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The Stand | Stephen King

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While I'm never going to connect as closely to a story with biblical themes as someone with a Judeo-Christian religious background would, there's a lot that's human about this story, that benefitted from King taking his time, to develop not just the characters but their interrelationships.
It's ultimately a book about faith but also about choices, obviously I lean more to one than the other unless it's a faith in people, and I think that was 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? a key element.
What grabbed me were so many microcosms of the larger crisis, individuals and smaller groups trying to manage, figuring out how they could make things better or worse, where they stood on the spectrum of self-serving to communally beneficial action, and making those types of decisions again and again, without anything necessarily getting easier with each choice. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 3/? Less a Ted Talk manual to a new you, and more a recognition of new circumstances and what options were left and how a person could still do right, even amidst the inevitable shades of gray, even as superstition, fear, loom. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 4/? Trashcan Man's ending is both an incredible scene to read and amusing in turning the ideas of choice, of intention, of seeking versus ultimately attaining redemption or atonement, on their heads while still kind of managing to save the world in a fantastically grotesque fashion. It's giving Gollum energy, really. 1d

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Robotswithpersonality 5/? Thematically, nothing is more apparent than how often the larger battle between good and evil is, according to my cultural if not scriptural understanding, fought by the individual in their own mind (soul, heart, etc). 1d

Robotswithpersonality 6/? I do wish that the philosophical/sociological treatise from Glen Bateman made up a larger portion of the text, not to mention his wit, I honestly could see this type of book told with him as the main/a larger character in the story, as being a favourite. The argument could be that that would mean less plot, a slower-paced book, maybe I just need to read more non-fiction with such a focus. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 7/? Relatedly, it was refreshing to see the revolutionary views on society, gun control, WMDs, presented by the text.
There's some promising but vague world building around the idea of telepathy on a larger scale, somehow more evident in the population as the world gets depopulated and maybe magicked up.
1d

Robotswithpersonality 8/? On to the not so good: EVERY. SINGLE. WARNING I've ever thought to warn for in a book review applies here. Just, be warned, for all of it.
Definitely shows its age in the language, terms for disabilities we don't use anymore, slurs mostly out of the ignorant/evil characters' mouths, but I think most horror writers would still hesitate to be as cavalier on the page these days. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 9/? Messy intersection of representation versus damaging tropes full of ableism and racism.
See the Magical [Black Person] entry in the non-fiction book The Black Guy Dies First for the run down on Mother Abigail.
And RF reconstituted only to start working his mojo on a 'primitive people' at the end, yikes. 😬 1d

Robotswithpersonality 10/? Then we have Tom Cullen, the intellectually disabled person guided in and out of high stakes and lucidity by friends (and God?) via hypnosis and visions of a dead friend, Nick Andros, a deaf person, who ends up as angelic guide, who can of course hear and speak in dreams and visions, who himself starts as a major character and becomes a martyr before the final act. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 11/? Points for existing in the book as more than throwaway characters, but it feels like the very extraordinary ways that they are portrayed as 'overcoming' their disabilities and being flawlessly good people to a fault, is contributing to unrealistic standards and ableist thinking. (edited) 1d

Robotswithpersonality 12/? Regarding the portrayal of female characters, the two I would say who count as major are Frannie Goldsmith and Nadine Cross. No surprise, they're kind of polar opposites. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 13/? Frannie: I truly appreciate how she was introduced, that she was working out a difficult situation and standing on her own feet even when it upset everyone around her, before the plague started, I love the moment when her father took her side, I think her tender resolve around the burial of her father was equally impressive and heartbreaking.
It just makes me more frustrated that, largely attributed to pregnancy hormones, 1d

Robotswithpersonality 14/? when in Boulder, she is regularly portrayed as having a tendency to fuss about any situation, argue, grow upset in a way that prioritized her own concerns, conscience, and didn't actually help deal with situations. It heightened drama but it didn't do much for her character, and like Andros, her involvement evaporates as we enter the third act. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 15/? Nadine Cross: Also bears some really tiresome tropes, the mystic weight given to her virginity, the witchy nature and the identity as the dark man's intended, her use as a tool to seduce Harold to the dark side, it's hard to briefly articulate all the ways this doesn't feel very empowering. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 16/? Special mention goes to Dayna Jurgens, who exercised an ironclad resolve to get cozy with the enemy for intelligence even after the sexual violence she experienced, who had her bisexuality reduced to doubts about lesbianism within a page, who had a violent end so epic in its exercise of will that it's one of three moments that stuck with me 20 years after first reading this book.
She definitely did not get enough page time. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 17/? Overall this book is enough of a mixed bag that I am giddy to see how the various authors of today treat the material in this story from the late 70s in The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand, coming out later this month (though who knows when my library's 'on order' copy will be available 🤷🏼‍♂️). 1d

Robotswithpersonality 18/? Oh, and while I don't have a clear enough memory of the original to make a firm determination, I can say that I did not really find a drag in the pace of the Complete and Uncut version, though that probably has more to do with the two approaches of a) reading it a chapter a day while it ramped up and b) tandem reading and blowing through the last 300 pages with audio. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 19/? The audiobook read by a single narrator competently distinguishes character voices such that everything is clear at 2x speed, but I can only vouch for the experience from chapter 56 on. 💁🏼‍♂️ Considering the sheer number of characters overall, I don't know if you'd ever get a full cast, and I definitely think you need to at least tandem read. This would be a lot to take in with no print in front of your eyes. 1d

Robotswithpersonality 20/20 And there's a couple of ugly scenes I definitely had to skim with my eyes and would have been tricky to fast-forward though. 🤢

Whoa, 20 parts, I guess long books mean long reflections! 1d

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