Book Review: Carrie by Stephen King [SPOILERS]
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A quick back story. This was King's first major novel published under his name. A woman challenged King, calling him a chauvinist who feared woman. King rebuffed her, but decided to write a story about a woman. King, at first, tossed the first 3 pages (shower scene involving Carrie's first period) in the trash. His wife picked it up and, quietly read it and convinced to finish the story. He said he wrote the book in less than 2 weeks. He sold the rights to the story for 400K in the mid-1970's. Impressive, indeed.
As far as the book is concerned, there is nothing really to give up about the plot. Most are aware it is about a troubled teenage girl who has a nasty prank played on her at the Prom and she responds with using her telekinesis powers. The book hides no bones about the plot and what the climax will be. King mentions TK power on page seven, the story opens with Carrie's first use of her powers at the tender age of three.
What is most intriguing about the book is the disjointed narrative that King uses. Most of the book isn't told from Carrie's view -- in the 3rd person -- but newspaper clippings, books that explored the event that night itself, and 3rd person views of the main characters. He seamlessly welds these varying viewpoints together into a coherent narrative. The reader knows that something bad is going to happen and after the meltdown at the Prom, the true climax is the reign of terror Carrie engages in. The suspense is heightened with routine, but well-calculated, breaks in the action as court reports and views of 3rd parties punctuate the sheer madness Carrie descends into.
Carrie, herself, had a deeply troubled upbringing. Her Christian upbringing was highly conservative but with a seriously sadistic, obsessive edge. Her mother was an intense and borderline insane woman who directs her own version of Christianity, with her as preacher with Carrie as the sole pulpit member. She had a father, that when one day when praying, he touched her crotch, Carrie's mother cast him out of the house. He came back drunk and forced himself on her and Carrie's mother was disgusted because he made her feel those sinful feelings (sexual pleasure). He dies in a factory accident so thereafter before Carrie's birth, leaving the family just Carrie and her mother. Carrie's mother treated her like an agent of the Devil, but never the temerity to kill her -- until Prom night.
Carrie had only recently had her period at 17. It happened the damp showers of her high school, surrounded by the terrifying jeers of her female classmates. Carrie, with the blessing of the school, ran away home. On the way home a young kid accosts her and in a blind fit of rage, knocks him off his bike with her mind. In the weeks leading up the Prom, Carrie masters the muscle in her mind to manipulate objects. She gets asked to the Prom by a popular boyfriend of one girl named Sue who felt extremely guilty over her taunting of Carrie in that shower.
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At the Prom, she is elected Prom Queen. A particularly loathsome girl - who absolutely detests Carrie -- had her abusive, anti-social boyfriend rig up two buckets of pig blood to rain down on Carrie as she was elected, per this nasty girl's plan. It goes as planned until they realize that Carrie is an absolute monster. Carrie tries to flee but once she calms down, she goes completely insane.
Carrie locks the doors of the gymnasium with her mind, turn on the sprinklers and tosses the electrical cords from the stage into the scrum, electrocuting some and the rest die in the fire.
Carrie walks with purpose toward her home, where she plans to kill her mother -- her one, true tormenter. She burns half the town down on her way. Everybody in town -- even they don't know her -- instinctively know Carrie is at fault. For a few hours, Carrie exerted complete psychological control over the town. At her home, her mother confronts her in an incredibly emotionally charged showdown. Carrie's mother nails a butcher knife into Carrie's shoulder and Carrie manipulates her heart so she dies.
The story ends as she travels to the local watering hole, an establishment her mother whinged endlessly about for its intrinsic ungodliness. She confronts the the offending couple and kills them both before falling to die. She leads the girlfriend of the man who took her to Prom to her and they have a sad exchange as Carrie dies.
The national press treated Carrie as a sheer monster who was so evil that she did this out of pure, vile spite. The few survivors feel tremendous amounts of guilt, as they know what she did was wrong but they also know they either did nothing to help Carrie and her mother or actively discriminated against and hurt Carrie.
Book rating? I can't put a number on it. The story is mesmerizingly terrifying and the writing is quite good, but you can tell King hasn't hit his stride as a writer. Epistolary novels can be quite tough to pull off, but King does this in effortless fashion and the story flows better as not a pure descent into madness, but a trying, conflicted attempt of outsiders endeavoring to understand the situation coupled with the growing sense of Carrie's impending doom.
King must have his own demons, as his ability to document the slide into pure insanity is effortless. He does a phenomenal job of presenting Carrie as a victim first and butcher second. Rare is the novel where somebody can kill over 400 people and, yet, at the end, still feel a complete sense of sympathy for Carrie. She is a preeminently a tragic character. The harrowing scenes of her mother's abuse and the vitriolic treatment at the hands of her peers is carefully done to ensure maximum sympathy for Carrie.
In the end, it is a well-told tale of a young woman testing the boundaries of her own sanity, only to realize that some doors were never meant to be opened and -- once you do -- you can become somebody you never thought in a thousand years you would become.
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. This book not only teaches solid reasoning but the importance of tuning things out.
