Captain Trips, or tube neck, coming falling on civilization has been a horrific premise in fiction for a long time. In reality, Bird flu, swine flu, Ebola, and Covid-19 were all very real problems. And, these were all just things in my lifetime–and they were real! In Stephen King’s The Stand, there is a great deal of misery when it comes to infectious diseases. However, in this post, we are going to avoid the plague’s disastrous impact on the characters in the story. Instead, we will focus on a novel-related subject that comes from one of the most interesting characters in the book. Thus, we are going to talk about Cibola, or the Seven Cities of Gold.
The Stand Synopsis
The plague in Stephen King’s disaster-novel The Stand (1978) wreaks a great deal of havoc on society. In fact, it reduces the population from 99 percent to just merely 1 percent in merely a month. The survivors, climbing their way out of the apocalypse, find themselves plagued by dreams. These dreams are of an old woman who calls herself Mother Abigail. She instructs them to venture off to Hemingford Home, Nebraska. But there is another figure out there—The Dark Man, The Midnight Rambler, Old Creeping Judas, or (my personal favorite): The Walking Dude. While he is given many different names in other books, from Walter Padick (his supposed birth name) to Walter O’Dim, he is most notably known as Randall Flagg in The Stand.
Randall Flagg and His Followers
Flagg is a nefarious villain, one of magic and great foresight, albeit magical foresight. He is capable of killing people with the snap of his fingers (or sending electrical flying balls of light). And, he can travel seemingly far reaches in very little time. He also has a great aptitude for choosing his followers, which may or may not be a debatable flaw. One such follower is Lloyd Henreid, a murderer and born tagalong. Flagg, The Walking Dude, releases Henreid shortly before he starves to death on a maximum security prison block. Of course, it wouldn’t be Stephen King if Henreid had not already turned cannibal for survival.
But perhaps the most enigmatic character in the novel is that of The Trashcan Man. Donald Merwin Elbert. Trash, as he is known mostly throughout the book, is mentally disturbed. He lives to watch the world burn (literally). His youth was plagued by bullying and typical nastiness at his odd behavior. This behavior was ostensibly inherited through his father’s genes. His father, gunned down by the local Sheriff, shared his pained psychology. As such, Trash would later spend time in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he received electroshock therapy.
After the plague, Trash is on a mission to find The Dark Man, who resides in Las Vegas. Flagg’s society has established itself there and the Trashcan Man travels far to find him.
King writes, “He came staggering and flapping up a long upgrade, the heat of the sun stewing his stomach and baking his brains. The interstate shimmered with reflected radiant heat. He had been Donald Merwin Elbert once; now he was Trashcan Man forever and ever, and he beheld the fabled City, Seven-in-One, Cibola.”
A paragraph later: “He stood, swaying in his rags, looking down at Cibola, the City that is Promised, the City of Dreams.”
What is Cibola?
Cibola, or the Seven Cities of Gold, was a 16th-century legend that hinted at the existence of literal lands of gold. Rumors of these cities existed. Some sources state that they were, “somewhere in the southwest of North America” and could be “comparable to the better-known mythical city of El Dorado” (Mark).
In The Stand, and in Trash’s brain, the city of Cibola—not many cities but just Seven-in-One—exists in the Mojave desert and would, of course, be the most sought-after place in the world, as not only was it a land of gold and promise, but the lair of his master, Flagg. My life for you!
Additionally, the sojourn to Hemingford Home, which would relocate to Boulder, Colorado, or even the voyage to Las Vegas, acts as a journey for the characters in the novel, much in the same way Spanish explorers ventured to find a land of gold to fund armies and warfare. In the novel, warfare and destruction of the same variety (total) would be inevitable. Trashcan Man’s sole purpose, as instructed by Flagg, was to find and retrieve the Old World weapons (guns, mines, and bombs). Then, he would bring them back to Vegas and they would use them against the Boulder Free Zone.
In reality, attempts to find the Cities of Gold were fruitless, as even in 1540, Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of Spain, sent Francisco Vazquez de Coronado “to search of the cities,” but he only found “Indian settlements—including the Zuni Pueblos” (Britannica).
Such is the way of legend, and even though Trash believes in his discovery in the novel, he has a momentary realization that can only be likened to the Spanish explorers of the 16th century: “What if Cibola had been a mirage?”
Conclusion
Whether you are critical of the end of Stephen King’s The Stand or not, it is a book of wonderful invention. It does so much legwork in the way of establishing the world. And, frankly, before the characters hit Hemingford Home, Nebraska, the book is startlingly horrifying and beautiful in the way one would expect…and desire. With that in mind, the addition of elements like Cibola and the Trashcan Man himself creates a lived in world where such interesting machinations can fall in line easily. The fact that Cibola is steeped in quite a bit of mythos and actually relates to the story’s theme of finding home in a chaotic world. And Stephen King has dabbled in many interesting themes, but perhaps never one so fruitful with mythology. Thus, in my opinion, Stephen King’s The Stand is a monumental achievement in the confines of fictional storytelling.
Works Cited
Editors. “Seven Cities of Cibola.” Britannica.
King, Stephen. The Stand. Doubleday, 1978.
Mark, Joshua. “Cibola – The Seven Cities of Gold and Coronado.” World History Encyclopedia. May 11, 2021. Web. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1754/cibola—the-seven-cities-of-gold–coronado/
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[…] The Stand, Randall Flagg is described as such: “He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds […]