History Literature / TheStand

* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: Nick's portion of the first part has him meet a local sheriff who is nothing but supportive and helpful to him after he gets the shit kicked out of him by some local roughnecks (one of whom is even the sheriff's brother in-law), along with his sister. They die.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Stu and Fran are reunited, but most of the main characters die at God's behest. Humanity is on the path to recovery at the end, but Flagg is still alive (in the expanded edition).]]

* OppressiveStatesOfAmerica: The federal goverment resorts to very draconian measures in an attempt to contain Captain Trips, instituting lockdowns of infected towns, censoring reports of the true magnitude of the epidemic, and executing anyone who tries to reveal the truth. In the end, their efforts are for naught.

** The novel's final chapters are centered around Stu, Ralph, Larry and Glen as they make their way to Las Vegas.

--->'''Lloyd Henreid''': [[spoiler:Oh, shit, we're all fucked!]]

* ChekhovsGunman:[[spoiler:Julie Lawry. After being run off by Nick and Tom early in the second part of the book, she joins the Vegas group in the third part of the book and recognizes Tom undercover as a spy, and gives Lloyd and Flagg the information they need to realize Tom is the third spy. Ultimately subverted, however: by the time they come to this realization, Tom has already left Vegas and is able to slip past the guards Flagg sets up at the Utah-Nevada border.]]

* BallsOfFire: [[spoiler:Flagg releases an EnergyBall at the climax.]]

In the 1980s, a film adaptation was planned, but ultimately was not made due to the length of the book and issues with adapting the narrative. However, an eight hour made-for-tv MiniSeries based on the novel, ''Series/TheStand1994'', aired for four nights on Creator/{{ABC}} in 1994 instead.

%%* TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive

%%* RefusalOfTheCall: Several characters refuse to acknowledge the dreams.

* WorthlessCurrency: With so few plague survivors and so many goods free for the taking, money becomes meaningless. Even using it for high-stakes poker only provides a short-lived thrill.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: As deaths from Captain Tripps begin to taper off, many people who survived the virus begin to suffer from this trope, leading to a "second epidemic" of deaths from accidents or suicides.

* TakingYouWithMe: Once America's leadership realizes they're doomed, they deliberately infect the rest of the world with Captain Trips.

%%* DystopiaIsHard: The theme behind the Vegas plotline.

%%* GhibliHills: America [[AfterTheEnd after the plague]].

** The LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition (book) was updated with references to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic only.)

%%* SceneryGorn

* JustFollowingOrders: The military doctor who comes into Stew's room with the intention of killing him after society has collapsed is just following his orders, but he'll do so with absolutely no hesitation. Stew thinks that it makes absolutely no sense for the guy to kill him -- civilization is in ruins, there are no more secrets to keep or people to keep secrets from. But he also knows that this is the kind of man to whom it would never in a million years occur to disobey an order, no matter how ridiculous or out-of-date, and he would kill Stew with a smile on his face and without a second thought.

** Originally set in 1980, updated to 1991 in the expanded version. The inspiration for Flagg was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army Donald DeFreeze]], the Patty Hearst kidnapper. (Another inspiration was then-current cult leader UsefulNotes/JimJones.)

** The action ranges across the country, quite a lot of it takes place in Maine (which is a frequent King locale) and Boulder (where he was living at the time of writing, and of which he is apparently quite fond).

* TelevisionGeography: the town of Arnette is said to be in East Texas, but is described as having West Texas’s wide-open, arid landscape, and later East Texas native Stu is surprised by the green vegetation of the eastern states. East Texas is dominated by pine forest to the north and swampy, dense wetland forest to the south. Moving west, the landscape gives way to lush, wet grassland. There are no dry prairies for a couple of hundred miles.

*** A heroin addict who inadvertently overdoses on his dealer's supply, unaware that it's nearly 100% pure.

* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Bobby Terry shooting [[spoiler:the Judge]] is technically an example of this; he ''is'' trying to kill him, but he had [[OhCrap explicit orders]] from Flagg to not shoot the target in, yes, the face. He also entirely accidentally [[spoiler:shoots his own partner through the throat and kills him]] while attempting to aim at his actual target.

* After Captain Trips has run its course, there follows a second wave of deaths caused by accidents and other illnesses. Even though the victims are immune, they end up dying due to the inability to get medical attention or to not having someone to look after them. One chapter focuses exclusively on several such people:
** A boy who falls down a dry well while picking blackberries and breaks both legs.
** A woman who tries to defend herself against a man she thinks is going to rape her, using her father's rusty old pistol and ammo, only for it to backfire and explode.
** A man who suffers a heart attack while jogging.
** A woman who gets drunk and falls asleep after lighting a cigarette, burning down her house and most of the town she lives in.
** A man who tries to amputate his own foot after stepping on a rusty nail and developing an infection.
** A girl who suffers a skull fracture after falling off her bike.
** A man who is bitten by a rattlesnake.
** A teenage girl who becomes trapped in a meat locker with the bodies of her husband and son.
** A man who hooks his house up to a gas-powered electric generator and electrocutes himself trying to start it.
** A heroin addict who inadvertently overdoses on his dealer's supply, unaware that it's nearly 100% pure.

** After Captain Trips has run its course, there follows a second wave of deaths caused by accidents and other illnesses. Even though the victims are immune, they end up dying due to the inability to get medical attention or to not having someone to look after them. One chapter focuses exclusively on several such people:

** Even after Captain Trips has run it's course, there's dozens, possibly hundreds of further deaths as most immune survivors are spread out across the U.S, some miles away from any other living human. Anyone who gets sick or injured (broken bones, heart attack, drug overdose, etc.) or who needs someone else to look after them (children, elderly) stands a good chance of dying since no one is available to intervene quickly.
** One of these survivors, a woman named Irma who suffers from a particularly extreme case of DoesNotLikeMen, believing that all men are rapists who are just waiting for an opportunity to get her, tries to shoot the only other survivor in her hometown with her fathers old gun. Said gun, and the bullets, had been left to rust in a box for almost 20 years by this point, meaning that the second she pulls the trigger, the bullet in the chamber backfires, causing the gun to explode and kills her instantly.
** Another survivor, a heroin addict in Chicago, breaks into his former dealers house and finds his drug stash. He promptly overdoses on it with one hit and dies in minutes, because said heroin hadn't been cut and dilluted for sale yet, meaning it was almost completely pure. The heroin he'd previously had access to on the street was usually less than 10% pure.

In the 1980s, a film adaptation was planned, but ultimately was not made due to the length of the book and issues with adapting the narrative. However, an eight hour made-for-tv MiniSeries based on the novel, ''Series/TheStand'', aired for four nights on Creator/{{ABC}} in 1994 instead.

In December 2020 Creator/CBSAllAccess premiered a 9-episode series adaptation[[note]]It was originally 10 but was reduced to 9 due to production issues mostly caused by the 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic.[[/note]], ''Series/TheStand2020''.

* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Bobby Terry shooting [[spoiler:the Judge]] is technically an example of this; he ''is'' trying to kill him, but he had [[OhCrap explicit orders]] from Flagg to not shoot the target in, yes, the face.