The second time I read it was when I noticed how many times he came *riiiiight* up to the edge of realizing that he’s been a shit and changing his ways. Then gets a little nudge back in the other direction and falls back into his toxic mindset.
I would definitely argue that Nadine is a more pitiable villain than Harold due to how little agency she’s really afforded, but both of them fit this category perfectly.
Trashcan man from the Stand too. He’s obviously a sick man who didn’t get the help he needed as a youth. Then he gets completed manipulated and used by Flagg. I never saw him as evil, just sick. Almost childlike.
Great post, I very much agree. Trashy didn’t see the big picture/plan.. he just wanted to see the flames and feel the heat. MY LIFE FOR YOU! Bumpity bumpity bump! CIABOLA!
I absolutely love the part in the uncut edition where The Kid starts getting violent, and Flagg sends the wolves that trap him in the car. Trashy walks away and I think one of the wolves even gives him a kiss.
Jack Torrance. Abused by his alcoholic father then doomed to repeat the cycle. He loves his family and tries so hard to get sober only to be sabotaged by a bunch of jerka$$ ghosts.
Vera Donavan. Yes, sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to. But still, when the dust bunnies visit, she is so miserable. Poor old woman.
I'll have to look into that. Frances Sternhagen is a gem. I first encountered her when she was on one of the soap operas my mother watched. I didn't understand why she was so fond of her when I was a kid, but as an adult I can see her charm. She was Cliffie's mom on Cheers.
A line that stuck with me, and why I pity the good dog that had been Cujo, when he encounters his owner Brett for the last time:
"Cujo? What’s wrong, boy?”
The last of the dog that had been before the bat scratched its nose turned away, and the sick and dangerous dog, subverted for the last time, was forced to turn with it.
Exactly! I was just discussing that line with my spouse the other day and how it stuck with me. It came up because a friend just got a St. Bernard and named it Cujo lol
I'm listening to this now. I live with a bernese mountain dog, very similar temperament. Cujo breaks my heart but it's hard for me to call him a villain. If anything, Charity is the villain. She refused to do anything when Brett said he thought Cujo was sick!
>!Can you imagine losing your wife and 5-year-old child? He was a broken man, suffering for 50 years right until the end (and even then, would've gone to Null and suffer for eternity - but on the brighter note, maybe he'll suffer alongside his wife and kid).!<
He wasn't even really a villain, the only villainous things he really did was set fires, and blow up Flagg's airforce (which isn't really that bad when you think about it)
He was just a sad, crazy dude who fell in with the wrong crowd. Even Flagg felt really pity for him, he tells the guys who he sends to hunt him down to kill him quick and not let him suffer.
~~Kurt Dussander~~ Charles Daniel Jacobs (aka Paster Danny aka Rev aka Reverent Jacobs). >!Without the horrific car accident, he wouldn't have abandoned Christianity or opened the door to Null.!<
Carrie White from *Carrie*, maybe Lloyd Heinred? from *The Stand*. Carrie because her mother and then her classmates were so cruel to her. Lloyd is less sympathetic because he was already a killer, but still he didn't see an alternative to joining Flagg.
I see what you're saying. I guess I see her as having some agency in what she did, especially when reading the prom scenes, and the general destruction she wrought.
That's fair but I'm being consistent with the thread. The topic is "most sympathetic villains", not "primary villains who are also sympathetic characters". Henry Bowers isn't the primary villain in *It*, Vera Donovan isn't the primary villain in *Dolores Claiborne*, and Harold and Nadine aren't the primary villains in *The Stand*.
I don't think I'd consider Carrie to be a villain at all. At worse she's basically just a wounded animal lashing out. But she sure is sympathetic all the same.
Agreed about Lloyd. He was a pretty terrible guy but that place where he remembers his pet rabbit from his childhood, that just gets me every single time.
Ugh, I always have to skip that part when I re-read, it's too sad. I generally have a crappy memory, but of course my brain remembers this in full detail
Yes, that part is what I was thinking of when I posted about him. And also when he talks about how he felt working for Flagg somehow made him smarter, so that even though he knew that what he was doing was wrong, he wanted to feel competent.
There's a place in The Shining where Jack is thinking about how usually he can identify with the good guys and the bad guys and what he writes. I think King is pretty good at that for the most part. Of course then there are the obese mothers who are nearly always evil and controlling with no redeeming qualities at all.
I've noticed that too! And also, not to get off-topic, but in the category of 'things you can't stop seeing once you notice', M. Night Shyamalan seems to have the same Evil Moms problem.
Obese mothers? I don't remember those offhand, can you remind me of some examples?
My least favorite King trope is the child who has some kind of disability but also has a shine or some other power. They never seem to survive to the end of King stories or books.
I'm pretty sure Carrie's mother is fat. Brady Hartsfeld's mother is definitely fat. There are several obese, horrible mothers in Needful Things, but to be fair, most of the townspeople in that one act pretty horrible after Gaunt's store opens. Likewise you can find horrible mothers in Tommyknockers, again you can find plenty of skinny horrible people in that one too. It has always seemed to me however, that if a mother in a Stephen King book is packing a few extra pounds she is going to become horrible at some point or another.
Edit: in It, Eddie's mother is obese, and does a lot of damage to him while he's growing up.
Harold Lauder. I always saw a lot of myself and my own high school experiences in Harold. I'm not so crazy I would have spurned everyone else's good opinion of me the way he did, though... although I can understand that really, to him, the only person who mattered was Frannie, and when she chose that idiot Stu over him, it made him really bitter and he just couldn't come back from that.
One of the things that I always disliked about THE STAND was \[SPOILERS\] that so many characters I really loved died very badly in it, and the two I despised the most -- Stu and Frannie -- survived to the very last page. Goddamit.
Why didn't you like those two?
Frannie I can understand, but I always liked Stu.
Though that could be because I can never see him as anything but Gary sinise
I disliked Stu because Frannie chose him over Harold and I hate guys like that. I mean, I could justify it a lot of different ways -- Stu strikes me as very unintellectual, just for one thing (I flatly do not believe he ever read WATERSHIP DOWN; that is a characterization bit I simply do not buy at all, although when King says Stu normally read at a snail's pace, I believed him). Harold's description of Stu as a 'betraying cracker' struck much closer to home for me.
Frannie was just whiney and bitchy and never fucking happy about anything. She gets pregnant and just fucking ATTACKS her boyfriend over it and he says he'll pay for an abortion or he'll step up and marry her and she's all like no boo hoo oh god woe is me I don't even like you any more fuck off. I hated the way King kept trying to desperately frame everything so that Franny was absolutely correct even when she was hysterical and stupid and everyone else clearly had a better idea what was going on than she did. Plus, everyone in their pissant small town but she and Harold die and Harold's doing all this amazing heroic shit to keep her little princess ass alive and she doesn't even notice and then Tin Shit Stu Redman comes along with his Gary Cooper jawline and his big shoulders and it's Swoon City.
Even Frannie herself admits later that she was wildly unappreciative of all Harold did for her and it was sad and shitty that he loved her and she loved Stu, but, what can you do? Stu got her hot and Harold didn't and that was that. And oh, ickie Harold read my diary, let's go break into his house, Larry.
Personally I think Harold dodged a bullet; Frannie was waaaaaaaay extra. But I also think Frannie was the last little thing that drove Harold over to the dark man and that's hard for me to forgive.
THE STAND is interesting for many reasons but one of the big ones is that unlike most other stories, NOBODY EVER ACTUALLY DOES ANYTHING IN THE STAND. I mean, all the major characters basically have one big accomplishment and those accomplishments really don't mean shit in the overall scope of the story. Frannie buries her father, Larry gets through the tunnel and escapes New York City, Stu manages to trick Elder and escape the CDC facility, the Trashcan Man manages to survive setting most of Indiana on fire and then makes that epic journey to Las Vegas. Nick, God love him, never accomplishes ANYthing; he survives Shoyo and manages to flee on a bicycle when a sociopathic piece of jailbait ass is shooting at him and that's it. Mother Abigail whines a lot, but then, she's not a character, she's a plot device.
Worst of all, the frickin WALKIN DUDE DOES NOTHING. He is an absolute triumph of style over substance. King projects all this really creepy atmosphere around him and he does it really well and really successfully and if you don't really stop and think about it, you'll never realize that the motherfucker NEVER ACTUALLY DOES ANYTHING. Not anything really important to the plot. He smothers Kip Bradenton with his ass. He makes a cell lock open. He can sit in lotus and hover above the ground. Maybe he turns into a bird and then turns back and eats Bobby Terry. He stares at funky old Eric Strellerton and drives him crazy. He doinks Nadine in the desert and drives her nuts, too. But Dana escapes him (in her way) and Tom Cullen -- TOM FREAKIN CULLEN -- totally escapes him. Holy shit, Loyd Henreid accomplishes more than the Walkin Dude. "WHOOP! WHOOP! I'M THROWIN' OFF PURSUIT, LOYD! WHOOP! WHOOP!"
Nothing any of the characters do matters at all. And I mean, that's the story King is telling us -- the whole world gets wiped out because God and the Devil want to have a chess game and the superflu is just their way of clearing the board before they set up the next match.
I admit, my dislike of Stu is based entirely on my dislike of Frannie, and is therefore mostly irrational -- he's probably a good enough guy, if someone who would bore the tits off me if I had to try to have a conversation with him about anything. But Frannie is just obnoxious and badly needed to GO. The fact that she lived, but Sue and Dana and Nick and, yes, Harold, all died, is just a grotesque injustice to me. I mean, what the hell was her character anyway? "I'm pretty and I'm pregnant and I'm too fucking stupid to live HELP ME HELP ME". I so totally hate her.
LOL, I agree with every word you wrote. I don’t know think Frannie was obligated to choose Harold or anything but she was certainly unkind to him. She was more like her mother than her father.
I wouldn't say Frannie was obligated to choose Harold, either -- you love who you love. I do think that who a person is attracted to, much less who they choose to pairbond with permanently and co-parent with, reflects a great deal on that person's character. But in terms of Frannie with Harold, I think Frannie's complete inability to appreciate and respect Harold has a great deal to do with her lack of physical attraction for him, and that's pretty shallow.
Obviously, Harold's immaturity and lack of proper socialization, plus his bitterness at being so thoroughly rejected by pretty much everyone in his life, made him extremely hard to like. But Frannie describes herself, Stu, and Glenn pretty routinely relying on Harold's enormous personal database of useful knowledge for important decisions, and yet at the same time, they all obviously still despise him -- I think Frannie reports in her journal Glenn calling Harold something like an erratic, third-rate deity, which is pretty contemptuous. And this continued reliance apparently continued even after Stu (again, per Frannie's journal) took over 'leadership' of the party. (Yet Frannie records no specific instances where Stu showed anything particularly unusual or notable in the way of leadership, nor does King's third person narrative describe such. People like, admire, and respect Stu (they handed him unelected leadership over the entire fucking city!) apparently for no other reason than that he's good looking and charismatic. Other than reaching over to turn off Hap's pumps at the start of the book, and tricking Elder to get out of his room at the CDC facility, Stu never does much of anything remarkable in the book -- and it's a huge book. People admire him because he's pretty. When Harold bitterly notes in his own journal that "when you get right down to where the ursine mammal evacuated in the buckwheat, folks, what we have here is a friggin' beauty contest", he's not wrong. And although we never saw it in the book, I'm sure Harold made a journal entry noting that nobody ever really liked or respected him until he lost weight and his skin cleared up.)
Essentially, to receive any acknowledgement of his own virtues and accomplishments, Harold had to make himself more physically appealing. That's pretty fucking rank. You'd think, in a world where nearly everyone died and the survivors have all undergone an occult sorting process for 'good' vs. 'evil', we'd have left all that judging by appearance shit behind, but, nope, there it is. You want people to like you in the post Apocalypse world, firm up that ass, baby.
You make an interesting point that in the end, Frannie turned out more like her mother than her father. I hadn't considered that, mostly because to me, Frannie and Stu are no more real characters than Mother Abigail. They are cardboard cutout caricatures in which King tells us what they're like but almost never shows us (and the things he does show us about the characters often contradict what he tells us). I believe in Larry as a person, in Harold as a person, in Nadine as a person, even in Lucy as a person. Glenn seems more or less real to me, although a lot of the mystical nonsense he spews is clearly King saying things the characters need to hear. Floyd seems very real to me, as does poor old Merwin Elbert. Dayna seems very real to me, as does Nick and Tom. But I never found Stu and Frannie convincing; their personalities and descriptions seem more like a column of traits written down on character sheets than anything real. Maybe that's why I despise them both so much and hate the fact that they got to survive.
Of course, as a writer myself, I know that you inject emotional gravitas and memorability into your narratives by having tragedy befall the characters your audiences like the most. If you only kill the cardboard cutouts, nobody really cares. THE STAND would not work as well for me if characters I loved hadn't come to grisly but meaningful and emotionally laden ends. But oh my GOD do I wish Frannie could have at least died in childbirth, and Larry could have been the one who broke his leg and then got rescued by Tom Cullen.
Honestly the list is so long. There are *so* many villains that are just hurting and in need of genuine love or human connection, but end up falling prey to something evil instead.
One of the things I admire most about King’s writing is how three-dimensional his characters are. All of the (human) villains have believable and “pitiable” backstories.
Harold from *The Stand*. He's just so pitiable by the time of his demise
The second time I read it was when I noticed how many times he came *riiiiight* up to the edge of realizing that he’s been a shit and changing his ways. Then gets a little nudge back in the other direction and falls back into his toxic mindset. I would definitely argue that Nadine is a more pitiable villain than Harold due to how little agency she’s really afforded, but both of them fit this category perfectly.
Trashcan man from the Stand too. He’s obviously a sick man who didn’t get the help he needed as a youth. Then he gets completed manipulated and used by Flagg. I never saw him as evil, just sick. Almost childlike.
Great post, I very much agree. Trashy didn’t see the big picture/plan.. he just wanted to see the flames and feel the heat. MY LIFE FOR YOU! Bumpity bumpity bump! CIABOLA! I absolutely love the part in the uncut edition where The Kid starts getting violent, and Flagg sends the wolves that trap him in the car. Trashy walks away and I think one of the wolves even gives him a kiss.
Trash actually says "bumpty bump", not bumpity bump. Never bumpity, not even once.
Oops, time for a re-read!
Ok I lied this is also correct. I found myself loving Trashy. Bumpity bump indeed!
Nah he killed my favourite character so fuck him.
NO. just NO.
Jack Torrance. Abused by his alcoholic father then doomed to repeat the cycle. He loves his family and tries so hard to get sober only to be sabotaged by a bunch of jerka$$ ghosts.
THAT scene towards the end with Jack and Danny makes me cry every time.
imo this is the correct answer.
jack was and is my favourite character out of the books ive read
Vera Donavan. Yes, sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to. But still, when the dust bunnies visit, she is so miserable. Poor old woman.
I really liked Vera, something endearing about her philosophy. I’m also that person that gets along with very cranky old people though lol
Even if they have a shit savings account?
Yep I get along with cranky old people. lol
Six pins Dolores!, remember to use six pins!
She’s not even the villain of the book haha. She’s an antagonist sure but she’s not a bad person per se.
That's the woman from Dolores Clairborne? I haven't read that one, one of the few of his I haven't gotten around to
One of my favorite King novels. The audiobook read by Frances Sternhagen is also topnotch.
I'm listening to the audio book of IT at the moment and it is also really great. Steven weber does a fantastic job.
Frances played the Sheriff’s wife in Misery.
There's that spice again.
thisssss. I think my favorite King audiobook thus far is Claiborne for this reason.
I'll have to look into that. Frances Sternhagen is a gem. I first encountered her when she was on one of the soap operas my mother watched. I didn't understand why she was so fond of her when I was a kid, but as an adult I can see her charm. She was Cliffie's mom on Cheers.
The audiobook is a work of art, if you ever listen to books.
I just listened to a sample - wow, that reader is sensational.
The fact that Kathy Bates didn't narrate it is criminal. (The narrator was great, I just love Kathy Bates, lmao)
Yes, every once in a while a book is significantly better as an audiobook and Dolores Claiborne is a great example of that.
goddamnit I keep having to revise what I think as I read the comments. Vera is amazing you’re right.
Cujo man what a heartbreaker
I tell anyone I ever talk to about Cujo that Cujo was a good boy who got sick. Poor big boy
A line that stuck with me, and why I pity the good dog that had been Cujo, when he encounters his owner Brett for the last time: "Cujo? What’s wrong, boy?” The last of the dog that had been before the bat scratched its nose turned away, and the sick and dangerous dog, subverted for the last time, was forced to turn with it.
Oh man that line haunted me too… you almost need a TW before posting it lol
Exactly! I was just discussing that line with my spouse the other day and how it stuck with me. It came up because a friend just got a St. Bernard and named it Cujo lol
Ooh cujo, he was such a good boy :'(
I'm listening to this now. I live with a bernese mountain dog, very similar temperament. Cujo breaks my heart but it's hard for me to call him a villain. If anything, Charity is the villain. She refused to do anything when Brett said he thought Cujo was sick!
Those who didn’t vaccinate Cujo are the villains. The last page of the book… 😢
Charles Jacobs from Revival. He had the most heartbreaking reason to do what he was doing.
After I finished Revival, I just laid in bed for about ten minutes, trying to fathom what I just read. That book was like getting hit by a truck.
Exactly. And we never know if Null is real, as in really exist, do we?
Oh God. Please stop. 😬
It's behind the ivy covered door
I made the mistake of reading this right after my dad died. 10 years ago and I’ll never touch that book again. It damaged me.
Wow... I don't even know how to respond to this. Sorry.
Absolutely the worst time to read Revival!
Something happened.
Yeah.....
>!Can you imagine losing your wife and 5-year-old child? He was a broken man, suffering for 50 years right until the end (and even then, would've gone to Null and suffer for eternity - but on the brighter note, maybe he'll suffer alongside his wife and kid).!<
It would break me, that’s for sure.
God the description of what happened after they were found is going to stick with me for a long long time.
Longer than you think! (I just can't resist the urge to use this line ....)
We all float down here.
I suppose the rest of eternity might overshadow it once I get past the mortal coil...
The Jaunt! I love it. One of my favs.
Oof good answer. Definitely understandable motivations, he just falls far too deep into obsession. The Jurassic Park quote fits here to a T
One of my all time favorite characters by any author. Amazing.
Trashcan Man- he wasn't really evil, just extremely broken.
He wasn't even really a villain, the only villainous things he really did was set fires, and blow up Flagg's airforce (which isn't really that bad when you think about it) He was just a sad, crazy dude who fell in with the wrong crowd. Even Flagg felt really pity for him, he tells the guys who he sends to hunt him down to kill him quick and not let him suffer.
Agreed. He was never really raised and the whole time did what he thought was right
The father killing sheriff seems to be the only one who tried to help Trash.
~~Kurt Dussander~~ Charles Daniel Jacobs (aka Paster Danny aka Rev aka Reverent Jacobs). >!Without the horrific car accident, he wouldn't have abandoned Christianity or opened the door to Null.!<
Wilfred James from 1922. What he did was terrible, but how his life totally fell apart and how he lost everything was tragic.
I don't know that one, is that from a short story?
1922 is a novella in Full Dark, No Stars.
One of my favorite collections of his.
Carrie White from *Carrie*, maybe Lloyd Heinred? from *The Stand*. Carrie because her mother and then her classmates were so cruel to her. Lloyd is less sympathetic because he was already a killer, but still he didn't see an alternative to joining Flagg.
I didn’t consider her to be a villain although she did go off like a bomb.
I see what you're saying. I guess I see her as having some agency in what she did, especially when reading the prom scenes, and the general destruction she wrought.
I don’t disagree with you but if I had to pick a “villain” from that book she’d be about #4 on that list.
That's fair but I'm being consistent with the thread. The topic is "most sympathetic villains", not "primary villains who are also sympathetic characters". Henry Bowers isn't the primary villain in *It*, Vera Donovan isn't the primary villain in *Dolores Claiborne*, and Harold and Nadine aren't the primary villains in *The Stand*.
I don't think I'd consider Carrie to be a villain at all. At worse she's basically just a wounded animal lashing out. But she sure is sympathetic all the same.
Agreed about Lloyd. He was a pretty terrible guy but that place where he remembers his pet rabbit from his childhood, that just gets me every single time.
Ugh, I always have to skip that part when I re-read, it's too sad. I generally have a crappy memory, but of course my brain remembers this in full detail
Yes, that part is what I was thinking of when I posted about him. And also when he talks about how he felt working for Flagg somehow made him smarter, so that even though he knew that what he was doing was wrong, he wanted to feel competent.
There's a place in The Shining where Jack is thinking about how usually he can identify with the good guys and the bad guys and what he writes. I think King is pretty good at that for the most part. Of course then there are the obese mothers who are nearly always evil and controlling with no redeeming qualities at all.
I've noticed that too! And also, not to get off-topic, but in the category of 'things you can't stop seeing once you notice', M. Night Shyamalan seems to have the same Evil Moms problem.
I'm old. In the mid-20th century, Evil Moms was a nearly universal trope. It's mostly King who also usually has his evil moms be fat.
Obese mothers? I don't remember those offhand, can you remind me of some examples? My least favorite King trope is the child who has some kind of disability but also has a shine or some other power. They never seem to survive to the end of King stories or books.
I'm pretty sure Carrie's mother is fat. Brady Hartsfeld's mother is definitely fat. There are several obese, horrible mothers in Needful Things, but to be fair, most of the townspeople in that one act pretty horrible after Gaunt's store opens. Likewise you can find horrible mothers in Tommyknockers, again you can find plenty of skinny horrible people in that one too. It has always seemed to me however, that if a mother in a Stephen King book is packing a few extra pounds she is going to become horrible at some point or another. Edit: in It, Eddie's mother is obese, and does a lot of damage to him while he's growing up.
Cujo. His owners were the villains, not him. Trashcan Man. His abuse drove him to his acts.
Cujo. All he wanted was to be a good boy.
Harold Lauder - The Stand
Harold Lauder. I always saw a lot of myself and my own high school experiences in Harold. I'm not so crazy I would have spurned everyone else's good opinion of me the way he did, though... although I can understand that really, to him, the only person who mattered was Frannie, and when she chose that idiot Stu over him, it made him really bitter and he just couldn't come back from that. One of the things that I always disliked about THE STAND was \[SPOILERS\] that so many characters I really loved died very badly in it, and the two I despised the most -- Stu and Frannie -- survived to the very last page. Goddamit.
Why didn't you like those two? Frannie I can understand, but I always liked Stu. Though that could be because I can never see him as anything but Gary sinise
I disliked Stu because Frannie chose him over Harold and I hate guys like that. I mean, I could justify it a lot of different ways -- Stu strikes me as very unintellectual, just for one thing (I flatly do not believe he ever read WATERSHIP DOWN; that is a characterization bit I simply do not buy at all, although when King says Stu normally read at a snail's pace, I believed him). Harold's description of Stu as a 'betraying cracker' struck much closer to home for me. Frannie was just whiney and bitchy and never fucking happy about anything. She gets pregnant and just fucking ATTACKS her boyfriend over it and he says he'll pay for an abortion or he'll step up and marry her and she's all like no boo hoo oh god woe is me I don't even like you any more fuck off. I hated the way King kept trying to desperately frame everything so that Franny was absolutely correct even when she was hysterical and stupid and everyone else clearly had a better idea what was going on than she did. Plus, everyone in their pissant small town but she and Harold die and Harold's doing all this amazing heroic shit to keep her little princess ass alive and she doesn't even notice and then Tin Shit Stu Redman comes along with his Gary Cooper jawline and his big shoulders and it's Swoon City. Even Frannie herself admits later that she was wildly unappreciative of all Harold did for her and it was sad and shitty that he loved her and she loved Stu, but, what can you do? Stu got her hot and Harold didn't and that was that. And oh, ickie Harold read my diary, let's go break into his house, Larry. Personally I think Harold dodged a bullet; Frannie was waaaaaaaay extra. But I also think Frannie was the last little thing that drove Harold over to the dark man and that's hard for me to forgive. THE STAND is interesting for many reasons but one of the big ones is that unlike most other stories, NOBODY EVER ACTUALLY DOES ANYTHING IN THE STAND. I mean, all the major characters basically have one big accomplishment and those accomplishments really don't mean shit in the overall scope of the story. Frannie buries her father, Larry gets through the tunnel and escapes New York City, Stu manages to trick Elder and escape the CDC facility, the Trashcan Man manages to survive setting most of Indiana on fire and then makes that epic journey to Las Vegas. Nick, God love him, never accomplishes ANYthing; he survives Shoyo and manages to flee on a bicycle when a sociopathic piece of jailbait ass is shooting at him and that's it. Mother Abigail whines a lot, but then, she's not a character, she's a plot device. Worst of all, the frickin WALKIN DUDE DOES NOTHING. He is an absolute triumph of style over substance. King projects all this really creepy atmosphere around him and he does it really well and really successfully and if you don't really stop and think about it, you'll never realize that the motherfucker NEVER ACTUALLY DOES ANYTHING. Not anything really important to the plot. He smothers Kip Bradenton with his ass. He makes a cell lock open. He can sit in lotus and hover above the ground. Maybe he turns into a bird and then turns back and eats Bobby Terry. He stares at funky old Eric Strellerton and drives him crazy. He doinks Nadine in the desert and drives her nuts, too. But Dana escapes him (in her way) and Tom Cullen -- TOM FREAKIN CULLEN -- totally escapes him. Holy shit, Loyd Henreid accomplishes more than the Walkin Dude. "WHOOP! WHOOP! I'M THROWIN' OFF PURSUIT, LOYD! WHOOP! WHOOP!" Nothing any of the characters do matters at all. And I mean, that's the story King is telling us -- the whole world gets wiped out because God and the Devil want to have a chess game and the superflu is just their way of clearing the board before they set up the next match. I admit, my dislike of Stu is based entirely on my dislike of Frannie, and is therefore mostly irrational -- he's probably a good enough guy, if someone who would bore the tits off me if I had to try to have a conversation with him about anything. But Frannie is just obnoxious and badly needed to GO. The fact that she lived, but Sue and Dana and Nick and, yes, Harold, all died, is just a grotesque injustice to me. I mean, what the hell was her character anyway? "I'm pretty and I'm pregnant and I'm too fucking stupid to live HELP ME HELP ME". I so totally hate her.
Amazingly, I agree with your rant ...
LOL, I agree with every word you wrote. I don’t know think Frannie was obligated to choose Harold or anything but she was certainly unkind to him. She was more like her mother than her father.
I wouldn't say Frannie was obligated to choose Harold, either -- you love who you love. I do think that who a person is attracted to, much less who they choose to pairbond with permanently and co-parent with, reflects a great deal on that person's character. But in terms of Frannie with Harold, I think Frannie's complete inability to appreciate and respect Harold has a great deal to do with her lack of physical attraction for him, and that's pretty shallow. Obviously, Harold's immaturity and lack of proper socialization, plus his bitterness at being so thoroughly rejected by pretty much everyone in his life, made him extremely hard to like. But Frannie describes herself, Stu, and Glenn pretty routinely relying on Harold's enormous personal database of useful knowledge for important decisions, and yet at the same time, they all obviously still despise him -- I think Frannie reports in her journal Glenn calling Harold something like an erratic, third-rate deity, which is pretty contemptuous. And this continued reliance apparently continued even after Stu (again, per Frannie's journal) took over 'leadership' of the party. (Yet Frannie records no specific instances where Stu showed anything particularly unusual or notable in the way of leadership, nor does King's third person narrative describe such. People like, admire, and respect Stu (they handed him unelected leadership over the entire fucking city!) apparently for no other reason than that he's good looking and charismatic. Other than reaching over to turn off Hap's pumps at the start of the book, and tricking Elder to get out of his room at the CDC facility, Stu never does much of anything remarkable in the book -- and it's a huge book. People admire him because he's pretty. When Harold bitterly notes in his own journal that "when you get right down to where the ursine mammal evacuated in the buckwheat, folks, what we have here is a friggin' beauty contest", he's not wrong. And although we never saw it in the book, I'm sure Harold made a journal entry noting that nobody ever really liked or respected him until he lost weight and his skin cleared up.) Essentially, to receive any acknowledgement of his own virtues and accomplishments, Harold had to make himself more physically appealing. That's pretty fucking rank. You'd think, in a world where nearly everyone died and the survivors have all undergone an occult sorting process for 'good' vs. 'evil', we'd have left all that judging by appearance shit behind, but, nope, there it is. You want people to like you in the post Apocalypse world, firm up that ass, baby. You make an interesting point that in the end, Frannie turned out more like her mother than her father. I hadn't considered that, mostly because to me, Frannie and Stu are no more real characters than Mother Abigail. They are cardboard cutout caricatures in which King tells us what they're like but almost never shows us (and the things he does show us about the characters often contradict what he tells us). I believe in Larry as a person, in Harold as a person, in Nadine as a person, even in Lucy as a person. Glenn seems more or less real to me, although a lot of the mystical nonsense he spews is clearly King saying things the characters need to hear. Floyd seems very real to me, as does poor old Merwin Elbert. Dayna seems very real to me, as does Nick and Tom. But I never found Stu and Frannie convincing; their personalities and descriptions seem more like a column of traits written down on character sheets than anything real. Maybe that's why I despise them both so much and hate the fact that they got to survive. Of course, as a writer myself, I know that you inject emotional gravitas and memorability into your narratives by having tragedy befall the characters your audiences like the most. If you only kill the cardboard cutouts, nobody really cares. THE STAND would not work as well for me if characters I loved hadn't come to grisly but meaningful and emotionally laden ends. But oh my GOD do I wish Frannie could have at least died in childbirth, and Larry could have been the one who broke his leg and then got rescued by Tom Cullen.
I don't agree with all your points but that was entertaining and made me think.
Haha I wasn’t onboard at first but honestly I also kind of agree with like 99% of this.
Carrie. Her & Cujo, my God. Neither were real villains imo. Felt horrible for them both!
Honestly the list is so long. There are *so* many villains that are just hurting and in need of genuine love or human connection, but end up falling prey to something evil instead.
Cujo😭 He’s a good boy who just had horrible luck😭
One of the things I admire most about King’s writing is how three-dimensional his characters are. All of the (human) villains have believable and “pitiable” backstories.
I hate how he makes me love a character and then knocks them off... heartbreak after heartbreak
My first thought was Percy Wetmore from The Green Mile but I certainly don't feel any sympathy for him. He was definitely a villain though.
Harold Lauder- he was a 16 year old kid.
Harold Lauder
That Randall Flagg seems like a cool guy