“So much had changed, so much was out of joint, that it was impossible not to think of it in terms of fantasy.”
Larry and Rita hit the road. The first thing they encounter is a man who wants to barter with him for permission to rape her.
First, isn’t everyone who is still alive now part of the Great Plan? So okay maybe The Fuckmonger will end up in Vegas. But ... I’ll get back to this. Second, this is a big problem in collapse stories. Too often the first / only thing women heroes will do is avoid rape, and the first / only thing men who aren’t the hero will do is rape. Women don’t get other conflicts or problems, and the world is full of men who don’t have other desires. Rape is Job One.
One example: this is just like the paper scene from Waterworld. Mixed gender protagonists meet a random dude. What does each character have to do?
1) Male Hero: Pilot the boat. Figure out if rapist is working for the villain. Barter. Try to get a look at his paper to see if it has useful information. Accomplish this while not getting anybody raped. Fight rapist.
2) Female Hero: Try not to get raped.
And since Kevin Costner’s other stuff is all red herrrings, He ends up with:
1) Male Hero: Fight rapist.
That’s. It. They brought three of the terribly few people on earth together for this. Three whole characters, two whole boats, all the dry land and Dennis Hopper and deciphering the map plots hanging out there. All the things all of them constantly need to cut deals for in this desperate world. And the imagination and effort and potential was all blown on "um ... rape.” This cheapens and shrinks the hell out of the woman characters. It also cheapens the world, the story, and the underlying ideas of what people are capable of.
Rape is obviously a part of life even when the lights are on and the police answer phone calls. Like starvation and murder, it also gets to be a bigger, more expected threat the dimmer those lights get. But even if you’re writing The Stand you only get so many scenes. So many kinds of moments to take in so many directions. And if you end up choosing every time that the first / only thing a man you don’t know wants is rape, and the first / only problem a woman will have is rape, then everything involved is shrunk.
Back to our random bad guy! Even if he is a shitty person. Even if he’s going to Vegas. We know for a fact that:
a) Everyone he loves, hell everyone who knows his name, is almost surely dead.
b) His entire society and way of life has collapsed. His plans and dreams are gone.
c) He is one of the few people chosen to survive. He is part of a cosmic plan.
e) He has just encountered not one, but two healthy human beings. Who have supplies.
The thing he chooses to do at that moment. Is ask if he can maybe rape one of them. Denied, he leaves. Rita’s only value in the scene is to maybe be raped. Larry’s only value is to say “that’s not cool man.”
See what I mean about this trope weakening the story? Lowering the stakes? Shrinking everyone? The fact that’s it’s a wider tic makes it worse. It’s “have every alien beat up Worf” except way more depressing.
On the plus side, Rita makes a reference to The Millionaire. So now I know what that was! Good run of trivia in this section of the book.
“At the intersection of Thirty Ninth and Seventh, they met a young man wearing cutoff denim shorts and nothing else lying atop a taxi.”
Pretty sure you could run into that right now. This is not an apocalypse thing. Bonus: he doesn’t try to rape anyone!
Their attempt to leave Manhattan goes completely to hell. The Lincoln Tunnel is a horror sausage stuffed with corpses and cars and rats eating the corpses. They are wearing dress shoes. They have no flashlight. They lose their shit and abandon each other. They panic and try to find each other. They frighten and almost kill each other. All of it happens in a dark underground mile full of dead neighbors.
They need Kurt Russell more than anyone has ever needed Kurt Russell.
After the best horror scene in the story so far, the next chapter is Frannie enjoying a sunset in a park. Good call Steve.
Fran has just buried the last person in town besides Whackoff Goblin. She is now alone with Whackoff Goblin. They will go to Vermont, looking for that dead CDC center. Whackoff Goblin is turning human quickly, so I guess I’ll call him Harold.
“And we’ll need guns, of course.”
“Because the police and courts are gone and you’re a woman and you’re pretty and some people ... some men ... might not be ... be gentlemen. That’s why.
His blush was so red now it was almost purple.
he’s talking about rape, she thought. Rape. but how could anybody want to rape me. I’m pregnant. But no one knew that, not even Harold. And even if you spoke up, said to the intended rapist: Will you please not do that because I’m pregnant, could you reasonably expect the rapist to reply, Jeez lady, I’m sorry, I’ll go rape some other goil?
My theory that this book can hear thoughts and rewrites itself to mess with the reader if they criticize or make fun of it? Confirmed.
Dark chest of something, for sure.
