Review - The Stand

Another one of my reviews from Amazon. Absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.

The Stand
by Stephen King

An incredible post-apocalyptic journey, September 7, 2007

It's easy to be drawn deeply into this book, to feel so connected to the characters that to finish it is a kind of death. I still feel slightly depressed and it's been about a week since I finished it. King is constantly underrated and glossed over by elitist critics (such as Master Snob Harold Bloom, who never published any fiction worth reading), but this novel is truly a masterpiece and deserves respect. You know the plot - a superflu kills 99% of the population. The survivors migrate west to Colorado and Vegas, attempting to rebuild society, trying to figure out the meaning of their collective dreams. What is the "good" dream really about? Who is the "dark man"?

King created several strong characters. Among my favorites are Glen, Tom, Nadine, and Kojak; I still grieve for Nadine, Harold, and Trashcan Man, all clever and pathetic in their own ways - and I believe many readers can sympathize with them. Trashcan Man began to thrive in Vegas, only to regress to his former ways and thought patterns because of a random comment made by a person from his new life. You can feel on top of the world, feel as if you're "fixed"...until you hear those words again, which trigger painful memories ("unquiet corpses come back to life"), and you might lose all progress made up to that point. You realize how fragile you are, and this can be terrifying.

Nadine and Harold are both disturbed souls, though Harold is driven more by revenge and Nadine is driven by evil. Nadine is tormented by and attracted to the dark man, but she is also drawn to Larry, who is desperate to make the right choices this time around to atone for his pre-plague life of darkness. The lines "Only this time the boy would catch her. She would let him catch her. It would be the end. But when he had caught her, HE HADN'T WANTED HER" are ones I can imagine Nadine replaying in her head as she travels over the mountains. She mourns for lost chances, acceptance, and goodness as she yields to her fate.

Along with the powerful theme of good vs. evil, a number of characters sacrificed themselves (for good and evil), seeked redemption, and many "innocents" were rewarded (such as Tom and Kojak). And remember that the devil is not all-knowing, but he does not want anyone to know this.

This novel really makes you think about the end of the world, and whether you would stand for good or evil. King, the dark genius, describes the growth of evil:

"Far away over the mountains was another cloned creature. A cutting from the dark malignancy, a single wild cell taken from the dying corpus of the old body politic, a lone representative of the carcinoma that had been eating the old society alive. One single cell, but it had already begun to reproduce itself and spawn other wild cells. For society it would be the old struggle, the effort of healthy tissue to reject the malignant incursion. But for each individual cell there was the old, old question, the one that went back to the Garden - did you eat the apple or leave it alone?"

The plague gave humanity another chance. They could build a superior society, choosing not to repeat mistakes from the past, or they could throw away this great opportunity to start over by giving in to the old ways. This chance is so rare that to waste it would be the worst mistake. And yet, inevitably, humans cannot be "good." The dark is too tempting, too consuming, and will always exist.