vol. 10 issue 6
Fellow readers, how are you? We are — almost to the page — half way through The Stand. That being the case, it feels like a good time to take a half-step back, and look at the novel as we’ve found it thus far. What I’m saying is: a little less textual analysis this week; instead I want to return to an idea I brought up in our introductory issue.
You may recall that I pulled some quotes from King’s 1981 non-fiction work Danse Macabre, in which the author suggests that there is a deeply conservative, moral underpinning to the way in which horror fiction functions. To recap: that horror’s ‘main purpose is to reaffirm the virtues of the norm by showing us what awful things happen to people who venture into taboo lands’ (p442), and that readers take comfort in knowing ‘that the evildoers will almost certainly be punished, and measure will be returned for measure’ (p443). I suggested from the outset that this might be a useful framing for us to have in mind as The Stand unfolds. If you’ve been doing so, gold star for you.
I’d like to complicate things this week, here at the half way point, by suggesting that often Stephen King’s work does not function in this way. Take, for example, the questions I raised last issue, about whom the plague has spared and why. It remains an open question for us as readers, but we saw it addressed this week by Mother Abigail herself.
Let’s take a moment to think about our extended time spent with Abigail this week. We’ve known since we first perused the back cover of the novel, that she is set up to be the leader of one of the groups of survivors. And we have also known that in this way, as in others, she is the counter-balancing force to the novel’s antagonist: Randall Flagg. The religious overtones in this dichotomy are… not subtle. The novel stops short of casting Flagg as the Devil, but is not shy about belabouring the connection. In Abigail’s words:
‘He ain’t Satan,’ she said, ’but he and Satan know of each other and have kept their councils together of old. (p545)
Abigail’s own valence, of course, is just as plain to see. Her defining characteristic is her Christian faith, and her dedication to serving God’s will. So far, so black and white; so morally clear cut. But here’s where things get interesting. In some quite moving passages this week we gain insight into Abigail Freemantle’s true feelings about the lot God has assigned her. As we have learned more of her biography, we’ve seen all that Abigail has lost. And, given that she believes everything occurs in accordance with God’s will, she necessarily believes that these losses were not accidents: her children, her family home, and much else besides, has been taken from her by the God she loves.
‘Oh, Nick,’ Mother Abagail said, ’I have harbored hate of the Lord in my heart. Every man or woman who loves Him, they hate Him too, because He’s a hard God, a jealous God, He Is, what He Is, and in this world He’s apt to repay service with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars. Even the joy of serving Him is a bitter joy. I do His will, but the human part o me has cursed Him in my heart. (p552)
And, what’s more, Abigail is quite clear that her opposite number is also acting out the will of God:
all things serve the Lord. Don’t you think this black man serves Him, too? He does, no matter how mysterious His purpose may be. (p545)
How are we to read this within the frame of moral justice that King suggests is the horror novel’s hallmark? We must, of course, reserve our full judgment until we’ve seen how this story ends. But I’d like to suggest that elsewhere in King’s oeuvre he’s less committed to the moralistic project he identifies at work in the genre more widely.
This is somewhat tricky to do without spoiling important plot arcs in others of King’s works — which is something I’d like to refrain from. That said, think of one we’ve already discussed. In Revival (2014) — about which I wrote in issue four — the inciting incident that consigns a major character to a lifetime of misery, is a freak car accident. The fact that he is a preacher offers him no protection; not only is his faith tested and depleted, but by the end of the novel it is revealed to have been misplaced all along.
Perhaps one could argue that, by the time he wrote Revival, Stephen King knew first hand the random unfairness of a vehicular collision. But similar instances of random misfortune disrupting and destroying the lives of innocents occur throughout King’s work. As one example, consider the fate of the titular Saint Bernard in Cujo (1981): a good-natured dog until he is bitten by a rabid bat. There is no larger justice at play, and no moral lesson to be learned from Cujo’s story. Sometimes, these novels suggest, bad things just happen to good people.
This actually fits well with something else we understand about Stephen King’s preferences as an author. His aversion to plotting narrative arcs has about it a tinge of randomness. Of course, the ‘write down what the characters do’ method of storytelling doesn’t entirely bypass the author’s conscious influence, and — though his endings are one of the most oft-criticised elements of his fiction — King is not immune to the pull of trying to provide resolutions that feel honest and earned.
So, which is it to be in The Stand when then dust settles? From our current vantage point, it is difficult to conceive of an ending that might balance the scales after the erasure of 99% of the world’s human population (let alone all those blameless animals). Even on an individual level, we have seen enough characters die from random ailments like appendicitis to question whether anyone here will get what we might consider they deserve.
In fact, if we take one line of argument in The Stand to its logical conclusion, we find hints of quite a dark counterpoint to the ‘measure will be returned for measure’ way of thinking. The argument Frannie makes that ‘Women’s lib […] was nothing more nor less than an outgrowth of the technological society’ (p557) is startlingly regressive, and yet doesn’t go far enough. As we have seen laid bare time and again in the early post-collapse days, all of us as individuals are more-or-less wholly reliant upon the rules and structures of civilisation to protect, feed and nurture us, not to mention facilitate the ease and pleasures of our daily lives. There is a theme one can find elsewhere in King’s work, which goes something like this: civilisation is a shared illusion, engaged in willingly and almost universally, in an attempt to sublimate very real, primal forces that lay beneath it.
Is this view entirely incompatible with the Old Testament sense of justice that Mother Abigail may be anticipating? If she is correct that every piece on the board is moved by God’s hand, there should be lessons to be learned in the endgame, whether or not the events to come comport with our mortal sense of what is just.
One brief note on the ‘Complete & Uncut’ edition’s temporal placement, if I may. It amused me this week that one chapter made no fewer than four references to Roger Rabbit. The use of Roger as a simile suggests that, when revising the novel for re-publication in 1990, King considered that the 1988 Robert Zemeckis movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit would have a significant, lasting cultural legacy. Similar use is made of Donald Duck elsewhere in this week’s reading: a character that had been on screen since 1934, and which every man, woman and child in the western world knows well! Now, I adore Who Framed Roger Rabbit (the first episode of my podcast was about the film), but even I have to imagine that a majority of modern readers do not receive what King is trying to communicate when he casually references the manner in which Roger says ‘P-p-pleeeeze!’.
One of the potent pleasures of reading Stephen King across the decades, lies in discovering references to one work within another. Though The Stand is relatively early in King’s career, we still got an instance of this during the week’s reading: Mother Abigail explains her belief that everyone has a little prophetic ability, saying her grandmother ‘used to call it the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shine’ (p543). This, of course, is a reference to the psychic abilities at the centre of King’s previous novel (published the year before The Stand in the US), The Shining (1977).
By virtue of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation, and Jack Nicholson’s indelible performance therein, The Shining remains one of King’s most widely-known titles. And yet, if you’ve not read the original novel, you’re missing important parts of the story of the Torrance family’s stay at the Overlook Hotel. Famously, King himself was not a fan of the film — which, I note once again, somewhat disbelievingly, received a lukewarm reception from critics upon release — and oversaw a further adaptation, for television in the late 1990s. (It is not very good.)
I want to use my little soap box here to full-throatedly suggest you read The Shining, which remains both a superb haunted house story and a powerful allegory for the destruction wrought by alcoholism. Whilst I’m here, I also want to shout out that rare thing in King’s canon: a true sequel. Doctor Sleep, published in 2013, is a direct continuation of The Shining, which picks up the story with an adult Danny Torrance still struggling with his gift. It’s an excellent sequel, but makes very clear from the first chapter that it’s a follow-up to the novel not the movie. So… read both!
I’m signing off for the week. From the replies and messages I’m getting, my impression is that folks continue to enjoy the novel. I wonder whether you share my sense that, here at the halfway mark, we have reached the apex of the rollercoaster. If that’s correct, things only happen faster from here on out. So fasten your seatbelts, and I’ll write to you again on Sun 18 Aug, to discuss the novel up to the paragraph break on p700: ‘…and what a sorry sound they made’.
Until then.
✌🏻
— Adam
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