The Stand characters

Also known as Stuart Redman

Appears from the start

Stuart 'Stu' Redman, a quiet, capable, plainspoken factory worker from the small town of Arnette, Texas. When a stranger crashes his car into the local gas station carrying a dying man and a sick family, Stu is among the first exposed to the disease and is taken into government quarantine, where his natural steadiness and refusal to be cowed set him apart. Immune to the plague, he becomes one of the central figures among the survivors.

Also known as Frances Goldsmith

First appears in chapter 6

Frances 'Frannie' Goldsmith, a college student in Ogunquit, Maine, who discovers she is pregnant just as the world begins to end. Warm, strong-willed and resilient, she loses her father to the plague and buries him herself. She falls in with her odd neighbour Harold Lauder as they set out to find other survivors, and her unborn child becomes a quiet emblem of whether humanity has any future.

First appears in chapter 6

Harold Lauder, a bright, overweight, deeply insecure teenager from Frannie's town, given to grand vocabulary and simmering resentment. He attaches himself to Frannie as they flee the emptied world, nursing an unrequited fixation on her and a growing bitterness at being overlooked. His intelligence and wounded pride make him both useful and unpredictable.

First appears in chapter 8

Larry Underwood, a rock musician who has just scored his first hit single when the plague strikes. Charming but self-absorbed and prone to using people, then feeling guilty about it, he is haunted by a nagging self-judgement that he has never really been a good man. Surviving a dying New York and a nightmarish escape through a tunnel choked with the dead, he begins a long journey toward becoming someone better.

First appears in chapter 12

Nick Andros, a deaf and mute young drifter - intelligent, self-educated and gentle - who is beaten and robbed passing through a small Arkansas town shortly before the plague. Deputised almost by accident amid the collapse of local order, he becomes one of the survivors' most trusted and level-headed leaders despite being unable to hear or speak.

First appears in chapter 16

Tom Cullen, a good-natured, developmentally disabled man who punctuates his speech by spelling out M-O-O-N for whatever he means to emphasize, and takes life as it comes. He falls in with Nick Andros, the two forming an unlikely, devoted partnership, and his simple decency and unexpected usefulness make him quietly important to the survivors' cause.

First appears in chapter 18

Lloyd Henreid, a small-time crook caught up in a botched armed robbery and left to rot, nearly starving, in a jail cell as the plague empties the world. Rescued from death by the dark man who has begun gathering the ruthless and the desperate to himself, Lloyd becomes his grateful right hand in the west.

Also known as the dark man, the Walkin' Dude

First appears in chapter 20

Randall Flagg, the 'dark man' or 'Walkin' Dude,' a grinning, ageless figure of malice who walks the emptying highways of America drawing the cruel, the lost and the power-hungry toward him. More than human, he delights in fear and chaos and sets himself up in the west as a tyrant rebuilding a hard, orderly society in his own image - the dark counterpart of everything the survivors gathering in the east represent.

Also known as Donald Merwin Elbert

First appears in chapter 24

Donald Merwin Elbert, called the Trashcan Man, a mentally ill pyromaniac tormented by voices and by memories of cruelty, who wanders the dead country setting fires and worshipping destruction. Drawn westward toward the dark man, whom he regards as a god, his obsession with fire and weapons makes him both a devoted servant and a loose, dangerous force.

First appears in chapter 28

Glen Bateman, a retired sociology professor whom Stu meets on the road - wry, talkative and fond of theorising about how a shattered society will try to put itself back together. His intelligence and detachment make him a valued adviser among the survivors and a clear-eyed voice about the choices they face.

Also known as Abagail Freemantle

First appears in chapter 42

Abagail Freemantle, called Mother Abagail, a devout Black woman well over a hundred years old living alone on her Nebraska farm. She appears to the good-hearted survivors in their dreams as a figure of faith and refuge, drawing them toward her, and becomes the spiritual centre of the community they build - a frail, human vessel for a power she believes is not her own.

First appears in chapter 44

Nadine Cross, a former teacher, striking and self-contained, who travels with a traumatised mute boy she has taken under her care. She believes herself promised to the dark man and struggles against a destiny she both dreads and cannot refuse, her longing for the survivors' community warring with the pull westward.

First appears in chapter 50

Ralph Brentner, a practical, good-humoured Oklahoma farmer, resourceful with machines and radios, who becomes one of the steady, unglamorous pillars of the community the survivors build. Plainspoken and brave, he is among those who commit fully to the stand against the dark man.