Yes, The Stand Is Banned!

Stephen King’s The Stand begins with a government-engineered superflu that wipes out 99.4% of the world’s population, then follows the survivors as they gravitate toward two leaders: Mother Abagail, a 108-year-old woman in Nebraska who represents hope, and Randall Flagg, a dark figure in Las Vegas who represents everything else. The uncut edition runs over 1,100 pages, and King uses every one of them to build an epic about community, faith, cowardice, and what people choose to become when civilization collapses. He wrote it as his attempt at an American Lord of the Rings, and it became one of the bestselling novels of the 20th century.

The Stand has been challenged 8 times in Florida and Texas, targeted for violence, sexual content, and profanity. King is one of the most frequently banned authors in the United States, and The Stand gets flagged alongside his other major works in district-wide sweep removals. The novel contains graphic violence (it opens with a plague that kills billions) and frank sexual content, but those elements serve a story about the fundamental struggle between human decency and human cruelty. Banning The Stand is particularly ironic: the novel is about what happens when institutions fail and a few brave people stand up for what’s right. It’s practically a manual for moral courage.