Stu Redman And Harold example essay topic

The Stand by Stephen King was a very detailed, and engulfing story about a possible end to mankind. This "extermination" is caused by a man-made variation of the flu that is 100% fatal and spread through the air. It wipes out 99% of the world's population in a month, leaving around 1 million people in the entire United States. The story is about how the population is split between good and evil and the battle that goes on between the two colonies. The story is presented from many different point of views, because there are around ten to fifteen different main characters. Of all the characters, Harold Lauder is probably the most interesting and developed in the whole story.

His personality changes drastically from one extreme to the other throughout the book. He is a "nerdy" type guy whom is scrawny, very intelligent, and spends a lot of time by himself. Before the plague, Harold is a nice guy whom is deeply in love with another main character, Franni Goldsmith. He's so in love that he spends everyday over at her house, just trying to carry out a conversation. Franni despises him though, and ignores him. Once the plague comes through however, Harold becomes very depressed, and starts to go crazy.

Franni is there to calm him down and the two join together to try to search for other survivors. Harold was excited, it was his perfect chance to finally spend time with Franni, but fate would have it that the first group they found had a man that Franni fell in love with. His name was Stu Redman and Harold hated him immediately. He decides to hide all of this though, and what a good job he does. Harold turns into the nicest guy you " ll ever meet, always willing to lend a helping hand.

He becomes great friends with Stu. Everyone starts to enjoy his company, though he hates all of them. This is about the time he starts to be overcome by the devil. Through his great ego, he plots to kill as many people as he can of the good, then switch over to the evil side.

All these mood swings are mixed together to make a very unstable and untrustable character in Harold Lauder. I give The Stand an eight out of ten rating. I thought the book was very good, but Stephen King went a little overboard in the details. The book was extremely long, and had page after page of in-depth descriptions that really don't need to be in there. Overall however, the story was excellent, and the plot seemed to grab me and make me want to read more. The story line was very well thought out, and has a variety of romance, horror, suspense, sci-fi, and more.

All this comes together to make a true classic but not the type of book for the faint at heart..