I have two items for my write-up today of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition:
1. On page 620, we read the following: “It was quarter past ten in the morning. Trashcan Man was sitting on his bench, wrapping copper wire, his mind a million miles away as his fingers did their work. He was composing a psalm of praise to the dark man in his mind. It had occurred to him that he should get a large book (a Book, actually) and begin to write some of his thoughts about him down. It would be the sort of Book people might want to read someday. People who felt about him as Trash did.”
Why did Trashcan Man have such adoration for the evil Randall Flagg, whereas people around Trash were terrified of the Dark Man? Was it because Flagg reached out to Trash, guided him, valued his contribution, and gave him a sense of purpose and community? That was a big part of it, I think. On page 623, we read why Trashcan Man believes that he owes Flagg his life in service, as well as the narrator’s opinion that Trash’s worship is misguided (to say the least): “The dark man had saved him from dying at the hands of The Kid (that the dark man might have sent The Kid for just that purpose never crossed Trashcan Man’s mind), and surely that meant his life was now a debt he owed to that same dark man…the man some of them here called the Walkin Dude.” The Kid was a psychopath who accompanied Trash, during which time he terrorized, threatened, and sodomized Trash. But Flagg sent wolves to take out The Kid, and Trash was grateful for that deliverance. But, as the narrator says, perhaps Flagg was the one who put The Kid into Trash’s life in the first place, so does Flagg deserve adoration and thanksgiving for delivering Trash from a problem that he himself caused for Trash?
I still like that quote on page 620, however, for it’s about Psalms and serving out of love. I wish I could adore God the way that Trashcan Man adores Flagg, and perhaps I can do so by reflecting on God’s love, as well as think of ways in which God may have given me a sense of acceptance, identity, purpose, deliverance, and community.
2. At the beginning of Chapter 49, we are introduced to Lucy Swann and the seventy-year-old Judge Farris, who are part of Larry Underwood’s team. Judge Farris compares Larry to the biblical Job, who tosses and turns. According to the Judge, Larry is a good leader because he has found himself late in life and is thus one who accepts responsibility, without being drunk with power. Moreover, Larry blames himself when a diabetic woman dies. Somehow—and I cannot really specify how this change occurred—Larry has moved from being a shallow taker to a leader who is concerned about people. In a sense, events have prepared Larry for leadership: he learned to care for someone other than himself with his Mom and then with Rita, plus Nadine Cross has sensitized him to the need to take care of the feral boy Joe rather than tossing him by the curb.
The conversation between Lucy Swann and Judge Farris also makes me think about the leadership of the various groups in The Stand. Larry Underwood leads one group. Nick Andros leads another group. You would think that Stu is the leader of the group that consists of Harold, Glen Bateman, Fran, and others, but it’s a little more complicated there, since there is more than one powerful, intelligent personality in that group. Harold continually challenges Stu, vaunts himself, and offers ideas, sometimes good, and sometimes bad. Glen likes to intellectualize. Fran has a strong personality. In the other two groups, there are intelligent people, such as Judge Farris and Ralph, but they are content to let someone else be in charge.