The Stand is my favorite novel. For several years I would reread it every June (the story starts in June) but one thing I never got is why the disease in the story got the nickname Captain Trips. I imagine it was a reference that was too old for me to understand but I just never saw any connection between that term and the disease so why in the story did that become a nickname for it?
The meaning of the nickname is never revealed.
It was/is a nickname for Jerry Garcia, for reasons that are probably easy to guess. I wouldn’t necessarily assume that King used it as a tribute to him (some tribute, naming a deadly disease after someone), but then again, it’s a distinctive name.
I’m absolutely sure it was deliberate.
I’ve been vaccinated against Captain Trips.
I get that King chose the name and what it means in real life but within the context of the story the general public came up with it and it went viral before that was a ubiquitous term. But that’s the disconnect. I don’t get how they came up with it within that world. What about the flu makes someone give it that name? I guess there is no answer.
I’d presumed that “trips” was a variant of “trots” i.e. the runs.
Captain Trips always felt like a catchy, 70s-era kind of name that became applied and widespread before people realized just how bad it was. I admit I can’t come up with a firm philological explanation of the name, but it’s always felt intuitive in my half dozen or so readings of the book
It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book, so correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the symptoms include delirium or hallucinations?
It was a bad trip.
Have we forgotten our acid roots??
That’s what I’d think.
There was a short story called “Night Surf” in one of King’s collections that came out before The Stand, and it had “Captain Trips” in it. My interpretation at the time, when I first read the short story, was that it was just one of those trend-following but mostly nonsensical things that our culture is so rife with. People do what they see or hear other people doing, especially if it seems trendy, and they don’t need any other reason to participate. Certainly no need for it to make any particular sense.
I only know The Stand from cultural osmosis, but have heard about the Captain Trips disease name. My figuring is that something that invisibly takes over bodies and casually wipes out human culture is the Ultimate Experience.
Even if you live your world will be altered beyond recognition. It did to the human race what too much dirty acid did to some human minds.
It does get its name before it’s even remotely clear it’s going to wipe out human existence, but I can see where that would appeal.
Maybe it’s a cross between “trots” and “grippe”?
I had also assumed it had something to do with diarrhea but I see that isn’t one of the symptoms.
Tuberculosis was once known, because of its lethality across populations in and out of epidemics as ‘The Captain of these Men of Death’.
In the early modern era there were other personifications of infectious disease, which I think makes for a plausible origin story. Wracking my brains to remember them, but its kind of bound up with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, those beaky plague-doctors and blaming cats.