explanation/analysis of the ending (spoilers and dark tower elements beware)

[Raymond Fiegler]

Well, it's pretty much common knowledge that lots of people were pissed off at the ending of The Stand, saying it was a 'cop-out', 'it came out of nowhere' or that it was a 'blatant deus ex machina'. Understandable, considering the massive length of the novel and the amount of investment readers placed in its characters. But I get the feeling that there's far more to the climax of this novel than a fatigued writer's burning desire to resolve the plot in any way he can. I'm writing this because I've looked all over the internet and I can't seem to find an interpretation similar to mine. So here it is. I'll use a few concepts introduced or elucidated further in The Dark Tower series to illustrate my point, as I think they're fairly relevant and make things easier to understand, as well as to tie the novel closer to the greater mythos Mr. King has built by this point.

(Note: I'll be using the 1990 Complete and Uncut edition of The Stand, as well as the 2003 Revised and Expanded edition of The Gunslinger for reference)

So to recap, at the climax of the novel, Larry and Ralph are all that's left of a hopeless (not to mention austere) pilgrimage to Las Vegas in the seemingly vain hope of either stopping Flagg, convincing his followers to rise up and overthrow him or to simply see what God's plan has in store for them. Now, they're about two minutes away from getting horribly executed. But then, a few things happen:


Whitney, a guilt-ridden cook, has finally had enough of Flagg and nervously chews him out, ordering him to tell the crowd what he really is: a devil in the shape of a man.
Flagg, having foreseen this (as he himself admits, straight after everything goes to hell), calmly walks up to him and shoots a tiny ball of blue fire (magic/energy/whatever) into his face, melting it.
Ralph starts chanting 'I fear no evil' under his breath, a phrase Glen kept repeating all throughout their ordeal. Larry quickly follows suit.
Trashcan Man suddenly shows up, in the final stages of radiation sickness and lugging around a very active and useable atomic bomb.
The ball of blue fire Flagg used to fry poor Whitney had been steadily growing in size the entire time, hovering over the whole scene while Flagg loses his ****.
Ralph shrieks to Larry that he sees 'The Hand of God', and Larry thinks that the glowing blue mass does indeed look like a hand.
Flagg briefly morphs into "something slumped and hunched and almost without shape - something with enormous
yellow eyes slit by dark cat's pupils." Then he warps out of there, leaving all his clothes.
Las Vegas go boom.


So… how and why did all this nonsensical crap happen? How did Ralph and Larry's presence in Las Vegas contribute to Flagg's defeat if Trashcan Man was going to just show up anyway with the nuke? Wouldn't the 'Hand of God' just set it off regardless, resulting in no unnecessary casualties for Team Boulder? And how lame is that? 'The Hand of God'? What the hell was Steve thinking?

Well, I think I might have an answer.

[Raymond Fiegler]

It all comes back to Mother Abigail and her 'spirit journey'. She felt that she had sinned and needed to get closer in touch with God and his will. When she finally comes back, there is no doubt that she had achieved it. She has seemingly clairvoyant knowledge of what has happened in the Free Zone during her absence. She gives prophecy, specifically telling the Committee that it is God's will that four men (specifically Ralph, Larry, Stu and Glen) go into the West to confront the 'Prince of High Places'. Abigail cures Fran's back injury simply by grabbing her arm. She speaks in Glen's voice, quoting perfectly his speech about Flagg being the 'last magician of rational thought' and the importance of 'white magic' (a speech she never witnessed). There is no doubt that 'God' is channeling directly through her at this point, and that His power is indeed great. But the real key is how she achieved this state, besides from being simply 'tapped' by God.

While Stu and the gang are making their way to Las Vegas, on foot and without any food or supplies, Glen starts to reason through their predicament. To summarize, Glen hypothesizes that Mother Abigail has sent them on a spirit journey of their own. He theorizes that "a healthy person might make a ****** prophet", suggesting that the drastically changed psyche of a dying or crazy person would be the perfect medium (or channel) for God's divine message. He goes on, suggesting that the purpose of their spirit journey may be to "to gain strength and holiness by a purging process". By relieving themselves of basic comforts, tools and necessities, they are also casting off the "self-related others that are symbolically related to those things". A sort of self-imposed diminishment of the ego or the self, until only the subconscious and everything else remains. Glen likens the human mind to a battery with an almost limitless supply of energy. It just needs to be focused or 'emptied' in order to reach its full potential. Despite the hunger, everyone is feeling really good. Larry describes it as like being high, except that he's feeling better and thinking clearer. So to recap, Mother Abigail (or maybe just God) needed these men to be at their utmost spiritual potential in order for them to channel 'white magic', as Glen put it.

These concepts of 'whiteness' and 'purification' are similar to the concepts of khef and The White, introduced in The Dark Tower Series. The Gunslinger even hinted at the nature of khef or 'life force', stating that one can progress through certain levels and reach greater states of mental detachment from the body, which is how Roland managed to cross the Mohaine Desert. This seems awfully similar to the 'emptying of the spirit/ego' discussed by Glen in The Stand. Roland is also an Agent of The White, the divine force of goodness, stability and interconnectedness in the Stephen King multiverse; in other words Gan, or the one God. Being an agent of such a force, progressing through the khef would certainly be advantageous, or possibly even a prerequisite. In other words, greater mastery of the khef means a greater ability to use or channel The White.

So now, we come to Flagg's undoing. By this stage, Ralph and Larry have sharpened their minds and bodies, progressed through the khef and are now perfect (as far as can be) conduits for white magic, AKA The White, Gan or simply God. Now all it needed was a trigger. The trigger was Whitney. Whitney, full of guilt and now at the end of his rope, makes a final, desperate stand against Flagg, calling him out on his atrocities and his true nature, even trying to convince the crowd to rise up against him. Flagg makes short work of him, melting his face with a ball of blue magic. As magic evidently has the capacity to be used for both good and evil in Stephen King's writings, this ball of raw potential makes contact with Whitney, in his dying moments surely having some form of The White deep within his soul. The ball appears to react to the situation, growing larger and rising through the air while Flagg and co. are distracted by Trashcan Man. Ralph and Larry's chanting of the Glen's oft-repeated phrase 'I will fear no evil' may in fact be sustaining and feeding this growing ball of energy. And didn't The Rose, the Dark Tower's one true twin and embodiment of The White, sing a song containing the voices of all those who had lived and died in the multiverse? Perhaps chanting this phrase 'summoned' Glen's essence, now completely one with The White, and helped further focus and channel it?

Or maybe I've just gone momentarily insane. I have to cap this off soon.

Either way, the big ball of energy turns into the Hand of God, God simply being another name for Gan or The White, and detonates Trashy's a-bomb. So in short, if no one went to Las Vegas, had a mini spirit journey along the way and didn't get captured by Flagg's goons, then Flagg probably wouldn't have fried Whitney and released a rogue ball of magic that turned against its master and detonated Trashy's nuke. Trashy would have made it to Las Vegas with it, but he'd most likely be quarantined and the nuke safely put away for later use. And then we'd all die.

To sum up: Larry, Stu, Ralph and Glen were basically gunslingers without guns at the end of The Stand. Mother Abigail was dinh of The White in this particular world. Flagg didn't count on his own magic being used against him, which contributed to his downfall.

My head really hurts now.

[PatInTheHat]

:umm:

A common knowledge ya say huh?
Oh by all means, please enlighten us, just what was he thinkin'???

[JohnDalglish]

So… how and why did all this nonsensical crap happen?

How lame is that?

Well, I think I might have an answer.

Hi,

'Lame' and 'crap' eh?

AN answer, yes.

Welcome to the MB, and thankee for your opinion.

Long days and pleasant nights

[DeathStalker]

Well, I think I might have an answer.
OK, well, out with it then.

[omm poppa mow mow]

Blame it on the wind...I was looking for the hand to start banging gophers...like in the video game?

Too, you might want to take a look back at Harold and his purple crayon...errrrr, Harold and his diary. 725
Use of the word "jittery" there, as well as the page your quote from...the hand of God.

Careful not to crowd the plate...next thing you know the Gov-nor will be throwing a fork ball at your head. :)

[J.T. Adams]

I loved the ending of this book, perfect ending to me.

[Moderator]

Sorry, I wasn't able to get the second post approved before comments were posted to the first one.

[Spideyman]

Sai King wrote from his muse. We, the constant reader read the book. No analysis, no what did the author mean by this or that, no critique-- just read and enjoyed.

[PatInTheHat]

Sorry, I wasn't able to get the second post approved before comments were posted to the first one.
Ahh, I really don't think it makes much of a difference, I mean speaking just for me, I'm just as confused as when I started:dunno:...but then 'The Stand" is my all time favorite read, so....
(and here I thought I over thought is what I'm thinkin' I thought:oo:..oh yeah, go ahead & try sayin' that ten times real fast:eyebrow:..mm hmm, that's what I thought:geek:!)

[dsurrett]

If Flagg would've been taken care of without the journey from the Good Guys, what fun would that have been? Would they have been standing around in a circle holding hands while a mushroom cloud formed in the distance? Yes, I can be a bit of a smart alleck.
I think the journey had to be made, even with bad outcomes for a few nice people, because they knew they had to do something, they couldn't just sit by and hope things turned out well. That would've shown weakness of their characters that would've been inconsistent with the first 900 pages of the book.
Just my opinion.

[DeathStalker]

Sorry, I wasn't able to get the second post approved before comments were posted to the first one.
Ah, I see what happened, hence my 1st reply. Sorry for my impatience. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

[GNTLGNT]

Word to the wise...careful questioning the Master...it tends to raise the hackles of we the Constant Reader Canines-heck we might even FLASH our canines....

http://www.digmydog.org/images/dogs/small/1103/stink-eye-evil-eye-dogs-1299600583.jpg

[omm poppa mow mow]

diablo es machina...
see for reference The Winter Queen by Boris, or Dostoyevsky's Demons, Possessed, Devils...

and for sure, consider theuse of the word jittery/jittering, as it relates to the hand of Harold 725 or the hand of God 1072 in the paperback.

the devils in the details mayhap...or consider Insomnia...what was so wise about them asking this neurotic king about a baby king? i could never identify the bishops, rooks, and castles, either...took a few years....

and too, consider the return of the king, or whatever the final tolkien book was...sauron's hand...or whatever, the wind blowing it away...who's in charge, who's on second, and stop crowding the plate or like happened, someone wings one close....:)

go figure.

[CCAL]

Please ya'll, dont shoot the messenger, cause you have an issue with the message! SK writes it like he sees it. Its KA. (isnt it??) rofl! Personally I thought it was an AWESOME ending!

[momone53]

Wow, just wow! I thought it was a great ending too, in the book. It didn't play too well in the movie. I never question sai King on any ending; I just enjoy the read.

[Raymond Fiegler]

No, no! You got me all wrong, people! I was just being ironic in that particular paragraph. I'm actually all for the ending and don't think it's a hasty asspull. Very don't. Just read both posts carefully and tell me what you think.

[CCAL]

Well stated. SK writes em as he does. Its HIS story, we are merely brief visitors in his house of books. One would never dream of critiquing the carpeting, drapes, furniture, so why would one attempt to question his story? I know, its just human nature to think and rethink. The ole 'whats ifs' creep in there if the window is left ajar. Perhaps its best to close the window and scoop up the dust of what ifs & rethinks and put them in the dustbin....jmo. lol