book notes that at Las Vegas, Flagg's group is constantly working and has organized a strong but harsh structure while at the Free Zone, some survivors lounge idly and do not work as hard. Flagg's group also has started a school system and weapons program with survivor Carl Hough as a helicopter pilot and the Trashcan Man searching the country for weapons.
The Free Zone's democratic society is not without its problems: Mother Abagail, feeling that she has become prideful and sinned due to her pleasure at being a public figure, disappears into the wilderness on a journey of spiritual reconciliation, while one of the members of "Stu's party" builds a dynamite
bomb in response to feelings of disconnection and unrequited love. However, two other members confiscate the explosive and crudely rig it to kill and wound the committee members of the Free Zone's democracy. Shortly before the explosion Mother Abigail returns (in poor shape) and the majority of the colony rushes to see her.
and a giant glowing hand—"The Hand of God"—detonates the bomb, destroying Flagg's followers and the two remaining prisoners.
Stu, with the aid of two of Flagg's camp survivors, survives injury, illness, and a harsh Rocky Mountain winter. The three of them arrive back in Boulder soon after the birth of Fran’s baby. Although the baby falls ill with the superflu, he is able to fight it off. In the end, Stu and Fran decide to return to Maine, and the original edition of the novel ends with the two of them questioning whether the human race can learn from its mistakes. The answer, given in the last line, is ambiguous: "I don’t know."
The expanded edition follows this with a brief coda
called "The Circle Closes", which leaves a darker impression and fits in with King’s ongoing "wheel of ka
" theme. Randall Flagg, using the alias "Russell Faraday", wakes up on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific, having escaped the atomic blast in Vegas by using his dark magic (although Flagg does not remember how he got to the beach or what his real name is, and it is suggested that he does not even remember the events in America), and begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people, who worship him as some sort of god.
as long as he can; for example, he orders the execution of journalists who try to reveal the truth. In an attempt at retaining plausible deniability, he orders a contingency plan into effect: to release the virus on several other continents in an effort to make it seem as though the U.S. did not create it artificially. After being dismissed by the President due to his failure to contain the virus, he commits suicide in the laboratory where the superflu was created.
. She is 108 years old and lives in a farmhouse in Hemingford Home, Nebraska
. She is one of the 0.6% of the population that is immune to the Captain Trips virus, and initially appears to some of the plague survivors in dreams, drawing them to her just as Randall Flagg
draws the evil survivors to him. She and her followers make their way to Boulder, Colorado
where they establish the "Boulder Free Zone" government.
She receives visions from God, though when she sins through pride, she loses her foresight and goes into exile in the wilderness. She regains her ability, and returns to the Zone just in time to inadvertently save most of the Free Zone Committee from Harold Lauder's assassination attempt. On her deathbed, she shares one final vision: four men from the committee are to travel to the west to make a stand against Randall Flagg. She makes no prediction as to what will occur, only that one will fall before arriving in Las Vegas
, and that the remainder will be brought before Flagg. Mother Abagail dies shortly after revealing this prophecy.
, Stu is at his friend’s gas station the night Charles Campion arrives. He is the first man discovered to be immune to the superflu, and is taken by authorities first to the Atlanta CDC, then to the fictitious Stovington, Vermont plague center. He escapes from the government employee sent to execute him, wandering through New England
for a few days before meeting Glen Bateman and, shortly after, Fran Goldsmith and Harold Lauder. Stu becomes romantically involved with Fran, accepting the unborn child she carries, but their involvement creates ill will with Harold Lauder, who holds an unrequited love for her.
Stu rises to authority in the Free Zone, becoming the spokesperson for the Free Zone Committee and its first Marshal. After an assassination attempt by Harold, Stu is told by Mother Abagail that he is to travel west to stand against Randall Flagg. Stu leads Larry, Glen and Ralph to Las Vegas, but breaks his leg in Utah
and is forced to remain behind, along with Kojak the dog. He develops pneumonia
due to injury and hypothermia
, but witnesses the destruction of Las Vegas and is saved by Tom Cullen, who nurses him back to health. Stu and Tom trek back to Boulder, where Frannie has given birth to the first known surviving child on Earth, post-plague. Stu and Frannie leave Boulder to raise their family in Maine.
, Fran (or Frannie, as she is often called), is pregnant at the start of the book, a topic which results in a painful standoff with her mother and the end of her relationship with the baby’s father, Jesse Rider. The superflu all but wipes out her community, with Fran and Harold Lauder being the only local survivors after parking lot attendant Gus Dinsmore dies on June 30. After burying her father in the garden he was weeding just a week earlier, Frannie decides to join forces with Harold. Harold decides to paint a message on Moses Richardson's barn (as it overlooks US Route 1, the road most people would take into town) telling anyone who reads it that they have gone to the fictional Stovington, Vermont plague center and even leaves road directions, then finishes by signing both his name and Frannie's (the latter name causing him to nearly fall off the roof). The two make their way to the Stovington facility of the Centers for Disease Control in hopes of finding someone in authority, but before they reach their destination they meet Stu Redman. After Harold reacts VERY negatively to Stu, he finally agrees to let Stu join their party and the three of them travel back west on US 302 to Glen Bateman's house but not before Stu tells them that everyone at the Stovington facility is dead. Glen Bateman agrees to join them and they travel west to Stovington and confirm that not only is everyone dead at the Stovington facility but that Stu was nearly killed there. They then make their way west to Mother Abagail, during which Fran falls deeply in love with Stu, a fact she records in her diary (as well as many other things about the trip west).
Fran serves on the original Free Zone Committee in Boulder and acts as its moral compass. Upon her union with Stu, Harold becomes jealous, but later appears to let bygones be bygones. However, Fran remains suspicious of him, a feeling later justified when she finds his diary and plot to kill Stu. She saves the majority of the committee when she receives an intuition of doom in the form of the planted bomb. She is moderately injured in the blast, but her unborn child remains safe. Fran is opposed to Stu traveling west, but comes to terms with it when she realizes it is what he has to do. Fran later moves in with Lucy Swann and delivers a baby boy. Though there is initial joy at the birth, her child falls ill with the superflu and Fran is crushed. However, she is rewarded by news of both Stu’s return to the Free Zone and her baby’s recovery. Throughout the novel, Fran becomes more and more homesick for her native Maine, and at the end of the book she, Stu, and the baby make their way back east; the last chapter also confirms that she is pregnant with Stu's baby.
, Maine
, at the beginning of the novel. He is the younger brother of Fran Goldsmith’s best friend, Amy Lauder, and is a social outcast in his local high school. Harold doesn’t help matters for himself by being rather obnoxious and uppity. A practicing but unpopular writer, he prefers to use a manual typewriter
. After the superflu wipes out the entire population of Ogunquit except for himself and Fran, the two decide to head to the Stovington Plague Center in Vermont. Harold decides to leave a prominent note, on the roof of a barn, detailing their plans and directions for future travelers. This ongoing effort by Harold, for which he is later congratulated by Larry Underwood, allows several other groups to join together in Colorado.
Harold falls in love with Fran and sees himself as her protector of sorts. When they meet Stuart Redman, Harold refuses to allow him to join, even going so far as to threaten Stu with a gun, but after a conversation in which Stu tells him he just wants to come along and has no designs on Fran, Harold relents. After the plague facility proves to be a disappointment, the survivors head to Nebraska
, and then Colorado
to join Mother Abagail, picking up more survivors along the way. Harold attempts to profess his love for Frannie, only to be rebuffed. As Fran becomes involved with Stu, Harold finds his jealousy growing.
Eventually, Harold disregards Fran's privacy, and rifles through her backpack. He finds her diary and begins reading it. There he finds that Fran has made several insulting comments about him, mocks him in her private thoughts, and considers him to be "immature." This proves to be the breaking point for Harold; from this point on he swears vengeance on Fran and Stuart.
Harold quickly becomes a respected and well thought of member of the Boulder Community. Due to the harsh conditions after the plague, he has dropped his excess weight, his acne has cleared, and his intelligence is often seen as an asset by those around him, rather than an isolating hindrance in his former life. As such, his ideas are used to better the community, and Harold frequently volunteers for the toughest jobs in the Boulder Free Zone, including moving dead bodies. It is because of his thin, sharp, resilient persona that he earns the nickname "Hawk" as a matter of respect from the other men on the work crews, and his old life has seemed to all but disappear except in his own thoughts. In a moment of emotional clarity, Harold realizes that he truly is accepted and valued in this strange new world, and that he has the freedom to choose a new life for himself as a respected member of society. However, unable to cast aside his past humiliations and his image of himself, he rejects his last chance at redemption and surrenders instead to his dreams of vengeance, particularly on Fran and Stu (he goes so far as to handle his gun - while in his jacket pocket - at Stu while scouting for the missing Mother Abagail, but does not fire). Soon after this, Nadine Cross approaches him and reveals an in-depth knowledge of Harold’s insecurities, hatreds and fears. She hints at her own. They enjoy a decadent sexual playtime that involves everything except vaginal intercourse, which Nadine does not allow Harold to perform due to her supernaturally-inspired commitment to Randall Flagg
. Harold succumbs to Nadine’s seduction. He fulfills Flagg’s wishes and creates a bomb to destroy the Free Zone Committee.
After detonating the bomb—which kills seven people—Harold and Nadine flee toward Las Vegas. However, Harold ends up wrecking his motorcycle and breaking his leg after slipping on an oil slick. Flagg, mistrustful of Harold for being "too full of thoughts," has apparently arranged the accident. Harold initially survives the accident, though terribly injured, and attempts to shoot Nadine. He misses and Nadine abandons him and continues to travel alone to meet Flagg in the desert.
Realizing that he is dying, Harold writes a note in which he takes responsibility for his actions, and expresses remorse and apologizes for them, though he knows he cannot be forgiven. He signs this note, "Hawk," as a way of trying one final time to accept the best version of himself that had existed briefly in Boulder. Harold commits suicide
by shooting himself in the head. His body is later found by Stu, Larry, Glen, and Ralph, and while they do not bury his corpse, Stu gently removes the gun from Harold's mouth and remarks that Harold’s actions were a waste not only of Nick and Susan (who died in the bomb explosion), but of himself as well. To Stu's surprise, he finds himself wanting to avenge Harold as well as the other victims when he meets Randall Flagg.
who went into retirement
some years before the superflu hit, Glendon Pequod "Glen" Bateman met Stu near Glen’s home in Woodsville, New Hampshire
. A senior citizen handicapped by arthritis
, the wise Bateman is often on hand to dispense advice to his young friend. A loyal friend, Bateman also experiences dreams of Mother Abagail, and joins Stu, Frannie, and Harold on their journey to meet her. Bateman becomes part of the reform committee in Boulder
. He also becomes one of the four men who must meet Randall Flagg in Las Vegas
. But as Stu falls by the wayside, Glen, along with Larry and Ralph, goes to Las Vegas and is detained by Flagg’s forces. Flagg offers Glen his freedom if he will "get down on (his) knees and beg for it." Glen refuses, laughing at the Dark Man for being so transparent, upon which Flagg orders Lloyd Henreid to execute him. "It’s all right, Mr. Henreid", Glen says as he dies, "you don’t know any better."
, whom he adopted after his original master died of the superflu. Formerly named Big Steve, Kojak is a rare survivor of the flu which impacted dogs and horses as well as humans. When Glen leaves with Redman, Kojak is initially left behind. However, he follows them and is later attacked by wolves after arriving at Mother Abagail's empty house. Kojak manages to walk to the Free Zone. He joins Glen, Stu, Ralph, and Larry on their journey to Las Vegas. When Stu is injured, he stays behind and kills rabbits and other small animals to feed Stu. After being found by Tom Cullen, he is taken back to Boulder. It is stated that he will live for 16 years after his master's death, putting his own death in 2001-2 (original edition), 2006-7 (revised).
of women who were taken captive by evil Superflu survivors and repeatedly raped, Susan - a former student at Kent State University
- is one of the women Stu and his party rescues. (Note: this version of her earlier experience is only in the uncut version of the novel.) Sue becomes a member of the original Boulder Free Zone Committee and recruits fellow captive Dayna Jurgens to spy out west. She is killed by Harold Lauder’s bomb in Ralph Brentner’s home.
, and one of the women whom Stu’s party rescues from the harem (in the uncut version). While she originally seems to display some romantic interest in Stu Redman, this does not extend beyond flirtation and two kisses, though it does cause Fran some consternation. Later, it is revealed that she is bisexual.
After residing in Boulder for a short time, she is recruited by fellow former captive Sue Stern to spy out west. In Las Vegas, she works with a streetlight-repair crew, and sleeps with Lloyd Henreid as part of her ploy to obtain information. While working with the light crew, she sees Tom Cullen on a passing truck. Flagg, aware of her identity through telepathy
, summons her to his office and attempts to make her reveal the third spy, into whose mind he cannot see. In order to protect Tom Cullen, and to save herself from the torture that Flagg will put her through, Dayna commits suicide by putting her head through a plate glass window, then jerking around so that the sharp edges of the broken glass cut open her jugular vein. This act of free will indicates the beginning of Flagg's downfall, as he foresaw her attempting to assassinate him and thwarted that, but did not predict her suicide attempt and could not prevent her death. Her body is desecrated by Flagg and later burned outside of Las Vegas.
, and travels to New York City
to lie low while visiting his loving but deeply disapproving mother. As the plague and anarchy destroy New York, Larry comes to his mother’s aid, but he is unable to prevent her death from the superflu. Not long after, Larry finds himself one of the few people left in New York City. He meets a troubled middle-aged woman named Rita Blakemoor and the two decide to leave New York together. They experience a frightening trek through the Lincoln Tunnel
while leaving the island; Larry often thinks back to this event and is terrified by it. Rita eventually dies from a drug overdose that Larry describes as "70% accident and 30% suicide."
Haunted by his dreams of Randall Flagg, Larry is in a semi-catatonic
state for several days until he finally collapses from exhaustion in New Hampshire. Recovering after a night’s sleep, Larry travels to Maine, where he plans to spend the summer, until he meets Nadine Cross and young Leo Rockway (known then only as "Joe"). The three travel together to Ogunquit, where they find Harold Lauder’s painted sign and its directions. Deciding to follow the directions, Larry leads Nadine and Joe to Stovington, Vermont, meeting Lucy Swann along the way. In Stovington, they find only Harold’s directions to Nebraska. Larry leads the ever-growing party to Nebraska and eventually on to Colorado, following Harold’s directions across the country. Though Larry is initially interested in Nadine, she spurns his advances and he begins a relationship with Lucy. Arriving in Boulder, Larry settles down with Lucy and Leo, becoming a member of the Free Zone Committee. Nadine attempts to reconcile with him, but Larry refuses her, choosing to remain with Lucy. Larry later breaks into Harold Lauder’s home with Fran Goldsmith after Leo instructs him to investigate before something horrible happens. They find Harold’s ledger, which states he intends to kill Stuart Redman. However, Harold’s plan is already in motion, and Stu narrowly escapes the assassination attempt the next day. Larry leaves Boulder with Stu, Ralph, and Glen when Mother Abagail instructs them to go to Las Vegas. Larry leads the party after Stu breaks his leg en route to Las Vegas, where Larry and Ralph eventually die in the nuclear explosion caused by Trashcan Man.
due to some vaguely defined but powerful sense that she is destined for something as dark as it is unique. After the outbreak of the superflu, Nadine finds an emotionally damaged young boy whom she calls Joe; Joe has regressed to a savage state of mind but trusts her and stays with her. Nadine meets Larry Underwood when Joe finds him sleeping. Joe is working up the courage to kill the sleeping Larry when Nadine stops him. The pair secretly follow Larry to Maine, where Joe finally does try to kill Larry, only to be overpowered. After conversing with Larry, Nadine agrees to join forces with him and find other survivors. Nadine is attracted to Larry but her subconscious conviction that she must remain "pure" has strengthened and begun to take shape; she begins to both fear and anticipate that she is meant for Flagg.
Upon arriving in Boulder, Nadine begins to surrender to the seductive allure of the Walkin’ Dude, and Joe (who has recovered enough to give his real name as Leo Rockway) becomes reluctant to be with her. Later, Leo reveals that Nadine had already known that it was too late to sleep with Larry. Nadine makes a last desperate attempt to seduce Larry, which would break her virginal commitment to Flagg and free her, but he is by now firmly committed to Lucy Swann and rejects her advances. Nadine surrenders to Flagg completely, communicating with him via a Ouija board
, an echo of her terrifying experience with a Ouija board in college, when she was first touched by Flagg ("WE ARE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD NADINE"). On Flagg’s orders, she seduces Harold Lauder. Although she will not do "that one little thing" with him, they are apparently free to do whatever else, sexually, that they wish. She uses him to attempt to assassinate the committee, a plot that would have succeeded but for the return of Mother Abagail and a premonition of Frannie’s.
Nadine travels west with Harold; when his motorcycle crashes, she implies it was her choice that Harold die in a motorcycle accident rather than be killed by Flagg upon arrival in Las Vegas. Harold fires his pistol at her and very nearly hits her, suggesting that she might unconsciously prefer death to the dark consummation awaiting her and revealing that Flagg only has limited power. Nadine continues on towards Vegas until one night Flagg comes to her in the desert, revealing his true nature and raping her, an experience which so violates and horrifies her (while at the same time causing her immense pleasure) that she falls into catatonia
. Flagg takes her with him to Vegas and installs them both in the penthouse suite of the MGM Grand
, almost immediately announcing her pregnancy. At last, Nadine recovers sufficiently to taunt Flagg about his coming failure, and she succeeds in goading him into throwing her off the balcony, killing herself and the unborn child.
and is unable to tell a distraught Lucy where The Judge is after he "vanishes" (The Judge, for his part, accepts before Larry can even bring himself to ask him, seeing the necessity of it). The Judge attempts to infiltrate Las Vegas from the north, but is intercepted by Flagg’s sentries in Idaho
. A firefight
ensues, and the Judge is killed by several shots to the head. This direct violation of Flagg's orders is the first vague sign that his power is limited and his downfall is imminent. The sentries had been under strict orders not to "mark his head", so that it could be delivered as a message to the Free Zone, and Flagg appears to brutally kill the surviving sentry, Bobby Terry, (who had not only killed Farris, but also the other sentry, Dave Roberts) for disfiguring the Judge's face and hampering this plan.
drifter originally from Caslin, Nebraska
, Nick is beaten and robbed outside of (fictional) Shoyo, Arkansas
, by some local thugs shortly after the start of the epidemic. Moderately injured, he is befriended by the local sheriff and his wife and watches them die as the epidemic unfolds. As the epidemic progresses, as the newest deputy (due to the lack of any other healthy people around), Nick also watches two of the four thugs who beat him die of the plague in the local jail. He later frees the third, only to be confronted by the fourth, the fugitive Ray Booth, who has returned to kill him. He very nearly dies as a result of a minor gunshot wound he received during the scuffle with Booth; Nick, in a panic, accidentally fires the gun holstered on his belt. The bullet scrapes his leg and becomes infected. (This entire episode with Ray Booth returning to kill him is only in the uncut version of the novel.)
Nick eventually recovers and begins his journey to Hemingford Home, Nebraska. Along the way he meets Tom Cullen, and later Ralph Brentner, June Brinkmeyer, Gina McCone, Dick Ellis, and Olivia Walker, and they become a surrogate family to him. Nick leads the growing band of survivors to Nebraska and Mother Abagail, who guides them to Boulder. Nick serves on the Free Zone Committee, of which he is the leading thinker, and eventually recruits Tom Cullen to spy out West. Nick is killed by Harold Lauder's assassination attempt on the Committee, and it is later revealed that it was Nick who was meant to lead the stand against Randall Flagg. Nick’s spirit appears to Tom Cullen after his death, guiding him on his way home and showing him how to save Stu Redman’s life during Stu's bout with illness.
In the Complete and Uncut edition, Nick loses sight in one eye for a period of time when he is attacked by Booth, the leader of the four thugs. Booth is shot and killed by Andros, but the resulting damage causes Nick to wear an eyepatch for almost the rest of the story.
Tom generally possesses a childish speech pattern, peppered with exclamations of "My laws!" and "Laws, yes!" and he makes frequent references to himself in the third person
. Tom also believes that everything is spelled "M-O-O-N" as in "M-O-O-N, that spells 'my main man'." When needing to make a logical connection, Tom, who is sometimes capable of normal thought, may slip into a form of self-hypnosis
wherein he is able to make connections that he cannot while "awake" (that is, conscious and focused on something superficial). Nick, Stu, and Glen use this ability to place a post-hypnotic suggestion
in Tom that will help him to act as the third Free Zone spy. During his hypnosis, Nick, Stu, and Glen discover that while hypnotized, Tom possesses the same type of foresight as Mother Abagail, referring to himself as the same Tom that Nick met in Oklahoma, but at the same time he proclaims himself to be "God’s Tom".
Tom travels West, giving a hypnotically imprinted cover story to get accepted into Las Vegas, and is able to avoid detection by Flagg. Tom’s anonymity seems to stem from his disability, as Flagg tells Dayna that every time he tries to see the third spy, all he sees is the moon
; this confirms Dayna's sighting of Tom earlier (while both were on Vegas work crews), and her desire to protect both Tom and his status as a spy compels her to commit suicide rather than submit to further questioning by Flagg. The sight of the full moon rising over Las Vegas triggers Tom’s post-hypnotic suggestion, and he begins the return trip to Boulder, appropriately noting "M-O-O-N, that spells moon."
During his return to Boulder, he encounters Stu, who is suffering from a broken leg and pneumonia due to exposure. Originally, Tom was far east of where Stu fell, but a prophetic dream tells him that he must double back to find Stu. With help from Nick's spirit, who appears to him in visions (due to the fact that Nick is already deceased due to Harold Lauder's bomb), Tom is able to nurse a delirious and dying Stu back to health while they are snowed in for much of the winter at a motel in central Utah. Together, they return to Boulder to report the destruction of Las Vegas.
veteran, meets Nick and Tom as their paths cross on a highway between Oklahoma
and Nebraska
, and together they form the first party to find Mother Abagail. Despite a lack of formal education, Ralph is possessed of a great deal of common sense
and is very skilled with tools and machines, and is elected to the first Free Zone Committee. Ralph typically serves as Nick’s "voice", reading his notes to the others during committee meetings. Ralph survives Harold Lauder’s assassination attempt (but loses the third and fourth fingers on his left hand), and is chosen as one of the four to stand against Flagg. Along with Stu, Glen, and Larry, he walks to Las Vegas, and is instrumental in convincing Larry to leave Stu behind after he breaks his leg. Ralph is captured by Flagg along with Glen and Larry, and is to be executed by dismemberment in front of the Golden Nugget Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Ralph is the first to notice the "Hand of God
" as it descends from the sky and onto Trashcan Man’s nuclear weapon, detonating it and killing him and everyone else present.
, also known as "the Dark Man" or "the Walkin’ Dude", is the main antagonist
of the novel—more (or less) than a man, he is the embodiment of evil, an antichrist
-like being whose goal is destruction and death. In the novel, he is presented as diametrically opposed to Mother Abagail’s personification of good.
The Dark Man character appears in many guises in other King novels and short stories, often with the initials "R.F." This very powerful, yet very unstable character is spread through King's other stories, most notably in The Dark Tower
series. Flagg is also the main villain in The Eyes of the Dragon
, and there are some passages in that book that allude to Flagg being immortal and pure evil.
Flagg's appearance shifts between human, demon, and various animals, and it is implied that he has lived many lives in many times; "Flagg" is just the name of his present form. Flagg is described by Tom Cullen as follows: "He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines. When he looks at you a certain way, your prostate goes bad and your urine burns. The grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He’s always outside. He came out of time. He doesn’t know himself." On the occasional instances when the reader sees through Flagg’s perspective, this insight is borne out: he does not know where he came from, has no memory of his life before Captain Trips though he vaguely remembers isolated violent or hateful events such as KKK lynchings and murdering police officers, taking part in race riots in the 1960s, being involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst
, and some vague speculation that he was involved in Charles Manson
's family. Most of these memories are marked by the note that Flagg was able to escape just at the last second at the end of many of these events, but that the events nourish his evil nature.
Like Mother Abagail, Flagg appears to various survivors in their dreams, providing a choice and attracting those who are drawn to structure, destruction and power. He rescues Lloyd Henreid from starvation in prison and with him as second-in-command establishes a community in Las Vegas
, Nevada
. Though Flagg has the ability to predict the future, along with several other demonic powers, as the events of The Stand unfold he begins to lose his power little by little as his plans go more and more awry. At the end of the novel, the Hand of God detonates a nuclear bomb, destroying Flagg’s gathered followers and Las Vegas. The uncut edition of the novel includes an epilogue in which Flagg, in a new incarnation, wakes in an unknown tropical location, where he meets a primitive tribe, telling them that he has come to teach them civilization and identifying himself as Russell Faraday.
, Arizona
, and New Mexico
resulting in six murders, Freeman’s death, and Lloyd’s detention in a Phoenix
jail. If he undergoes his scheduled trial, it is likely that he will be placed on Death Row under a new statute that reduces the delays and appeals in the capital punishment
process. Once the plague hits, people at his prison start dying, including the guards. Lloyd is forgotten in his cell and eventually becomes the sole survivor. Lloyd demonstrates both resilience and an ability to forecast problems by rapidly concluding that his situation is growing dire well before the regular services to inmates stops; he is able to save himself from starvation by eating food he has saved, along with whatever rats, roaches, or other vermin he can catch, and very nearly the leg of a dead cellmate (in the uncut version, Flagg insinuates that Lloyd did indeed eat some human flesh, despite Lloyd's attempts to hide the cuts in the leg before the Dark Man arrived). He is found by Randall Flagg, who frees him from his cell after Lloyd, at that point starving and nearly delirious, agrees to be Flagg’s right-hand man despite suspicions about the man being the devil
. At this time, Flagg also gives Lloyd a black stone with a red flaw as a symbol of Lloyd’s allegiance to Flagg.
Lloyd, oddly enough, finds himself feeling more intelligent and able than he thought he was, running several of the day-to-day activities in Vegas and even overseeing operations at a military base; he attributes his newfound abilities to Flagg, though Dayna later suspects that his natural ability to anticipate problems has only been amplified by fear of failing Flagg. For saving his life and elevating him to his second-in-command, Lloyd is fiercely loyal to Flagg, and chooses to remain with him despite his growing doubts over Flagg’s control of the situation, even when offered the opportunity to leave Las Vegas with several close friends. Lloyd respects the men's decision and does not blow the whistle to Flagg about the deserters, but he does not follow. Lloyd is present at the execution of Larry and Ralph, and is killed in the nuclear explosion caused by the Trashcan Man’s atomic warhead. Before that, Randall Flagg makes him shoot Glen Bateman. As Glen dies, he forgives Lloyd with his dying breath, saying "It's all right, Mr. Henreid.... you don’t know any better." Lloyd's last words were: "Oh shit, we're all fucked!"
pyromania
c, whose favorite phrases include "bumpty, bumpty, bump!" and "my life for you." He often found himself in trouble as a youth due to his fixation with fire. He was treated with shock treatments at an institution
in Terre Haute
, Indiana
, before being incarcerated
for arson
as a teenager. Trash leaves prison during a work detail (carrying plague victims’ bodies from prison cells) and returns home to (the fictional) Powtanville, Indiana. Trash indulges his ambition of setting cities afire, setting fire to oil tanks in Powtanville, and then destroying the city of Gary
, Indiana
. He permanently disfigures his arm in the Powtanville incident when he tries to jump a railing and breaks his arm at the wrist, a break which he does not properly set and which later causes his hand to point away from his body at an almost 90 degree angle. He also severely burns his broken arm, as well as his upper thigh, when a piece of exploding tank hits him, covering the areas with burning oil.
He abandons his original plans of starting fires randomly all over America to join Randall Flagg
when the Dark Man appears in his dreams and promises him work, "great work" (as Flagg puts it) in the desert. After treating his severely burned arm, he finds a bicycle and makes his way west with all speed.
In the unedited version, Trash briefly hooks up with a cocky, maniacal street hood named The Kid, but when The Kid threatens not only to kill Trash (several times, always for petty reasons), but to overthrow the Dark Man, Flagg sends wolves to save him. The Kid ends up holed up in a car with the pack of wolves surrounding it day and night.
The threat neutralized, Trash moves on to Las Vegas and he also receives a black stone with a red flaw. Due to his savant
talent regarding destructive devices, he is assigned to search for weapons in the desert and to assist in arming the fighter jets
at Indian Springs Air Force Base
. Trash does well until, when being teased by fellow workers, a comment causes him to flash back to his tormented youth and revert to his old destructive ways.
In a schizophrenic episode, Trash destroys several trucks and aircraft, kills the most experienced pilots Las Vegas has, and flees into the desert. Overcome with anguish over his actions, Trash originally sets out to kill himself but later makes an attempt at redemption by bringing Flagg the most powerful weapon he can find: an atomic bomb, in the form of a warhead detached from a missile. Trash transports the nuclear warhead
in a trailer attached to an ATV
across the desert, coming down with a lethal case of radiation sickness
in the process; the sickness has reached its terminal stage when Trash arrives in town. Trash ultimately brings about Flagg’s (apparent) destruction as the Hand of God descends and activates the warhead, destroying Las Vegas and everyone in it.
who meets the Trashcan Man en route to Las Vegas. He drives a souped-up hot rod and has a fanatical love of Coors
beer and Rebel Yell
whiskey. He is also ambitious, unstable, and easily angered, as Trashcan discovers, when The Kid nearly kills him for spilling a can of beer on the carpet. After becoming monumentally drunk, The Kid forces Trash to manually pleasure him while he rapes Trash with a pistol. The Kid and Trash travel together until they reach the permanently blocked Eisenhower Tunnel
. After he threatens Trashcan Man's life one too many times, and threatens to overthrow the Dark Man, The Kid ends up trapped in a car surrounded by wolves sent by Flagg. The Kid survives for several days until, facing starvation, he jumps out of the car and fights the wolves, strangling one as he dies. His body is later found by Stu, Larry, Glen, and Ralph; Larry dubs him "the Wolfman." In the original edition, The Kid appeared as a minor character and was never seen directly, only in Trashcan’s flashbacks; the extended edition includes the full story of his encounter with Trashcan. It has also been revealed in interviews that The Kid is meant to be the reincarnation of late-50s serial killer Charles Starkweather
.
by claiming it is poison, Nick rejects her. She then tries to kill them with a rifle. She ends up joining Randall Flagg and, recognizing Tom Cullen, brings his presence as a spy to Lloyd's attention.
Police. Although he sides with Flagg, he does so only because he thinks it is the only society with a chance of regaining a sense of law and order, although he eventually loses faith in this as well. One of the few mentally stable members of Flagg's police, he is one of the sentries who intercepts Larry, Glen, and Ralph, who are surprised by his sympathetic nature. He stands guard over Larry and Ralph shortly before their executions and is killed by the Trashcan Man's nuke.
, Stephen 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 decimated by a plague, as one of the main inspirations:
The Stand was also planned by King as an epic The Lord of the Rings
-type story in a contemporary American setting:
King nearly abandoned The Stand due to writers' 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 because He was dissatisfied with the heroes’ focus on petty politics, and not on the ultimate quest of destroying Flagg. When telling this story, King sardonically observed that the bomb saved the book, and that he only had to kill half of the core cast in order to do this.
for 10 years. During the '80s Stephen King had planned a theatrical film, with George A. Romero
directing and himself writing, not trusting somebody else with the project. However writing a workable screenplay proved difficult, due to the novel's length. King talked about adapting it for television but was informed that the television networks did not "want to see the end of the world, particularly in prime time." Eventually King allowed screenwriter Rospo Pallenberg
, who was a fan of The Stand, to write his own adaptation
on the novel. Pallenberg's script would clock the film in at close to three hours while still staying true to the novel. Everyone liked the script; however, just as it was about to finally come together, Warner Brothers backed out of the project.
ABC
eventually offered Stephen King the chance to make The Stand into a 6-hour miniseries for television. King wrote a new screenplay (toned down for television). The miniseries
was broadcast in 1994, directed by Mick Garris
and starring such actors as Gary Sinise
, Molly Ringwald
, Rob Lowe
, Miguel Ferrer
, Laura San Giacomo
, Ossie Davis
, Shawnee Smith
and Ed Harris
.
In January 2011, it was announced that Warner Bros.
and CBS Films
will be developing a feature length film adaptation of The Stand. There is currently no official release date. In July 2011 it was reported that the film may be a trilogy, and that David Yates
is considering directing. On August 10, Warner Bros. has finalized the deal for Yates and Harry Potter
screenwriter Steve Kloves
to re-team for a multi-movie version of The Stand. However, in October of 2011, it was reported that both Yates and Kloves had left the project due to Yates feeling the project would work better as a miniseries
and that actor/direcor Ben Affleck
was Warner Bros. new choice for the project.
is adapting The Stand into a series of six, five issue comic book
miniseries
. The series is written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
and illustrated by Mike Perkins
. Colorist Laura Martin
, letterer Chris Eliopoulos
and cover artist Lee Bermejo
are also confirmed to be on the staff. The first issue of The Stand: Captain Trips was released on September 10, 2008.
band Shadow Circus has created a series of songs about the main events in The Stand, and in whole the tracks come to a full 33-minute progressive rock
epic titled "Project Blue". The tracks can be found on their latest CD Whispers and Screams and the track listing can be found in the audio portion of their website
.
A more concise nod to The Stand has been recorded as the title track on the album Among The Living
by Anthrax
, a thrash/speed metal band whose love of King's work has been well documented.
A soundtrack to the mini-series was released at the same time of the ABC special four night broadcast. It contains the instrumental guitar music and orchestrations of "Snuffy" Walden and other artists.
In 1983, the alternative rock band The Alarm
released the song, "The Stand," with lyrics directly inspired by the novel. The lyrics follow the travels of Randall Flagg
, in much the same way The Rolling Stones had "Sympathy For The Devil."
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
/fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf
Night Surf
"Night Surf" is a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen King, first published in the spring 1969 issue of Ubris magazine, and later collected in a heavily revised version in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.-Plot summary:...
. The novel was originally published in 1978 and was later re-released in 1990 as The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition; King restored some text originally cut for brevity, added and revised sections, changed the setting
Setting (fiction)
In fiction, setting includes the time, location, and everything in which a story takes place, and initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story. Setting has been referred to as story world or milieu to include a context beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may...
of the story from 1980 (which in turn was changed to 1985 for the original paperback release in 1980) to 1990, and updated a few pop culture references accordingly. The Stand was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
This World Fantasy Award is given to the fantasy novel or novels voted best by a panel of judges, and presented each year at the World Fantasy Convention.-1975:...
in 1979, and was adapted into both a television miniseries
The Stand (TV miniseries)
# Project Blue [1:33]# The Dream Begins [2:08]# On the Road to Kansas [3:57]# The Trashmen in Vegas [1:58]# Headin' West [1:56]# Larry & Nadine [2:38]# Mother Abigail [3:10]# 'Sorry Mister, I Don't Understand' [2:54]# Mid Country [3:22]...
for ABC and a graphic novel
The Stand (comics)
The Stand: Captain Trips is a five-issue comic book miniseries, the first of six The Stand series by Marvel Comics, adapting Stephen King's novel of the same name. It is to be overseen by King, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, illustrated by Mike Perkins, and colored by Laura Martin...
published by Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
.
The book is dedicated to King's wife, Tabitha
Tabitha King
Tabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
: "For my wife Tabitha: This dark chest of wonders."
"Captain Trips"
The novel is divided into three parts, or books. The first is titled "Captain Trips" and takes place over nineteen days, with the escape and spread of a human-made biological weaponBiological warfare
Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...
, a superflu (influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
) virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
known formally as "Project Blue" but most commonly as "Captain Trips" (among some other colloquialisms). The virus is developed at a U.S. Army base, where it is released. While the base tries to shut down before any infected person can escape, a security malfunction allows a guard and his family to sneak out. Unfortunately, they are already infected, and release an epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
, which quickly turns into a pandemic
Pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
, that leads directly to the death of an estimated 99.4% of the world's human and animal population.
King outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence, the failure of martial law
Martial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
to contain the outbreak, and eventually the death of virtually the entire population. The human toll is also dealt with, as the few survivors must care for their families and friends, dealing with confusion and grief as their loved ones succumb to the flu.
The expanded edition opens with a prologue titled "The Circle Opens" that offers greater detail into the circumstances surrounding the development of the virus and the security breach that allowed its escape from the secret laboratory compound where it was created.
"On the Border"
Intertwining cross-country odysseys are undertaken by a small number of survivors in 3 parties (8 people in "Stu's", 7 in "Nick's" and 5 in "Larry's") which are drawn together by both circumstances and their shared dreams of a 108-year-old woman from HemingfordHemingford, Nebraska
Hemingford is a village in Box Butte County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 993 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Hemingford is located at ....
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
whom they see as a refuge and a representation of good in the struggle of good versus evil. This woman, Abagail Freemantle (known as "Mother Abagail"), becomes the spiritual leader of this group of survivors, directing them to Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, referred to as "the Free Zone", where they begin to reestablish a democratic
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
society. Much of this section of the book involves the struggles to create an orderly society reinstating the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
and Bill of Rights
Bill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
as a basis (with modifications). Boulder is found to be hosting considerably fewer dead bodies of plague victims than other cities, due to an exodus following a false rumor in the early stages of the plague that the outbreak originated in the Boulder Air Test Center.
Meanwhile, another group of survivors (party of 10, but with more interesting nick names like "The Trashcan Man" and "Ace High" along with normal ones like "Carl Hough") are drawn to Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
by Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
(known as "the Dark Man", among other nefarious names), who is an evil being with supernatural powers; he exists in the story to represent the opposite influence of Mother Abagail. Flagg’s governance is tyrannical and brutal, using crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
, dismemberment
Dismemberment
Dismemberment is the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise removing, the limbs of a living thing. It may be practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, as a result of a traumatic accident, or in connection with murder, suicide, or cannibalism...
and other forms of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
as punishment for those who are disloyal and disobedient. His group is able to quickly reorganize their society, restore power to Las Vegas, and rebuild the city as many technical professionals have migrated to the city. The book notes that at Las Vegas, Flagg's group is constantly working and has organized a strong but harsh structure while at the Free Zone, some survivors lounge idly and do not work as hard. Flagg's group also has started a school system and weapons program with survivor Carl Hough as a helicopter pilot and the Trashcan Man searching the country for weapons.
The Free Zone's democratic society is not without its problems: Mother Abagail, feeling that she has become prideful and sinned due to her pleasure at being a public figure, disappears into the wilderness on a journey of spiritual reconciliation, while one of the members of "Stu's party" builds a dynamite
Dynamite
Dynamite is an explosive material based on nitroglycerin, initially using diatomaceous earth , or another absorbent substance such as powdered shells, clay, sawdust, or wood pulp. Dynamites using organic materials such as sawdust are less stable and such use has been generally discontinued...
bomb in response to feelings of disconnection and unrequited love. However, two other members confiscate the explosive and crudely rig it to kill and wound the committee members of the Free Zone's democracy. Shortly before the explosion Mother Abigail returns (in poor shape) and the majority of the colony rushes to see her.
"The Stand"
The stage is now set for the final confrontation as the two camps become aware of one another, and each recognizes the other as a threat to its survival, leading to the "stand" of good against evil. There is no pitched battle, however. Instead, at Mother Abagail's dying behest, Stu, Larry, Ralph and Glen set off on foot towards Las Vegas on an expedition to confront Randall Flagg. Stu breaks his leg en route and drops out. He encourages the others to leave without him, telling them that God will provide for him. Glen, Ralph, and Larry soon encounter Flagg's men, who take them prisoner. When Glen rejects an opportunity to be spared if he kneels and begs Flagg for his life, he is shot on Flagg's order by one of his men. Flagg gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of the other two, but before it can take place, Trashcan Man arrives with a nuclear warheadNuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
and a giant glowing hand—"The Hand of God"—detonates the bomb, destroying Flagg's followers and the two remaining prisoners.
Stu, with the aid of two of Flagg's camp survivors, survives injury, illness, and a harsh Rocky Mountain winter. The three of them arrive back in Boulder soon after the birth of Fran’s baby. Although the baby falls ill with the superflu, he is able to fight it off. In the end, Stu and Fran decide to return to Maine, and the original edition of the novel ends with the two of them questioning whether the human race can learn from its mistakes. The answer, given in the last line, is ambiguous: "I don’t know."
The expanded edition follows this with a brief coda
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
called "The Circle Closes", which leaves a darker impression and fits in with King’s ongoing "wheel of ka
Ka (Dark Tower)
Ka is a plot element in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It is a word of the fictional language High Speech.-Overview:In the books, it is a mysterious force that leads all living creatures. It is the will of Gan, the approximate equivalent of destiny or fate, in King's fictional language of High...
" theme. Randall Flagg, using the alias "Russell Faraday", wakes up on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific, having escaped the atomic blast in Vegas by using his dark magic (although Flagg does not remember how he got to the beach or what his real name is, and it is suggested that he does not even remember the events in America), and begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people, who worship him as some sort of god.
Charles D. Campion
A soldier stationed out in the California desert, Campion is patient zero, the original carrier of the superflu outside of its containment area. On duty the night the deadly virus escapes the complex, he manages to flee with his wife and baby daughter before the lockdown of the base. He and his family finally succumb to the flu at a gas station in Arnette, Texas, spreading the virus and unleashing the events of the story.General William "Billy" Starkey
As the commanding officer of Project Blue, Starkey is aware that the superflu is almost impossible to control once loose. Though compassionate, he goes to extreme lengths to cover up the accident and its ensuing pandemicPandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
as long as he can; for example, he orders the execution of journalists who try to reveal the truth. In an attempt at retaining plausible deniability, he orders a contingency plan into effect: to release the virus on several other continents in an effort to make it seem as though the U.S. did not create it artificially. After being dismissed by the President due to his failure to contain the virus, he commits suicide in the laboratory where the superflu was created.
Len Creighton
General Starkey's friend and right hand man, he periodically updates Starkey on the situation. He assumes command of the containment operation after Starkey is relieved of command of Project Blue and commits suicide in the Project Blue lab. He is last heard speaking to an army officer on the radio in Los Angeles; it is unknown whether he survives the superflu.Mother Abagail
Abagail Freemantle, also known as "Mother Abagail", leads the "good" survivors of the Captain Trips plague, and is also a prophet of GodGod
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
. She is 108 years old and lives in a farmhouse in Hemingford Home, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
. She is one of the 0.6% of the population that is immune to the Captain Trips virus, and initially appears to some of the plague survivors in dreams, drawing them to her just as Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
draws the evil survivors to him. She and her followers make their way to Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
where they establish the "Boulder Free Zone" government.
She receives visions from God, though when she sins through pride, she loses her foresight and goes into exile in the wilderness. She regains her ability, and returns to the Zone just in time to inadvertently save most of the Free Zone Committee from Harold Lauder's assassination attempt. On her deathbed, she shares one final vision: four men from the committee are to travel to the west to make a stand against Randall Flagg. She makes no prediction as to what will occur, only that one will fall before arriving in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
, and that the remainder will be brought before Flagg. Mother Abagail dies shortly after revealing this prophecy.
Stuart Redman
A quiet man from the fictitious town of Arnette, East TexasEast Texas
East Texas is a distinct geographic and ecological area in the U.S. state of Texas.According to the Handbook of Texas, the East Texas area "may be separated from the rest of Texas roughly by a line extending from the Red River in north central Lamar County southwestward to east central Limestone...
, Stu is at his friend’s gas station the night Charles Campion arrives. He is the first man discovered to be immune to the superflu, and is taken by authorities first to the Atlanta CDC, then to the fictitious Stovington, Vermont plague center. He escapes from the government employee sent to execute him, wandering through New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
for a few days before meeting Glen Bateman and, shortly after, Fran Goldsmith and Harold Lauder. Stu becomes romantically involved with Fran, accepting the unborn child she carries, but their involvement creates ill will with Harold Lauder, who holds an unrequited love for her.
Stu rises to authority in the Free Zone, becoming the spokesperson for the Free Zone Committee and its first Marshal. After an assassination attempt by Harold, Stu is told by Mother Abagail that he is to travel west to stand against Randall Flagg. Stu leads Larry, Glen and Ralph to Las Vegas, but breaks his leg in Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
and is forced to remain behind, along with Kojak the dog. He develops pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
due to injury and hypothermia
Hypothermia
Hypothermia is a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as . Body temperature is usually maintained near a constant level of through biologic homeostasis or thermoregulation...
, but witnesses the destruction of Las Vegas and is saved by Tom Cullen, who nurses him back to health. Stu and Tom trek back to Boulder, where Frannie has given birth to the first known surviving child on Earth, post-plague. Stu and Frannie leave Boulder to raise their family in Maine.
Frances Goldsmith
A college student from Ogunquit, MaineOgunquit, Maine
Ogunquit is a town in York County, Maine, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 1,226. The popularity of the town as a summer resort is epitomized by its motto, "Beautiful Place by the Sea."...
, Fran (or Frannie, as she is often called), is pregnant at the start of the book, a topic which results in a painful standoff with her mother and the end of her relationship with the baby’s father, Jesse Rider. The superflu all but wipes out her community, with Fran and Harold Lauder being the only local survivors after parking lot attendant Gus Dinsmore dies on June 30. After burying her father in the garden he was weeding just a week earlier, Frannie decides to join forces with Harold. Harold decides to paint a message on Moses Richardson's barn (as it overlooks US Route 1, the road most people would take into town) telling anyone who reads it that they have gone to the fictional Stovington, Vermont plague center and even leaves road directions, then finishes by signing both his name and Frannie's (the latter name causing him to nearly fall off the roof). The two make their way to the Stovington facility of the Centers for Disease Control in hopes of finding someone in authority, but before they reach their destination they meet Stu Redman. After Harold reacts VERY negatively to Stu, he finally agrees to let Stu join their party and the three of them travel back west on US 302 to Glen Bateman's house but not before Stu tells them that everyone at the Stovington facility is dead. Glen Bateman agrees to join them and they travel west to Stovington and confirm that not only is everyone dead at the Stovington facility but that Stu was nearly killed there. They then make their way west to Mother Abagail, during which Fran falls deeply in love with Stu, a fact she records in her diary (as well as many other things about the trip west).
Fran serves on the original Free Zone Committee in Boulder and acts as its moral compass. Upon her union with Stu, Harold becomes jealous, but later appears to let bygones be bygones. However, Fran remains suspicious of him, a feeling later justified when she finds his diary and plot to kill Stu. She saves the majority of the committee when she receives an intuition of doom in the form of the planted bomb. She is moderately injured in the blast, but her unborn child remains safe. Fran is opposed to Stu traveling west, but comes to terms with it when she realizes it is what he has to do. Fran later moves in with Lucy Swann and delivers a baby boy. Though there is initial joy at the birth, her child falls ill with the superflu and Fran is crushed. However, she is rewarded by news of both Stu’s return to the Free Zone and her baby’s recovery. Throughout the novel, Fran becomes more and more homesick for her native Maine, and at the end of the book she, Stu, and the baby make their way back east; the last chapter also confirms that she is pregnant with Stu's baby.
Peter Goldsmith-Redman
Fran’s baby is the first surviving child born in the Boulder Free Zone. He is stricken with the superflu soon after birth, but his partial immunity inherited from Fran enables him to recover.Harold Lauder
Harold is 16 years old and lived in OgunquitOgunquit, Maine
Ogunquit is a town in York County, Maine, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 1,226. The popularity of the town as a summer resort is epitomized by its motto, "Beautiful Place by the Sea."...
, Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, at the beginning of the novel. He is the younger brother of Fran Goldsmith’s best friend, Amy Lauder, and is a social outcast in his local high school. Harold doesn’t help matters for himself by being rather obnoxious and uppity. A practicing but unpopular writer, he prefers to use a manual typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
. After the superflu wipes out the entire population of Ogunquit except for himself and Fran, the two decide to head to the Stovington Plague Center in Vermont. Harold decides to leave a prominent note, on the roof of a barn, detailing their plans and directions for future travelers. This ongoing effort by Harold, for which he is later congratulated by Larry Underwood, allows several other groups to join together in Colorado.
Harold falls in love with Fran and sees himself as her protector of sorts. When they meet Stuart Redman, Harold refuses to allow him to join, even going so far as to threaten Stu with a gun, but after a conversation in which Stu tells him he just wants to come along and has no designs on Fran, Harold relents. After the plague facility proves to be a disappointment, the survivors head to Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, and then Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
to join Mother Abagail, picking up more survivors along the way. Harold attempts to profess his love for Frannie, only to be rebuffed. As Fran becomes involved with Stu, Harold finds his jealousy growing.
Eventually, Harold disregards Fran's privacy, and rifles through her backpack. He finds her diary and begins reading it. There he finds that Fran has made several insulting comments about him, mocks him in her private thoughts, and considers him to be "immature." This proves to be the breaking point for Harold; from this point on he swears vengeance on Fran and Stuart.
Harold quickly becomes a respected and well thought of member of the Boulder Community. Due to the harsh conditions after the plague, he has dropped his excess weight, his acne has cleared, and his intelligence is often seen as an asset by those around him, rather than an isolating hindrance in his former life. As such, his ideas are used to better the community, and Harold frequently volunteers for the toughest jobs in the Boulder Free Zone, including moving dead bodies. It is because of his thin, sharp, resilient persona that he earns the nickname "Hawk" as a matter of respect from the other men on the work crews, and his old life has seemed to all but disappear except in his own thoughts. In a moment of emotional clarity, Harold realizes that he truly is accepted and valued in this strange new world, and that he has the freedom to choose a new life for himself as a respected member of society. However, unable to cast aside his past humiliations and his image of himself, he rejects his last chance at redemption and surrenders instead to his dreams of vengeance, particularly on Fran and Stu (he goes so far as to handle his gun - while in his jacket pocket - at Stu while scouting for the missing Mother Abagail, but does not fire). Soon after this, Nadine Cross approaches him and reveals an in-depth knowledge of Harold’s insecurities, hatreds and fears. She hints at her own. They enjoy a decadent sexual playtime that involves everything except vaginal intercourse, which Nadine does not allow Harold to perform due to her supernaturally-inspired commitment to Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
. Harold succumbs to Nadine’s seduction. He fulfills Flagg’s wishes and creates a bomb to destroy the Free Zone Committee.
After detonating the bomb—which kills seven people—Harold and Nadine flee toward Las Vegas. However, Harold ends up wrecking his motorcycle and breaking his leg after slipping on an oil slick. Flagg, mistrustful of Harold for being "too full of thoughts," has apparently arranged the accident. Harold initially survives the accident, though terribly injured, and attempts to shoot Nadine. He misses and Nadine abandons him and continues to travel alone to meet Flagg in the desert.
Realizing that he is dying, Harold writes a note in which he takes responsibility for his actions, and expresses remorse and apologizes for them, though he knows he cannot be forgiven. He signs this note, "Hawk," as a way of trying one final time to accept the best version of himself that had existed briefly in Boulder. Harold commits suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by shooting himself in the head. His body is later found by Stu, Larry, Glen, and Ralph, and while they do not bury his corpse, Stu gently removes the gun from Harold's mouth and remarks that Harold’s actions were a waste not only of Nick and Susan (who died in the bomb explosion), but of himself as well. To Stu's surprise, he finds himself wanting to avenge Harold as well as the other victims when he meets Randall Flagg.
Glen Bateman
An associate professor of sociologySociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
who went into retirement
Retirement
Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...
some years before the superflu hit, Glendon Pequod "Glen" Bateman met Stu near Glen’s home in Woodsville, New Hampshire
Woodsville, New Hampshire
Woodsville is a census-designated place in the town of Haverhill in Grafton County, New Hampshire, U.S., along the Connecticut River at the mouth of the Ammonoosuc River. The population was 1,126 at the 2010 census...
. A senior citizen handicapped by arthritis
Arthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
, the wise Bateman is often on hand to dispense advice to his young friend. A loyal friend, Bateman also experiences dreams of Mother Abagail, and joins Stu, Frannie, and Harold on their journey to meet her. Bateman becomes part of the reform committee in Boulder
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
. He also becomes one of the four men who must meet Randall Flagg in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
. But as Stu falls by the wayside, Glen, along with Larry and Ralph, goes to Las Vegas and is detained by Flagg’s forces. Flagg offers Glen his freedom if he will "get down on (his) knees and beg for it." Glen refuses, laughing at the Dark Man for being so transparent, upon which Flagg orders Lloyd Henreid to execute him. "It’s all right, Mr. Henreid", Glen says as he dies, "you don’t know any better."
Kojak
Glen Bateman's dog, an Irish SetterIrish Setter
The Irish Setter , is a setter, a breed of gundog and family dog. The term Irish Setter is commonly used to encompass the show-bred dog recognized by the American Kennel Club as well as the field-bred Red Setter recognised by the Field Dog Stud Book....
, whom he adopted after his original master died of the superflu. Formerly named Big Steve, Kojak is a rare survivor of the flu which impacted dogs and horses as well as humans. When Glen leaves with Redman, Kojak is initially left behind. However, he follows them and is later attacked by wolves after arriving at Mother Abagail's empty house. Kojak manages to walk to the Free Zone. He joins Glen, Stu, Ralph, and Larry on their journey to Las Vegas. When Stu is injured, he stays behind and kills rabbits and other small animals to feed Stu. After being found by Tom Cullen, he is taken back to Boulder. It is stated that he will live for 16 years after his master's death, putting his own death in 2001-2 (original edition), 2006-7 (revised).
Susan Stern
Part of an unwilling haremHarem
Harem refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men...
of women who were taken captive by evil Superflu survivors and repeatedly raped, Susan - a former student at Kent State University
Kent State University
Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...
- is one of the women Stu and his party rescues. (Note: this version of her earlier experience is only in the uncut version of the novel.) Sue becomes a member of the original Boulder Free Zone Committee and recruits fellow captive Dayna Jurgens to spy out west. She is killed by Harold Lauder’s bomb in Ralph Brentner’s home.
Dayna Jurgens
A community college P.T. instructor from Xenia, OhioXenia, Ohio
Xenia is a city in and the county seat of Greene County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio 21 miles from Dayton and is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, and one of the women whom Stu’s party rescues from the harem (in the uncut version). While she originally seems to display some romantic interest in Stu Redman, this does not extend beyond flirtation and two kisses, though it does cause Fran some consternation. Later, it is revealed that she is bisexual.
After residing in Boulder for a short time, she is recruited by fellow former captive Sue Stern to spy out west. In Las Vegas, she works with a streetlight-repair crew, and sleeps with Lloyd Henreid as part of her ploy to obtain information. While working with the light crew, she sees Tom Cullen on a passing truck. Flagg, aware of her identity through telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
, summons her to his office and attempts to make her reveal the third spy, into whose mind he cannot see. In order to protect Tom Cullen, and to save herself from the torture that Flagg will put her through, Dayna commits suicide by putting her head through a plate glass window, then jerking around so that the sharp edges of the broken glass cut open her jugular vein. This act of free will indicates the beginning of Flagg's downfall, as he foresaw her attempting to assassinate him and thwarted that, but did not predict her suicide attempt and could not prevent her death. Her body is desecrated by Flagg and later burned outside of Las Vegas.
Larry Underwood
Larry is a cocky young singer and composer who, at the beginning of the novel, is starting to reach real success with his debut single, "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" He falls in debt to a local drug dealer while living in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and travels to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to lie low while visiting his loving but deeply disapproving mother. As the plague and anarchy destroy New York, Larry comes to his mother’s aid, but he is unable to prevent her death from the superflu. Not long after, Larry finds himself one of the few people left in New York City. He meets a troubled middle-aged woman named Rita Blakemoor and the two decide to leave New York together. They experience a frightening trek through the Lincoln Tunnel
Lincoln Tunnel
The Lincoln Tunnel is a long tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting Weehawken, New Jersey and the borough of Manhattan in New York City.-History:...
while leaving the island; Larry often thinks back to this event and is terrified by it. Rita eventually dies from a drug overdose that Larry describes as "70% accident and 30% suicide."
Haunted by his dreams of Randall Flagg, Larry is in a semi-catatonic
Catatonia
Catatonia is a state of neurogenic motor immobility, and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor. It was first described in 1874: Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein ....
state for several days until he finally collapses from exhaustion in New Hampshire. Recovering after a night’s sleep, Larry travels to Maine, where he plans to spend the summer, until he meets Nadine Cross and young Leo Rockway (known then only as "Joe"). The three travel together to Ogunquit, where they find Harold Lauder’s painted sign and its directions. Deciding to follow the directions, Larry leads Nadine and Joe to Stovington, Vermont, meeting Lucy Swann along the way. In Stovington, they find only Harold’s directions to Nebraska. Larry leads the ever-growing party to Nebraska and eventually on to Colorado, following Harold’s directions across the country. Though Larry is initially interested in Nadine, she spurns his advances and he begins a relationship with Lucy. Arriving in Boulder, Larry settles down with Lucy and Leo, becoming a member of the Free Zone Committee. Nadine attempts to reconcile with him, but Larry refuses her, choosing to remain with Lucy. Larry later breaks into Harold Lauder’s home with Fran Goldsmith after Leo instructs him to investigate before something horrible happens. They find Harold’s ledger, which states he intends to kill Stuart Redman. However, Harold’s plan is already in motion, and Stu narrowly escapes the assassination attempt the next day. Larry leaves Boulder with Stu, Ralph, and Glen when Mother Abagail instructs them to go to Las Vegas. Larry leads the party after Stu breaks his leg en route to Las Vegas, where Larry and Ralph eventually die in the nuclear explosion caused by Trashcan Man.
Nadine Cross
A teacher at a private school in Vermont, Nadine has retained her virginityVirginity
Virginity refers to the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions which place special value and significance on this state, especially in the case of unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth...
due to some vaguely defined but powerful sense that she is destined for something as dark as it is unique. After the outbreak of the superflu, Nadine finds an emotionally damaged young boy whom she calls Joe; Joe has regressed to a savage state of mind but trusts her and stays with her. Nadine meets Larry Underwood when Joe finds him sleeping. Joe is working up the courage to kill the sleeping Larry when Nadine stops him. The pair secretly follow Larry to Maine, where Joe finally does try to kill Larry, only to be overpowered. After conversing with Larry, Nadine agrees to join forces with him and find other survivors. Nadine is attracted to Larry but her subconscious conviction that she must remain "pure" has strengthened and begun to take shape; she begins to both fear and anticipate that she is meant for Flagg.
Upon arriving in Boulder, Nadine begins to surrender to the seductive allure of the Walkin’ Dude, and Joe (who has recovered enough to give his real name as Leo Rockway) becomes reluctant to be with her. Later, Leo reveals that Nadine had already known that it was too late to sleep with Larry. Nadine makes a last desperate attempt to seduce Larry, which would break her virginal commitment to Flagg and free her, but he is by now firmly committed to Lucy Swann and rejects her advances. Nadine surrenders to Flagg completely, communicating with him via a Ouija board
Ouija Board
Ouija Board is a Thoroughbred mare racehorse owned by Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby and trained by Ed Dunlop. In a career spanning four seasons, she won 10 of her 22 races, 7 of them Group 1s, including the Epsom Oaks in 2004 and the Hong Kong Vase in 2005...
, an echo of her terrifying experience with a Ouija board in college, when she was first touched by Flagg ("WE ARE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD NADINE"). On Flagg’s orders, she seduces Harold Lauder. Although she will not do "that one little thing" with him, they are apparently free to do whatever else, sexually, that they wish. She uses him to attempt to assassinate the committee, a plot that would have succeeded but for the return of Mother Abagail and a premonition of Frannie’s.
Nadine travels west with Harold; when his motorcycle crashes, she implies it was her choice that Harold die in a motorcycle accident rather than be killed by Flagg upon arrival in Las Vegas. Harold fires his pistol at her and very nearly hits her, suggesting that she might unconsciously prefer death to the dark consummation awaiting her and revealing that Flagg only has limited power. Nadine continues on towards Vegas until one night Flagg comes to her in the desert, revealing his true nature and raping her, an experience which so violates and horrifies her (while at the same time causing her immense pleasure) that she falls into catatonia
Catatonia
Catatonia is a state of neurogenic motor immobility, and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor. It was first described in 1874: Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein ....
. Flagg takes her with him to Vegas and installs them both in the penthouse suite of the MGM Grand
MGM Grand Las Vegas
The MGM Grand Las Vegas is a hotel casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. The MGM Grand is the third largest hotel in the world and largest hotel resort complex in the United States in front of The Venetian. The MGM Grand was the largest hotel in the world when it opened in...
, almost immediately announcing her pregnancy. At last, Nadine recovers sufficiently to taunt Flagg about his coming failure, and she succeeds in goading him into throwing her off the balcony, killing herself and the unborn child.
Lucy Swann
The first survivor encountered by Larry Underwood’s party, 24-year-old New Hampshire housewife Lucy has survived the superflu while her husband and daughter die. Lucy joins the party on their route to the Stovington Plague Center. She becomes romantically involved with Larry, a feeling that she feels is not shared because of Larry’s strong attraction to Nadine Cross, despite her seeming disinterest in him. However, when forced to make a decision, Larry chooses to remain with Lucy, much to her surprise. Lucy stands by Larry through his tenure as a member of the Free Zone Committee and serves as a devoted wife to him and as a mother to Leo Rockway. Unlike Fran Goldsmith, Lucy supports Larry’s decision to go west to confront Randall Flagg, though she does not know that she is pregnant herself at the time. Lucy takes care of Frannie during Stu’s absence and, at the end of the book, she has given birth to twins.Judge Farris
A man in his late seventies who joins Larry’s party in Illinois while making their way to Nebraska. Usually referred to as just "The Judge", he is a sharp, well-spoken, educated and insightful man who served as a judge in the 1950s, but has since retired. Lucy and Larry like him immensely, and Larry is pained when he successfully recruits the Judge as the first Free Zone spyEspionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
and is unable to tell a distraught Lucy where The Judge is after he "vanishes" (The Judge, for his part, accepts before Larry can even bring himself to ask him, seeing the necessity of it). The Judge attempts to infiltrate Las Vegas from the north, but is intercepted by Flagg’s sentries in Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
. A firefight
Firefight
Firefight may refer to:* firefight, a large exchange of bullets between two sides * Firefighting, process of extinguishing destructive flames* A game mode in Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach video games...
ensues, and the Judge is killed by several shots to the head. This direct violation of Flagg's orders is the first vague sign that his power is limited and his downfall is imminent. The sentries had been under strict orders not to "mark his head", so that it could be delivered as a message to the Free Zone, and Flagg appears to brutally kill the surviving sentry, Bobby Terry, (who had not only killed Farris, but also the other sentry, Dave Roberts) for disfiguring the Judge's face and hampering this plan.
Nick Andros
A 22-year-old deaf-muteDeaf-mute
For "deafness", see hearing impairment. For "Deaf" as a cultural term, see Deaf culture. For "inability to speak", see muteness.Deaf-mute is a term which was used historically to identify a person who was both deaf and could not speak...
drifter originally from Caslin, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, Nick is beaten and robbed outside of (fictional) Shoyo, Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, by some local thugs shortly after the start of the epidemic. Moderately injured, he is befriended by the local sheriff and his wife and watches them die as the epidemic unfolds. As the epidemic progresses, as the newest deputy (due to the lack of any other healthy people around), Nick also watches two of the four thugs who beat him die of the plague in the local jail. He later frees the third, only to be confronted by the fourth, the fugitive Ray Booth, who has returned to kill him. He very nearly dies as a result of a minor gunshot wound he received during the scuffle with Booth; Nick, in a panic, accidentally fires the gun holstered on his belt. The bullet scrapes his leg and becomes infected. (This entire episode with Ray Booth returning to kill him is only in the uncut version of the novel.)
Nick eventually recovers and begins his journey to Hemingford Home, Nebraska. Along the way he meets Tom Cullen, and later Ralph Brentner, June Brinkmeyer, Gina McCone, Dick Ellis, and Olivia Walker, and they become a surrogate family to him. Nick leads the growing band of survivors to Nebraska and Mother Abagail, who guides them to Boulder. Nick serves on the Free Zone Committee, of which he is the leading thinker, and eventually recruits Tom Cullen to spy out West. Nick is killed by Harold Lauder's assassination attempt on the Committee, and it is later revealed that it was Nick who was meant to lead the stand against Randall Flagg. Nick’s spirit appears to Tom Cullen after his death, guiding him on his way home and showing him how to save Stu Redman’s life during Stu's bout with illness.
In the Complete and Uncut edition, Nick loses sight in one eye for a period of time when he is attacked by Booth, the leader of the four thugs. Booth is shot and killed by Andros, but the resulting damage causes Nick to wear an eyepatch for almost the rest of the story.
Tom Cullen
Tom Cullen is a man initially thought to be in his mid-20's to mid-30's who suffers from mild to moderate mental retardation. Nick encounters him while cycling from Arkansas to Nebraska through Oklahoma. After Nick learns that Tom remembers his father's return from the Korean War, he realizes Tom must be much older than he thought, perhaps in his 40's. The two bond closely, despite the fact that Nick cannot speak, and Tom cannot read Nick’s notes, though when the two encounter Ralph Brentner, Tom is finally able to learn Nick's name.Tom generally possesses a childish speech pattern, peppered with exclamations of "My laws!" and "Laws, yes!" and he makes frequent references to himself in the third person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
. Tom also believes that everything is spelled "M-O-O-N" as in "M-O-O-N, that spells 'my main man'." When needing to make a logical connection, Tom, who is sometimes capable of normal thought, may slip into a form of self-hypnosis
Autosuggestion
Autosuggestion is a psychological technique that was developed by apothecary Émile Coué from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.-Origins:...
wherein he is able to make connections that he cannot while "awake" (that is, conscious and focused on something superficial). Nick, Stu, and Glen use this ability to place a post-hypnotic suggestion
Post-hypnotic suggestion
A Post-hypnotic suggestion is a behavior or thinking pattern that presumably will manifest after a subject has come out of the so-called "hypnotic state" .According to a psychologist at the University of New South Wales:...
in Tom that will help him to act as the third Free Zone spy. During his hypnosis, Nick, Stu, and Glen discover that while hypnotized, Tom possesses the same type of foresight as Mother Abagail, referring to himself as the same Tom that Nick met in Oklahoma, but at the same time he proclaims himself to be "God’s Tom".
Tom travels West, giving a hypnotically imprinted cover story to get accepted into Las Vegas, and is able to avoid detection by Flagg. Tom’s anonymity seems to stem from his disability, as Flagg tells Dayna that every time he tries to see the third spy, all he sees is the moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
; this confirms Dayna's sighting of Tom earlier (while both were on Vegas work crews), and her desire to protect both Tom and his status as a spy compels her to commit suicide rather than submit to further questioning by Flagg. The sight of the full moon rising over Las Vegas triggers Tom’s post-hypnotic suggestion, and he begins the return trip to Boulder, appropriately noting "M-O-O-N, that spells moon."
During his return to Boulder, he encounters Stu, who is suffering from a broken leg and pneumonia due to exposure. Originally, Tom was far east of where Stu fell, but a prophetic dream tells him that he must double back to find Stu. With help from Nick's spirit, who appears to him in visions (due to the fact that Nick is already deceased due to Harold Lauder's bomb), Tom is able to nurse a delirious and dying Stu back to health while they are snowed in for much of the winter at a motel in central Utah. Together, they return to Boulder to report the destruction of Las Vegas.
Ralph Brentner
Ralph, an amiable Midwest farmer and United States ArmyUnited States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
veteran, meets Nick and Tom as their paths cross on a highway between Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
and Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, and together they form the first party to find Mother Abagail. Despite a lack of formal education, Ralph is possessed of a great deal of common sense
Common sense
Common sense is defined by Merriam-Webster as, "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts." Thus, "common sense" equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have...
and is very skilled with tools and machines, and is elected to the first Free Zone Committee. Ralph typically serves as Nick’s "voice", reading his notes to the others during committee meetings. Ralph survives Harold Lauder’s assassination attempt (but loses the third and fourth fingers on his left hand), and is chosen as one of the four to stand against Flagg. Along with Stu, Glen, and Larry, he walks to Las Vegas, and is instrumental in convincing Larry to leave Stu behind after he breaks his leg. Ralph is captured by Flagg along with Glen and Larry, and is to be executed by dismemberment in front of the Golden Nugget Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Ralph is the first to notice the "Hand of God
Hand of God
Hand of God may refer to:* Act of God, in religious or legal contexts* Hand of God , a motif in Jewish and Christian art* Hamsa or Khamsa, a hand-shaped protective amulet in Islamic and Jewish folklore also known as " helping hand"...
" as it descends from the sky and onto Trashcan Man’s nuclear weapon, detonating it and killing him and everyone else present.
Randall Flagg
Randall FlaggRandall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
, also known as "the Dark Man" or "the Walkin’ Dude", is the main antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
of the novel—more (or less) than a man, he is the embodiment of evil, an antichrist
Antichrist
The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...
-like being whose goal is destruction and death. In the novel, he is presented as diametrically opposed to Mother Abagail’s personification of good.
The Dark Man character appears in many guises in other King novels and short stories, often with the initials "R.F." This very powerful, yet very unstable character is spread through King's other stories, most notably in The Dark Tower
The Dark Tower (series)
The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "Gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King...
series. Flagg is also the main villain in The Eyes of the Dragon
The Eyes of the Dragon
The Eyes of the Dragon is a novel by Stephen King published in 1987. Previously, it was published as a limited edition hardcover by Philtrum Press in 1984. The mass-market version had been slightly revised for publication. At the time it was a surprising deviation from the norm for King, who is...
, and there are some passages in that book that allude to Flagg being immortal and pure evil.
Flagg's appearance shifts between human, demon, and various animals, and it is implied that he has lived many lives in many times; "Flagg" is just the name of his present form. Flagg is described by Tom Cullen as follows: "He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines. When he looks at you a certain way, your prostate goes bad and your urine burns. The grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He’s always outside. He came out of time. He doesn’t know himself." On the occasional instances when the reader sees through Flagg’s perspective, this insight is borne out: he does not know where he came from, has no memory of his life before Captain Trips though he vaguely remembers isolated violent or hateful events such as KKK lynchings and murdering police officers, taking part in race riots in the 1960s, being involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst
Patricia Campbell Hearst , now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber....
, and some vague speculation that he was involved in Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
's family. Most of these memories are marked by the note that Flagg was able to escape just at the last second at the end of many of these events, but that the events nourish his evil nature.
Like Mother Abagail, Flagg appears to various survivors in their dreams, providing a choice and attracting those who are drawn to structure, destruction and power. He rescues Lloyd Henreid from starvation in prison and with him as second-in-command establishes a community in Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
. Though Flagg has the ability to predict the future, along with several other demonic powers, as the events of The Stand unfold he begins to lose his power little by little as his plans go more and more awry. At the end of the novel, the Hand of God detonates a nuclear bomb, destroying Flagg’s gathered followers and Las Vegas. The uncut edition of the novel includes an epilogue in which Flagg, in a new incarnation, wakes in an unknown tropical location, where he meets a primitive tribe, telling them that he has come to teach them civilization and identifying himself as Russell Faraday.
Lloyd Henreid
Lloyd starts off as a petty criminal who, along with Andrew "Poke" Freeman, engages in a killing spree across NevadaNevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, and New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
resulting in six murders, Freeman’s death, and Lloyd’s detention in a Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
jail. If he undergoes his scheduled trial, it is likely that he will be placed on Death Row under a new statute that reduces the delays and appeals in the capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
process. Once the plague hits, people at his prison start dying, including the guards. Lloyd is forgotten in his cell and eventually becomes the sole survivor. Lloyd demonstrates both resilience and an ability to forecast problems by rapidly concluding that his situation is growing dire well before the regular services to inmates stops; he is able to save himself from starvation by eating food he has saved, along with whatever rats, roaches, or other vermin he can catch, and very nearly the leg of a dead cellmate (in the uncut version, Flagg insinuates that Lloyd did indeed eat some human flesh, despite Lloyd's attempts to hide the cuts in the leg before the Dark Man arrived). He is found by Randall Flagg, who frees him from his cell after Lloyd, at that point starving and nearly delirious, agrees to be Flagg’s right-hand man despite suspicions about the man being the devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
. At this time, Flagg also gives Lloyd a black stone with a red flaw as a symbol of Lloyd’s allegiance to Flagg.
Lloyd, oddly enough, finds himself feeling more intelligent and able than he thought he was, running several of the day-to-day activities in Vegas and even overseeing operations at a military base; he attributes his newfound abilities to Flagg, though Dayna later suspects that his natural ability to anticipate problems has only been amplified by fear of failing Flagg. For saving his life and elevating him to his second-in-command, Lloyd is fiercely loyal to Flagg, and chooses to remain with him despite his growing doubts over Flagg’s control of the situation, even when offered the opportunity to leave Las Vegas with several close friends. Lloyd respects the men's decision and does not blow the whistle to Flagg about the deserters, but he does not follow. Lloyd is present at the execution of Larry and Ralph, and is killed in the nuclear explosion caused by the Trashcan Man’s atomic warhead. Before that, Randall Flagg makes him shoot Glen Bateman. As Glen dies, he forgives Lloyd with his dying breath, saying "It's all right, Mr. Henreid.... you don’t know any better." Lloyd's last words were: "Oh shit, we're all fucked!"
"The Trashcan Man"
Donald Merwin Elbert, better known as the "Trashcan Man", is a schizophrenicSchizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
pyromania
Pyromania
Pyromania in more extreme circumstances can be an impulse control disorder to deliberately start fires to relieve tension or for gratification or relief. The term pyromania comes from the Greek word πῦρ . Pyromania and pyromaniacs are distinct from arson, the pursuit of personal, monetary or...
c, whose favorite phrases include "bumpty, bumpty, bump!" and "my life for you." He often found himself in trouble as a youth due to his fixation with fire. He was treated with shock treatments at an institution
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
in Terre Haute
Terre Haute, Indiana
Terre Haute is a city and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, near the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a population of 170,943. The city is the county seat of Vigo County and...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, before being incarcerated
Incarceration
Incarceration is the detention of a person in prison, typically as punishment for a crime .People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime, and different jurisdictions have differing laws governing the function of incarceration within a larger system of...
for arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
as a teenager. Trash leaves prison during a work detail (carrying plague victims’ bodies from prison cells) and returns home to (the fictional) Powtanville, Indiana. Trash indulges his ambition of setting cities afire, setting fire to oil tanks in Powtanville, and then destroying the city of Gary
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
. He permanently disfigures his arm in the Powtanville incident when he tries to jump a railing and breaks his arm at the wrist, a break which he does not properly set and which later causes his hand to point away from his body at an almost 90 degree angle. He also severely burns his broken arm, as well as his upper thigh, when a piece of exploding tank hits him, covering the areas with burning oil.
He abandons his original plans of starting fires randomly all over America to join Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
when the Dark Man appears in his dreams and promises him work, "great work" (as Flagg puts it) in the desert. After treating his severely burned arm, he finds a bicycle and makes his way west with all speed.
In the unedited version, Trash briefly hooks up with a cocky, maniacal street hood named The Kid, but when The Kid threatens not only to kill Trash (several times, always for petty reasons), but to overthrow the Dark Man, Flagg sends wolves to save him. The Kid ends up holed up in a car with the pack of wolves surrounding it day and night.
The threat neutralized, Trash moves on to Las Vegas and he also receives a black stone with a red flaw. Due to his savant
Savant syndrome
Savant syndrome , sometimes referred to as savantism, is a rare condition in which people with developmental disorders have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual's overall limitations...
talent regarding destructive devices, he is assigned to search for weapons in the desert and to assist in arming the fighter jets
Fighter aircraft
A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...
at Indian Springs Air Force Base
Creech Air Force Base
Creech Air Force Base , formerly known as Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field, is a United States Air Force base located one mile north of the central business district of Indian Springs, in Clark County, Nevada, United States. It is about northwest of Las Vegas and northwest of Nellis Air...
. Trash does well until, when being teased by fellow workers, a comment causes him to flash back to his tormented youth and revert to his old destructive ways.
In a schizophrenic episode, Trash destroys several trucks and aircraft, kills the most experienced pilots Las Vegas has, and flees into the desert. Overcome with anguish over his actions, Trash originally sets out to kill himself but later makes an attempt at redemption by bringing Flagg the most powerful weapon he can find: an atomic bomb, in the form of a warhead detached from a missile. Trash transports the nuclear warhead
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
in a trailer attached to an ATV
All-terrain vehicle
An all-terrain vehicle , also known as a quad, quad bike, three wheeler, or four wheeler, is defined by the American National Standards Institute as a vehicle that travels on low pressure tires, with a seat that is straddled by the operator, along with handlebars for steering control...
across the desert, coming down with a lethal case of radiation sickness
Radiation poisoning
Acute radiation syndrome also known as radiation poisoning, radiation sickness or radiation toxicity, is a constellation of health effects which occur within several months of exposure to high amounts of ionizing radiation...
in the process; the sickness has reached its terminal stage when Trash arrives in town. Trash ultimately brings about Flagg’s (apparent) destruction as the Hand of God descends and activates the warhead, destroying Las Vegas and everyone in it.
"The Kid"
"The Kid" is a thug from Shreveport, LouisianaShreveport, Louisiana
Shreveport is the third largest city in Louisiana. It is the principal city of the fourth largest metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana and is the 109th-largest city in the United States....
who meets the Trashcan Man en route to Las Vegas. He drives a souped-up hot rod and has a fanatical love of Coors
Coors Brewing Company
The Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Company and is the third-largest brewer in the United States...
beer and Rebel Yell
Rebel Yell (whiskey)
Rebel Yell is a brand of Kentucky made Straight Bourbon Whiskey that is made using more wheat than most Bourbons. The brand name is currently owned and marketed by Luxco, and the bourbon itself is distilled and bottled under contract by Heaven Hill at its Bernheim distillery in Louisville, Kentucky...
whiskey. He is also ambitious, unstable, and easily angered, as Trashcan discovers, when The Kid nearly kills him for spilling a can of beer on the carpet. After becoming monumentally drunk, The Kid forces Trash to manually pleasure him while he rapes Trash with a pistol. The Kid and Trash travel together until they reach the permanently blocked Eisenhower Tunnel
Eisenhower Tunnel
The Eisenhower Tunnel, officially the Eisenhower–Johnson Memorial Tunnel, is a dual-bore, four-lane vehicular tunnel approximately west of Denver, Colorado, United States. The tunnel carries Interstate 70 under the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. With a maximum elevation of above sea...
. After he threatens Trashcan Man's life one too many times, and threatens to overthrow the Dark Man, The Kid ends up trapped in a car surrounded by wolves sent by Flagg. The Kid survives for several days until, facing starvation, he jumps out of the car and fights the wolves, strangling one as he dies. His body is later found by Stu, Larry, Glen, and Ralph; Larry dubs him "the Wolfman." In the original edition, The Kid appeared as a minor character and was never seen directly, only in Trashcan’s flashbacks; the extended edition includes the full story of his encounter with Trashcan. It has also been revealed in interviews that The Kid is meant to be the reincarnation of late-50s serial killer Charles Starkweather
Charles Starkweather
Charles Raymond Starkweather was an American teenaged spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming during a two-month road trip with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. The couple was captured on January 29, 1958...
.
Julie Lawry
An unstable, sex-crazed teenager who lives through the pandemic, she has sex with Nick Andros in the deserted store where they meet and then attempts to convince Nick to leave Tom Cullen behind. However, when she reveals her true nature, ridiculing Tom's impairment and frightening him into refusing Pepto-BismolPepto-Bismol
Pepto-Bismol is an over-the-counter drug currently produced by the Procter and Gamble company in the United States of America and in Canada to treat minor digestive system upset. Its active ingredient is bismuth subsalicylate...
by claiming it is poison, Nick rejects her. She then tries to kill them with a rifle. She ends up joining Randall Flagg and, recognizing Tom Cullen, brings his presence as a spy to Lloyd's attention.
Whitney Horgan
An ex marine butcher, Whitney joined Flagg's group and acts as a cook. He performs minor tasks but is high-ranking in Flagg's society, reporting directly to Lloyd or Flagg himself. Planning to flee to Central America with several others (first asking Lloyd to join them, though Lloyd refuses), Whitney decides to take a "stand" against Randall Flagg and publicly challenges him before the executions of Larry and Ralph. At least one of the people who were to leave with Whitney is in the crowd watching, implying that they had chosen not to leave or had not left yet. Randall announces that he would have just let Whitney go for the time being, but then mutilates and eventually kills Whitney with a ball of lightning from his finger. It turns out, though, that Whitney's death was not in vain: the lightning that killed him gathers in the sky over the next few moments before descending as the Hand of God and activating the Trashcan Man's nuke.Jenny Engstrom
A former nightclub dancer, Jenny awaits Flagg in Las Vegas with Ronnie and Hector and when he arrives, kisses his boots. She works for the group as a construction worker and becomes close friends with Dayna, who is confused by why such a nice person as Jenny is in league with the evil group. Jenny discovers Dayna's true purpose in Las Vegas and betrays her to Randall Flagg. Later, Whitney tells Lloyd that Jenny wants to flee the group. Flagg tells Lloyd that he knows the names of people who want to leave, including Jenny. She is present during the executions and is most likely killed when the crowd runs away but is likely caught in the explosion.Barry Dorgan
Barry Dorgan is a friendly former detective of the Santa Monica, CaliforniaSanta Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
Police. Although he sides with Flagg, he does so only because he thinks it is the only society with a chance of regaining a sense of law and order, although he eventually loses faith in this as well. One of the few mentally stable members of Flagg's police, he is one of the sentries who intercepts Larry, Glen, and Ralph, who are surprised by his sympathetic nature. He stands guard over Larry and Ralph shortly before their executions and is killed by the Trashcan Man's nuke.
"The Rat Man"
"Ratty" Erwins, a.k.a. The Rat Man, is a pirate-like hood. He is described as dressing like an Ethiopian pirate, with a red sash, a necklace of silver dollars around his "scrawny neck" and a sword he often threatened Larry Underwood and Ralph Brentner with. He also nicknamed Larry Underwood "Wonder Bread," and Brentner "Farmer John." He is described as "the only guy in Las Vegas too creepy [for Julie Lawry] to sleep with", in Julie's words, "except maybe in a pinch". He is likely killed in the explosion at the end of the book.Background
In his non-fiction book Danse MacabreDanse Macabre (book)
Danse Macabre is a non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, radio, film and comics, and the genre's influence on United States popular culture...
, Stephen King writes about the origins of The Stand at some length. One source was Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst
Patricia Campbell Hearst , now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber....
'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
George R. Stewart
George Rippey Stewart was an American toponymist, a novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley...
's novel Earth Abides
Earth Abides
Earth Abides is a 1949 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer George R. Stewart. It tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and its rebirth. Beginning in the United States in the 1940s, it deals with Isherwood "Ish" Williams, Emma, and the community they...
, which describes the odyssey of one of the last human survivors after the population is decimated 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 CBW 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 The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
-type story 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 RingsThe Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
, 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 Minutes60 Minutes60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
segment on CBW (chemical-biological warfare). 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 sheepDugway sheep incidentThe Dugway sheep incident, also known as the Skull Valley sheep kill, was a 1968 sheep kill that has been connected to United States Army chemical and biological warfare programs at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah...
(these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured). 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 RageRage (1972 film)Rage is a 1972 film starring George C. Scott, Richard Basehart, Martin Sheen and Barnard Hughes. Scott also directed this drama about a sheep rancher who is fatally exposed to a military lab's poison gas....
, starring George C. ScottGeorge C. ScottGeorge Campbell Scott was an American stage and film actor, director and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, and as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr...
, 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 FlaggRandall FlaggRandall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
. The land of MordorMordorIn J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth, Mordor or Morhdorh was the dwelling place of Sauron, in the southeast of northwestern Middle-earth to the East of Anduin, the great river. Orodruin, a volcano in Mordor, was the destination of the Fellowship of the Ring in the quest to...
('where the shadows lie,' according to Tolkien) was played by Las Vegas.
King nearly abandoned The Stand due to writers' 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 because He was dissatisfied with the heroes’ focus on petty politics, and not on the ultimate quest of destroying Flagg. When telling this story, King sardonically observed that the bomb saved the book, and that he only had to kill half of the core cast in order to do this.
Live-action
A movie adaptation of The Stand was in development hellDevelopment hell
In the jargon of the media-industry, "development hell" is a period during which a film or other project is trapped in development...
for 10 years. During the '80s Stephen King had planned a theatrical film, with George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
directing and himself writing, not trusting somebody else with the project. However writing a workable screenplay proved difficult, due to the novel's length. King talked about adapting it for television but was informed that the television networks did not "want to see the end of the world, particularly in prime time." Eventually King allowed screenwriter Rospo Pallenberg
Rospo Pallenberg
Rospo Pallenberg is a screenwriter. He was involved in the writing of the John Boorman films Exorcist II: The Heretic, Excalibur, and The Emerald Forest.-External links:...
, who was a fan of The Stand, to write his own adaptation
on the novel. Pallenberg's script would clock the film in at close to three hours while still staying true to the novel. Everyone liked the script; however, just as it was about to finally come together, Warner Brothers backed out of the project.
ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
eventually offered Stephen King the chance to make The Stand into a 6-hour miniseries for television. King wrote a new screenplay (toned down for television). The miniseries
The Stand (TV miniseries)
# Project Blue [1:33]# The Dream Begins [2:08]# On the Road to Kansas [3:57]# The Trashmen in Vegas [1:58]# Headin' West [1:56]# Larry & Nadine [2:38]# Mother Abigail [3:10]# 'Sorry Mister, I Don't Understand' [2:54]# Mid Country [3:22]...
was broadcast in 1994, directed by Mick Garris
Mick Garris
Mick Garris is an American filmmaker and screenwriter born in Santa Monica, California.-Biography:He is best known for his adaptations of Stephen King stories, such as directing the horror film Sleepwalkers starring Madchen Amick and is the creator of the Showtime series Masters of Horror...
and starring such actors as Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of...
, Molly Ringwald
Molly Ringwald
Molly Kathleen Ringwald is an American actress, singer and dancer. Having appeared in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles , The Breakfast Club , and Pretty in Pink , Ringwald has been frequently named the greatest teen star of all time...
, Rob Lowe
Rob Lowe
Robert Hepler "Rob" Lowe is an American actor. Lowe came to prominence after appearing in films such as The Outsiders, Oxford Blues, About Last Night..., St. Elmo's Fire, and Wayne's World. On television, Lowe is known for his role as Sam Seaborn on The West Wing and his role as Senator Robert...
, Miguel Ferrer
Miguel Ferrer
Miguel José Ferrer is an American actor and voice actor who is often cast as a villain. His notable roles include Bob Morton, a supporting character in RoboCop , the short tempered FBI agent Albert Rosenfield in Twin Peaks, and Dr...
, Laura San Giacomo
Laura San Giacomo
Laura San Giacomo is an American actress known for playing the role of Maya Gallo on the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me! and Kit De Luca in the film Pretty Woman, and Cynthia in sex, lies, and videotape as well as other work on television and in films...
, Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis was an American film actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist.-Early years:...
, Shawnee Smith
Shawnee Smith
Shawnee Smith is an American film and television actress and singer. Smith is best known for her roles as Amanda Young in the Saw films and Linda in the CBS sitcom Becker....
and Ed Harris
Ed Harris
Edward Allen "Ed" Harris is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, Radio, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, and The Truman Show. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies...
.
In January 2011, it was announced that Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and CBS Films
CBS Films
CBS Films is an American film production company founded in 2007, a feature film division of CBS Corporation. CBS Films is located on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles.-Company history:...
will be developing a feature length film adaptation of The Stand. There is currently no official release date. In July 2011 it was reported that the film may be a trilogy, and that David Yates
David Yates
David Yates is an English filmmaker who rose to mainstream prominence directing the final four films in the Harry Potter film series. He helmed the series' fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth installments, all of which became an instant blockbuster success and made him the most commercially...
is considering directing. On August 10, Warner Bros. has finalized the deal for Yates and Harry Potter
Harry Potter (film series)
The Harry Potter film series is a British-American film series based on the Harry Potter novels by the British author J. K. Rowling...
screenwriter Steve Kloves
Steve Kloves
Stephen Keith "Steven" Kloves is an Academy Award-nominated American screenwriter mainly renowned for his adaptations of novels, especially for the Harry Potter film series and for Wonder Boys...
to re-team for a multi-movie version of The Stand. However, in October of 2011, it was reported that both Yates and Kloves had left the project due to Yates feeling the project would work better as a miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
and that actor/direcor Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck
Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt , better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor, film director, writer, and producer. He became known with his performances in Kevin Smith's films such as Mallrats and Chasing Amy...
was Warner Bros. new choice for the project.
Comics
Marvel ComicsMarvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
is adapting The Stand into a series of six, five issue comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
miniseries
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
. The series is written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an American playwright, screenwriter and comic-book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics and for the HBO drama series Big Love.-Biography:...
and illustrated by Mike Perkins
Mike Perkins
Mike Perkins is a British comic book artist known for both his inking work and full art duties on comic books such as Captain America, Ruse and Stephen King's The Stand.-Career:Mike Perkins began drawing at a very early age...
. Colorist Laura Martin
Laura Martin
Laura DePuy is an award-winning colorist who has produced work for several of the major comics companies, including DC Comics, Marvel Comics and CrossGen.-Career:...
, letterer Chris Eliopoulos
Chris Eliopoulos
Chris Eliopoulos is an American cartoonist and letterer of comic books.-Early life:Eliopolous attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York City, from 1985–1989. He majored in graphic design and minored in illustration...
and cover artist Lee Bermejo
Lee Bermejo
Lee Bermejo is an American comic book artist whose published work includes interior illustrations and cover art. His career began in 1997 as an intern at Wildstorm...
are also confirmed to be on the staff. The first issue of The Stand: Captain Trips was released on September 10, 2008.
Music
Progressive rockProgressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
band Shadow Circus has created a series of songs about the main events in The Stand, and in whole the tracks come to a full 33-minute progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
epic titled "Project Blue". The tracks can be found on their latest CD Whispers and Screams and the track listing can be found in the audio portion of their website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
.
A more concise nod to The Stand has been recorded as the title track on the album Among The Living
Among the Living
Among the Living is the third studio album by American heavy metal band Anthrax. The album was released in March 1987 by Megaforce Worldwide/Island and is certified gold by the RIAA. The BBC has described the album as "arguably their big breakthrough", and "often cited by fans as their favourite...
by Anthrax
Anthrax (band)
Anthrax is an American heavy metal band from New York City, formed in 1981. Founded by guitarists Scott Ian and Danny Lilker, the band has since released ten studio albums and 20 singles, and an EP featuring Public Enemy. The band was one of the most popular of the 1980s thrash metal scene...
, a thrash/speed metal band whose love of King's work has been well documented.
A soundtrack to the mini-series was released at the same time of the ABC special four night broadcast. It contains the instrumental guitar music and orchestrations of "Snuffy" Walden and other artists.
In 1983, the alternative rock band The Alarm
The Alarm
The Alarm are an alternative rock band that emerged from North Wales in the late 1970s. They started as a mod band and stayed together for over ten years. As a rock band, they displayed marked influences from Welsh language and culture...
released the song, "The Stand," with lyrics directly inspired by the novel. The lyrics follow the travels of Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
, in much the same way The Rolling Stones had "Sympathy For The Devil."
See also
- Earth AbidesEarth AbidesEarth Abides is a 1949 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer George R. Stewart. It tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and its rebirth. Beginning in the United States in the 1940s, it deals with Isherwood "Ish" Williams, Emma, and the community they...
, an early post-apocalyptic novel which inspired King. - The Dark TowerThe Dark Tower (series)The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "Gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King...
series. The concept of the villain Flagg as an extradimensional evil or AntichristAntichristThe term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...
figure, capable of appearing in multiple later works of fiction by King, was introduced in The Stand. - The Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
, the epic fantasy trilogy that also inspired King. He said he wanted to recreate this with "an American setting." - Swan SongSwan Song (novel)Swan Song is a 1987 horror novel by American novelist Robert R. McCammon. It is a work of post-apocalyptic fiction describing the aftermath of a nuclear war that provokes an evolution in humankind.- Plot :...
, a later work of post-apocalyptic fiction by Robert R. McCammonRobert R. McCammonRobert Rick McCammon is an American novelist from Birmingham, Alabama. His parents are Jack, a musician, and Barbara Bundy McCammon. After his parents' divorce, McCammon lived with his grandparents in Birmingham. He received a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Alabama in 1974. McCammon...
that owes much to The Stand.