…plug it up…
Carrie is Stephen King’s Cinderella story. It’s the novel that garnered him enough money to quit teaching and concentrate on writing full-time. The novel also spawned one of the best King film adaptations. King would later say: “The movie made the book and the book made me.”
The novel is a fairy tale unto itself. Carrie White is gifted (or afflicted) with the power of telekinesis. She plays King’s Cinderella in the story. She’s a tragic character who is a very shy, awkward teenager residing on the lowest rung of the high school caste system. In one of the most memorable scenes, when Carrie experiences her first menstrual period following gym, the other girls in her class pelt her with sanitary napkins and chant: “Plug it up!” In this regard they act as the Wicked Sisters of the novel.
The cruelty doesn’t end there. Carrie is also burdened with an overly religious, and quite unstable, mother in the form of Margaret White. Just like Carrie’s period heightens her telekinetic abilities, it also triggers something in her mother. The fear of a parent being threatened by their child’s approaching adulthood is heightened to an extreme and terrifying conclusion.
Sue Snell performs as the Fairy Godmother of the story when she asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (the Prince Charming), to take Carrie to the Spring Ball. When they attend the function, Carrie’s classmates find her to be charming and quite amusing. She’s able to come out of her proverbial shell since she’s stood up to her domineering mother and accepted her powers. This is a theme that King will occasionally return to in his work; especially IT.
In fact, King returns to a lot of themes explored in Carrie. Vera Smith from The Dead Zone is like Margaret White in that she fears her child’s powers stem from Satan. There are also plenty of children with extraordinary abilities: Danny Torrance’s psychic prowess, Ellie Creed’s prophetic nightmares, and Charlie McGee’s experiments with her pyrotechnic ability echo Carrie’s own coming of age.
The tragedy in Carrie stems from the character’s inherent personality. Stephen King doesn’t present a monster with Carrie White; instead he gives us someone we can care for. We’re led to believe that if she hadn’t attended the infamous Spring Ball, she might have flowered into a “normal” person. In the context of the novel, we’re forced to pity Carrie rather than fear her. It should be no surprise that Sue Snell can feel Carrie’s pain in the climax of the book.
Mixed into the text are eyewitness accounts, newspaper excerpts, and court transcripts that purport to be real. King insists that Carrie’s story be taken seriously. Like much of his other work, the novel is about an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.
As much as I enjoy Carrie, there are a few other things which I dislike. King immediately tells us about Carrie’s telekinetic powers rather than show us. I chalk this up to King still being a young writer, but it’s always stuck out like a sore thumb for me. I also don’t like the scene where Billy Nolan kills the pigs. I suppose that’s the animal lover in me coming out, because I know the scene is integral to the novel’s plot, but I can’t get over my mental image of the pig chewing potato chips before it gets a sledgehammer to the skull. It always makes me sad.
I’m also not a fan of Carrie or her mother’s fate. I much prefer the theatrical version over their demise in the book. And that’s where I can mention Brian De Palma’s film. It was released in 1976, and like I’ve previously mentioned, it’s one of the best Stephen King adaptations. Both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie received Oscar nominations for their performances, and they’re both rightfully deserved. The film’s ending, where Carrie’s arm shoots out of the ground, has always been a favorite of mine. And who can forget those movie posters with Sissy Spacek bathed in blood? I can remember a full-figure cardboard cut-out of her standing in my local theater’s lobby. From that moment, I knew it was a film I had to see.
Carrie wasn’t the first Stephen King book I read. It was the following year’s Salem’s Lot that brought me into his fold, but I quickly read Carrie afterwards. I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool Stephen King fan ever since.
However, Carrie was the first exposure for a lot of his fans. Though it wasn’t his first written novel (both Rage and The Long Walk are prior books), it’s still an exceptional tale. Years later, Carrie still has enough muscle to usher forth feelings of fear and sympathy.
And King still hasn’t loosened his hold on the public’s throat.
Carrie is Stephen King’s Cinderella story. It’s the novel that garnered him enough money to quit teaching and concentrate on writing full-time. The novel also spawned one of the best King film adaptations. King would later say: “The movie made the book and the book made me.”
The novel is a fairy tale unto itself. Carrie White is gifted (or afflicted) with the power of telekinesis. She plays King’s Cinderella in the story. She’s a tragic character who is a very shy, awkward teenager residing on the lowest rung of the high school caste system. In one of the most memorable scenes, when Carrie experiences her first menstrual period following gym, the other girls in her class pelt her with sanitary napkins and chant: “Plug it up!” In this regard they act as the Wicked Sisters of the novel.The cruelty doesn’t end there. Carrie is also burdened with an overly religious, and quite unstable, mother in the form of Margaret White. Just like Carrie’s period heightens her telekinetic abilities, it also triggers something in her mother. The fear of a parent being threatened by their child’s approaching adulthood is heightened to an extreme and terrifying conclusion.
Sue Snell performs as the Fairy Godmother of the story when she asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (the Prince Charming), to take Carrie to the Spring Ball. When they attend the function, Carrie’s classmates find her to be charming and quite amusing. She’s able to come out of her proverbial shell since she’s stood up to her domineering mother and accepted her powers. This is a theme that King will occasionally return to in his work; especially IT.
In fact, King returns to a lot of themes explored in Carrie. Vera Smith from The Dead Zone is like Margaret White in that she fears her child’s powers stem from Satan. There are also plenty of children with extraordinary abilities: Danny Torrance’s psychic prowess, Ellie Creed’s prophetic nightmares, and Charlie McGee’s experiments with her pyrotechnic ability echo Carrie’s own coming of age.
The tragedy in Carrie stems from the character’s inherent personality. Stephen King doesn’t present a monster with Carrie White; instead he gives us someone we can care for. We’re led to believe that if she hadn’t attended the infamous Spring Ball, she might have flowered into a “normal” person. In the context of the novel, we’re forced to pity Carrie rather than fear her. It should be no surprise that Sue Snell can feel Carrie’s pain in the climax of the book.
Mixed into the text are eyewitness accounts, newspaper excerpts, and court transcripts that purport to be real. King insists that Carrie’s story be taken seriously. Like much of his other work, the novel is about an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.
As much as I enjoy Carrie, there are a few other things which I dislike. King immediately tells us about Carrie’s telekinetic powers rather than show us. I chalk this up to King still being a young writer, but it’s always stuck out like a sore thumb for me. I also don’t like the scene where Billy Nolan kills the pigs. I suppose that’s the animal lover in me coming out, because I know the scene is integral to the novel’s plot, but I can’t get over my mental image of the pig chewing potato chips before it gets a sledgehammer to the skull. It always makes me sad.
I’m also not a fan of Carrie or her mother’s fate. I much prefer the theatrical version over their demise in the book. And that’s where I can mention Brian De Palma’s film. It was released in 1976, and like I’ve previously mentioned, it’s one of the best Stephen King adaptations. Both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie received Oscar nominations for their performances, and they’re both rightfully deserved. The film’s ending, where Carrie’s arm shoots out of the ground, has always been a favorite of mine. And who can forget those movie posters with Sissy Spacek bathed in blood? I can remember a full-figure cardboard cut-out of her standing in my local theater’s lobby. From that moment, I knew it was a film I had to see.
Carrie wasn’t the first Stephen King book I read. It was the following year’s Salem’s Lot that brought me into his fold, but I quickly read Carrie afterwards. I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool Stephen King fan ever since.
However, Carrie was the first exposure for a lot of his fans. Though it wasn’t his first written novel (both Rage and The Long Walk are prior books), it’s still an exceptional tale. Years later, Carrie still has enough muscle to usher forth feelings of fear and sympathy.
And King still hasn’t loosened his hold on the public’s throat.
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