MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, DONT READ IF U DONT WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!
the beginning of the book finds us on a military base where our first character, a soldier named charlie, is waking his wife from a dead sleep. he's in a panic and he's prompting her to get dressed, dress the baby, and let's get the hell outta dodge. the warning light went off in the tower when charlie was on watch and all the other soldiers are dead; he managed to escape before the tower sealed off and he's come home to rescue his family. they throw together some clothes, grab some money they had hidden away, and haul buggy off the military base.
in the previous few sentences i've basically summed up the opening of the book. however, king said it well in his preface to the stand that an entire story can be told in just a few sentences but it's all the extra stuff that makes it good. i mean, admit it, my short summary is pretty crappy. but his approximately 7 page beginning, he starts to weave a tale that just grabs your attention and holds it tight. and if you're anything like me (as a reader) then it wont let go until long after the book is finished. *sigh* i'm already dreading the end of the book and i'm only on chapter 3!
chapter one transports us to a small texas town where several old men are in the local texaco, hem-hawing over the poor economy in said town. we meet a slew of characters, from the owner of the station to out-of-work factory employees. one attendee of this local yokel meeting is stu, who will eventually become one of our main characters. he's the youngest of the bunch of old philosophers. he's pretty quiet, in general, having grown up on hard times and then losing his new wife to cancer, the same cancer, we learn, that killed his mother years earlier. while he listens to the old guys chewing the proverbial fat, he witnesses in the distance a vehicle traveling erratically toward the station. the car comes to a crashing halt at the station and charlie, our character from chapter one, falls out of the car when the door is opened. charlie is very sick from what appears to be food poisoning or perhaps cholera, or so muses one of the onlookers from the station. his wife and child are inside the car, dead from apparently the same thing.
king paints a portrait of life in any small american town. the old men gathered together to talk politics or the economy, or maybe both. if you've read much of king's work, you know he has a knack for grasping the small things that draw you in on such a base level that you cant help but identify in some way with whatever he's writing about. no, i've never been chased by a rabid saint bernard, and i've never owned a possessed car (i had one repossessed once, but that's a whole other can of worms!), and i've certainly never been trapped at the school dance when a teen telekinetic is pushed past the breaking point , but it sure felt like i could have been at any or all of them. they all seemed real and all happened in places where i very well could have been. i could identify with so many nuances of those stories, just as i can with this one. no, i'm not an old man but i see them in action on a regular basis with my work, and i grew up around older men (uncles, grandfather, etc) and i've heard the same things said in so many different ways.
enter our next character, frannie. she will later become a main character, but for now she's a 22 year old local girl who's just "a little bit preggers." she's meeting her boyfriend/babydaddy on the beach, the same beach where the babybump was made. watching him from afar, she realizes she is not in love with the guy anymore, and when she tells him she's pregnant, he seems lost. they go to have ice cream, they quarrel, they kinda break up. their future is a bit uncertain at the moment. chapter 2 in a nutshell.
having read the stand several times, i guess i may be biased when i write my summaries. if i were reading it for the first time, i'd probably include a lot more details. it's also hard not to include events that i know are going to happen. chapter two is kind of bland. i see frannie painted as a sort of a bitch, but i know that she's not. hormones? disappointment? resentment? probably all of the above and more.
i look forward to chapters 3 and 4. it's kind of fun to analyze them also. i havent done this kind of thing before (well i probably did in literature class in high school but that was many many moons ago and mandatory, this is voluntary and much more fun!) so i guess it might get interesting later on as the story progresses. i hope, if you're reading, that i'm not spoiling anything for you. even if you've not read the book and you come across this blog, i hold no candle whatsover to the awesome mr king and you would do so much better to read his version. in addition to mine, of course ;)
until tomorrow, friends....
the beginning of the book finds us on a military base where our first character, a soldier named charlie, is waking his wife from a dead sleep. he's in a panic and he's prompting her to get dressed, dress the baby, and let's get the hell outta dodge. the warning light went off in the tower when charlie was on watch and all the other soldiers are dead; he managed to escape before the tower sealed off and he's come home to rescue his family. they throw together some clothes, grab some money they had hidden away, and haul buggy off the military base.
in the previous few sentences i've basically summed up the opening of the book. however, king said it well in his preface to the stand that an entire story can be told in just a few sentences but it's all the extra stuff that makes it good. i mean, admit it, my short summary is pretty crappy. but his approximately 7 page beginning, he starts to weave a tale that just grabs your attention and holds it tight. and if you're anything like me (as a reader) then it wont let go until long after the book is finished. *sigh* i'm already dreading the end of the book and i'm only on chapter 3!
chapter one transports us to a small texas town where several old men are in the local texaco, hem-hawing over the poor economy in said town. we meet a slew of characters, from the owner of the station to out-of-work factory employees. one attendee of this local yokel meeting is stu, who will eventually become one of our main characters. he's the youngest of the bunch of old philosophers. he's pretty quiet, in general, having grown up on hard times and then losing his new wife to cancer, the same cancer, we learn, that killed his mother years earlier. while he listens to the old guys chewing the proverbial fat, he witnesses in the distance a vehicle traveling erratically toward the station. the car comes to a crashing halt at the station and charlie, our character from chapter one, falls out of the car when the door is opened. charlie is very sick from what appears to be food poisoning or perhaps cholera, or so muses one of the onlookers from the station. his wife and child are inside the car, dead from apparently the same thing.
king paints a portrait of life in any small american town. the old men gathered together to talk politics or the economy, or maybe both. if you've read much of king's work, you know he has a knack for grasping the small things that draw you in on such a base level that you cant help but identify in some way with whatever he's writing about. no, i've never been chased by a rabid saint bernard, and i've never owned a possessed car (i had one repossessed once, but that's a whole other can of worms!), and i've certainly never been trapped at the school dance when a teen telekinetic is pushed past the breaking point , but it sure felt like i could have been at any or all of them. they all seemed real and all happened in places where i very well could have been. i could identify with so many nuances of those stories, just as i can with this one. no, i'm not an old man but i see them in action on a regular basis with my work, and i grew up around older men (uncles, grandfather, etc) and i've heard the same things said in so many different ways.
enter our next character, frannie. she will later become a main character, but for now she's a 22 year old local girl who's just "a little bit preggers." she's meeting her boyfriend/babydaddy on the beach, the same beach where the babybump was made. watching him from afar, she realizes she is not in love with the guy anymore, and when she tells him she's pregnant, he seems lost. they go to have ice cream, they quarrel, they kinda break up. their future is a bit uncertain at the moment. chapter 2 in a nutshell.
having read the stand several times, i guess i may be biased when i write my summaries. if i were reading it for the first time, i'd probably include a lot more details. it's also hard not to include events that i know are going to happen. chapter two is kind of bland. i see frannie painted as a sort of a bitch, but i know that she's not. hormones? disappointment? resentment? probably all of the above and more.
i look forward to chapters 3 and 4. it's kind of fun to analyze them also. i havent done this kind of thing before (well i probably did in literature class in high school but that was many many moons ago and mandatory, this is voluntary and much more fun!) so i guess it might get interesting later on as the story progresses. i hope, if you're reading, that i'm not spoiling anything for you. even if you've not read the book and you come across this blog, i hold no candle whatsover to the awesome mr king and you would do so much better to read his version. in addition to mine, of course ;)
until tomorrow, friends....
oh wow! you actually made me LOL =)
ReplyDeleteas I am reading and writing a blog on this with you, i have to say, yours is more... entertaing than mine =D i think I am getting bogged down in the writing of the story.
I too am having a hard time keeping the story from advancing b4 its natural course =D
oh man I wanna rad chapters 3 &4 and your thoughts on them!! keep up the yay!! I so enjoyed this!!
i'm glad u laughed! and yours is just as entertaining as mine, just in a different way! (if we were the same, it would be bor-ing!)
ReplyDeletewhen I read it Frannie was my fav to start with, but had a lot of them by the time it was finished,Just saying , Me
ReplyDeletei eventually came to like frannie, thought stu and trashcan man are my fav characters. m-o-o-n, that spells trashcan man! lol
ReplyDeleteyour remark showed up as anonymous but i hope you continue to read along with us. i appreciate your input!
(this is the 2nd draft of a message i tried to post from my phone but it didnt go thru so no telling when it might actually show up lol so if another one shows up out of the blue, that's why!)