My feeling when I read the book( and I enjoyed most of the book quite a lot) was that King was being rather simpleminded. The people were following what was in themselves naturally. As in Nadine( Laura San Giacamo)she wanted to go to Boulder but ended up in Vegas all smashed up mentally for trying to fight the"evil" in herself.
I kept thinking as I was reading: What about the thousands of us loners who really don’t congregate and follow pop culture trends? Those of us that are basically good people but not comfortable in society but without the strong activistic leanings of the Boulder crowd. Would we all end up staring at each other from mountain tops?
I think the world has a lot more neutral in it than King is willing to accept. Either that or it was the neutral people who died…
Someone actually comments that there are a bunch of people out there hiding out and waiting for the God/Satan smackdown to end.
On the other hand, since King gave the Captain Tripps a 99.9(9?)% mortality rate, and since bunches of immune people died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, there ain’t all that many hold-outs.
Frankly, the way King described things and given what Glenn said, if you’re on the SDMB, you’d end up in Vegas: using the internet is using technology ( unless you’re on AOL, of course. <–JOKE! ) and remember, “technology is a deathtrip”. :rolleyes:
I really do like The Stand, and the first half of the book is insanely powerful and haunting and evokative, but when it comes down to it, I think Spider Robinson had it right when he reviewed the book and called it a “paen to ignorance”.
Yeah, by one grumpy old man, who was himself smug about most of the population being wiped out and only grieved for the dogs, who was quick to council suicide to a fallen comrade, and whose very name was a reference to his deathwish for humanity – which he worked to overcome.
Everyone else in Boulder was jubilant when Susan Stern and her squeeze got the electric plant running again.
I’d make my way to Colorado, myself. Clear the cordwood out of a nice three-storey house, plant corn in the front yard and herb in the back, build me a still, and take my pick of patchouli-smellin’ deadhead chicks that were drifting in.
Not only by Glenn: IIRC the narrator also comments that most of the techies* end up in Vegas. So Glenn and the narrator are in sync about that particular bit of nitwittery. And since the narrator’s not a character, we haveta trust him about what’s going on.
Fenris
*There’s also some comment about “rationalism” ending you up in Vegas too.
Oh, c’mon, Fenny, King just took the allegorical references to “worldy” things in his story… scientists and rational thinkers are the ones that turn away from God.
But look at some of the other characters. They’re intelligent. Stu has a very innate wit, a natural common sense. Nick is probably the smartest in the whole book, next to Tom.
The dividing line came down to whether or not people preferred to “rule” in Hell or to serve in Heaven (“rule” being in quotes because Flagg made them feel dominant over the Boulderites, despite them all being subservient to him). Flagg’s forces took and did only what was useful or beneficial to their little society, whereas Boulder was open to anyone.
Naw, the impression that Fenris got from the book* is the very same one I received from it as well. Rational techies went to Vegas while Boulder had a preponderance of groovy artists and teachers. King states it a number of times, not only in the words of Glenn Bateman, but also of his descriptions of the workings of the two societies: people of a rational, technological orientation are of a mindset to be duped into working for Evil, while those who are more creative and less organized in their lives will work for Good.
To answer the OP, I probably would’ve done well wherever I hooked up, but I would’ve chafed under Vegas’s restrictions.
If I could’ve lived somewhere else (and I probably wouldn’t, given that I prefer hot water and running refrigerators) I’d probably move to some lake in the mid-Atlantic states one that’s near a big city. There will always be the problem of bodies (remember that King got rid of a big chunk of the original population by having them flee because of a rumor), but one is just gonna have to accept their existence as a fact of post-plague life.
*i.e., Canon which the movie isn’t. IMHOBC, of course.
I loved the first half of the book; the buildup and depiction of the overwhelming disaster of Superflu were truly horrific and haunting. But then the supernatural stuff starts. In his book On Writing, King said that he wanted his heroes to abandon the technology-heavy American way of life and form a more “God-centered” society. Personally, I think that “God-centered” stuff is more responsible than technology for a good deal of human misery, and my ideal society would be pretty secular.
But if we accept the premise of the book, then as soon as the Superflu hits, all sorts of supernatural stuff starts to manifest itself. Suddenly everybody’s having telepathic dreams sent by either Flagg or Mother Abigail; both God and the Devil are manifesting themselves. My problem is that the “God” character in the book ain’t any god I’d care to worship. (For one thing, he apparently needs a nuclear warhead in order to destroy Vegas. I know the warhead is symbolic of our self-destructive technological sinfulness, but it’s kinda clumsy and obvious. And why the Hell does Trashcan Man have radiation poisoning?)
So, I’m not a Godfearing Luddite, yet I’d want to help take down Flagg. The character I’m closest to (Tony, if I recall the name right) gets blown up. So there you are. I think I’ll write my own epic novel.
Also meant to add that, for me, the miniseries earned big points for two scenes: the early scene where the camera moves through the research center full of suddenly dead people, to the sound of “Don’t Fear the Reaper”; and the scene with Larry Underwood sitting on the hood of a car in a stationary traffice jam of dead drivers, with an entire city burning in the distance behind him as he plays a guitar and sings “Eve of Destruction”.
If you mean why, physically, does he, it’s because he spent hours wrestling with a nuclear warhead. He wasn’t wearing any protective gear, if that would even have helped with such prolonged exposure, and the whole building was probably irradiated to some degree.
If you mean why, logically, was he at the nuclear storehouse in the first place, well, we knew all along that that character was going to do Something Big and Bad. One of my favorite scenes, actually.
But that’s what I’m talkin’ about. There shouldn’t be any significant radiation in a nuclear warhead storage facility. Or did he get it off an ICBM or cruse missile? I don’t remember, but either way, there shouldn’t be any exposed radioactive material around. Just a little gratuitous melodramatic touch, I think. And, of course, Flagg is hoist by his own petard when Trashy actually brings a nuke back to town and God Almighty, Creator of the Universe, takes advantage of the opportunity.
I agree completely with this. The first half of the novel is fascinating with its juxtaposition of the horror of the superflu with the almost exhilirating freedom it gave to the survivors. The Stand is a novel that really invited the reader to imagine what he or she would do in a suddenly vacated America with all the amenities still in place. It was also a very intriguing study of the responses of a multitude of very well drawn characters. Then he had to go and bung it up with a bunch of supernatural nonsense complete with a simplistic, moralistic “God vs Devil” dramatic climax. It’s one of King’s weaknesses as a writer that he really has a very pedestrian religious ethos in his stories.
I would have rather seen the supernatural stuff left out of it and just made it about people reforming a society after the plague. I believe a dramatic arc could have been created by having an intially utopian Boulder-type community becoming beset with the same human conflicts that killed everyone in the first place.
I couldn’t have lived in Boulder. I have no use for a theocracy and Mother Abigail was too much of a relgiostic nut for my taste.
I wouldn’t have wanted to get crucified either, so screw Vegas. I’d have probably just gone south somewhere and lived by myself. Hopefully my wife and daughter would have survived as well. but if not I would try to find another woman somehow, or at least some human companionship. They couldn’t have all gone to Boulder and Vegas.
(Pardon my lack of specific names, it’s been a few years since I last read the book.)
Well, we know that there were obviously survivors in other countries. There’s no reason why there wouldn’t have been. I think Flagg mentions them at one point.
We know that some people resorted to general evilness even outside of Vegas. Remember the slavers?
We know that some people made themselves plenty comfortable on their own (whassisname who had the beer in the stream).
My guess is that only a small percentage of the survivors were actually called to either place, and the rest were left to fend for themselves.
I know darn well that I’d die trying to look after myself in the weeks after the superflu. But hypothetically…well, hell, I just don’t know. I can’t see myself getting caught up in the God trip, on the other hand, I’m a huge technophobe…guess I’ll just have to wait until the dreams start.
There is no way I’d end up in Vegas, and not because I’m so good. Vegas on its best day reeks of nauseating waste to me. It was fun to visit for a few days, but it made me very uncomfortable, even without the malign presence of Flagg. Colorado, otoh, is the only place I’d like to live besides the Northeast, so on that level, it’s a no-brainer.
I’m also as far from a techie as possible, and living in a community like the one Mother Abigail founds seems pretty idyllic to me. I think I’d like it there. Also, the fact that I don’t take well to following orders and am generally not in favor of being subject of a dictatorship, even if said dictatorships gets the lights on or the trains running on time, makes me an ideal candidate for Boulder.
) and remember, “technology is a deathtrip”. :rolleyes: