Stephen King's The Stand is a thrilling novel
that portrays
the forces of
good against evil. In the year 1991, a
plague
strikes America,
leaving only a few thousand people alive who are
"immune"
to the epidemic. Of the survivors, those
who serve G-d
instinctively
join in Boulder, Colorado, while those who worship
the "Dark
Man" are drawn to Las Vegas, Nevada.
The two groups
separately
re-build society, until one must destroy the other.
Franni Goldsmith comes very close to killing
herself. She
thinks she can
not deal with her parents' deaths, being unwed and
pregnant, and
having the only other survivor in her hometown of
Ogunquit, Main be
her recently deceased best friend's weird brother
Harold
Lauder. Fran puts aside her personal
feelings for Harold
aside, and goes
with him to the place in her dreams, to Boulder,
Colorado.
On their way, they meet up with six people from
various states
in the United
States who joined them on their journey.
Fran is
disturbed by her
dreams, as all of them are by their own.
She
dreams of an old
lady named Abigail, in Colorado. This
lady is
kind and loving
and promises to protect them from the evil.
In the
dreams there is
also a "Dark Man". He is
always there lurking,
waiting to
attack.
Harold admits to himself that he is in love
with Fran and goes
crazy when he
realizes how serious Fran has become with Stuart
Redman, one of
the newcomers to their traveling group.
Harold
becomes insanely
jealous and plots to separate them, even if it
means
murder.
Harold doesn't admit it to any of them, but his
dreams are
different from
theirs. In his dreams the "Dark
Man" offers Harold
power and
respect, something Harold could never imagine in the
past. Harold knows his destiny is to go to Las
Vegas.
The group arrives in Boulder, and soon after
are joined by
over one thousand
others who dreamt of Abigail and this place.
They inevitably
form a society where they settled and has meetings
to decide what
they would do about the "Dark Man".
Abigail tells
the people that
three of them, including Stuart, must be sent to
destroy the
"Dark Man". Meanwhile Harold
secretly leaves with the
"Dark
Man's" bride-to-be, Nadine, to Las Vegas.
Harold is ready to
kill Stuart, but
is killed instead by "the will of G-d". Nadine
makes it safely
to Las Vegas before Stuart and his two companions
are about to be
hanged. Out of the sky "the hand of
G-d" comes and
destroys the
"Dark Man" sparing the three men.
After much
hardship, Stuart
returns to Fran and her newborn son and together
they plant the
seeds of a new society.
The Stand is a book about human nature. It shows people's
inclination
toward good or evil. Mostly, it shows
how it is in
man's nature to
build society and to fight for his beliefs.
I
found this book
to be extremely entertaining because it was well
written and
somewhat realistic, despite it's supernatural aspects.
I would recommend this book for anyone who
enjoys roller coasters,
horror movies, or
a good old fashioned suspense novel.
Class:
10L2
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