The Stand Official Discussion Thread

I actually decided to move the summaries to a separate thread and took out all my personal commentary for the most part. This one is for discussion, the other one is for summaries. Feel free to jump in on either thread; I'm glad to summarize the chapters but if someone else wants to, or find mine lacking and want to add more, please feel free.

There is one reference from Larry that cracks me up...if I recall correctly. Doesn't he refer to a blow job he got as being 'gobbled'? I might be thinking of another book but I laughed my ass off when I read that part

*laughs* Yes, he was 'eaten alive by Sandra D' iirc. That whole interaction was funny; just the fact that she was an oral hygenist was the icing on the cake.

I did think it was interesting that 'You ain't no nice guy' haunted him for so long...it's a double negative, that means he -is- a nice guy!

I think Larry is one of the most interesting people to read just because he has such a warped sort of self awareness. He makes an interesting counterpoint to Lloyd; the superflu made men of them both, though in vastly different directions.

Oddly enough, even after reading The Stand so many times, I'm still not sure if I -like- Larry. I don't think he's the 'no nice guy' he thinks he is, but he's not close to my heart the way Nick is and he doesn't make me smile and nod the way Stu and Glen do. I think his interactions with the Judge help us to see his character outside of the cloud of guilt and self flagation he typically surrounds himself with and I wish we had been able to see more of his relationship with Lucy.

That said, in many ways he's the most 'human' of the characters. I like that he's a deeply flawed mess.

Just posted summaries up through chapter 8 and thought it was time to step back and see where we are, what there is to discuss, and so on.

Since I wrote a little about Larry I thought I would talk about the other characters a little bit too. I’ll stick with the ones we’ve already met in my summary posts up to this point and add more later on.

Stu

I liked Stu from the beginning, though I think some of that has to do with the actor who played him in the movie to be honest. I enjoy reading from his point of view because he provides a nice even temper and fair mindedness as well as a good amount of clever charm. I also believe, though, that the depth of his personality is explored in his relationships with other characters, so it’s a little early to talk a whole lot about him other than to say he’s a cool ‘old time tough’ sort of guy.

Fran

I’m not crazy about Fran; I think she’s whiny and she gets on my nerves. That said, I think she has one of the most creative points of view and I like reading her parts for that interesting perspective with a thought process so similar to my own, particularly the constant stream of puns and bad jokes. She is also an inappropriate laugher, which reminds me of myself to some extent.

Regardless of my personal feelings, I do think her viewpoint benefits the story and The Stand would be a vastly different book without her. She is much later described as the moral compass of the group and I think this is true to some extent.

What I thought was interesting about the Stand was its lack of children. With King there's at least 1 main character that's under or around the age of 12. Maybe I'm not recalling it or maybe Nick is King's version of a child. He's pure and good, like all children at the age of 12.

I always loved that about King though. He loves kids, is his crazy sort of way, but he holds them in such high regard. Maybe The Talisman was his version of the Stand.

There's arguably three children in The Stand.

Tom Cullen - while he may be 30+, he has the mind of a ten year old (or less)
The feral kid (Joe in the miniseries). He's not so much a main character, though, but iirc he finds Mother Abigail when she returns to Boulder.
Fran's baby

I slipped this over to the discussion thread (in hopes of livening it up ).

*nods* I would agree Joe/Leo isn't so much of a main character...there's little told from his point of view and I feel he kind of fades away after he serves his purposes. *thinks* He's very...utilitarian in a way. I do think he was an essential part of Larry Underwood's transformation.

Tom Cullen...yeesh, I'm wary of describing mentally retarded adults as children so that might color my thoughts on that issue. I do, however, think it's interesting to note who calls him a 'boy' and who calls him a 'man' in the book. I also think that King does not treat that character like a child, but then I feel King is very good at writing children and young adults as thinking and independant entities.

And yes, how could I forget Fran's baby. What with the relentless shrill 'my baby!' hysteria in all of Fran's pov chapters. Now I'm sitting here trying to figure out why it is that I'm so unsympathetic toward her and wondering what would have made her more likeable to me. But that's for another post, this one is about children and we can't leave out the entire future of all of human civilization (or so Fran would have us believe of her baby.)

I have been reading but as of yet don't have anything interesting to add. I did find the recurrance of Larry's song and the things that people told him to be interesting. It wasn't just the one woman but also his mother and his not so close friend, all of whom said in one form or another that when it came down to it that he'd do what he needed to survive. It would be him first and therefore he wasn't a nice guy.

His relationship with Rita was interesting to me because it seemed to contradict that sentiment but then at the end he wouldn't/couldn't bring himself to bury her which seemed like a simple act of kindness.

So...any new Stephen King thoughts???

One thing that I found interesting about the part of the book where people were sort of choosing which camp to be in was the idea that very...morally average people ended up on both sides of the fence. Sometimes it seemed like ending up with Mother Abigale or Flagg was as much luck and geography as a moral choice. I suppose we're so used to hearing about what the extremists are up to that this was kind of a realistic, and refreshing, approach to how people would align themselves in this situation. How many people make an active choice to, say, belong to a religion, or live in a certain state, rather than letting their upbringing and chance decide for them? At the same time it's horribly sad to think that all these regular people just minding their business get sucked into a war they really have little interest in.

Yeah, but isn't that the way it works? How many people in Iraq, Rwanda, Afghanistan, or whatever are actually that involved in the war effort in anything but a verp passive way? I'm quite sure the rural goat herder of Afghanistan feels rather put out when the F-16s drop bombs and tear up his pastures, but other than that, I doubt he considers the whole thing in any serious moral/philosophical way.

The Stand is a GREAT example of how we should work to make those choices, and why. Sure Flagg had trains that ran on time, but at what cost? Your life could be easier in Nevada, it had no crime, no alcohol or drug abuse to speak of, and the electricity back on...but the streets weren't paved with good intentions, they were lined with crucifixes...

Just something to ponder.