Carrie (novel)
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| Carrie | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Stephen King |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Publication date | April 5, 1974 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 199 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-385-08695-4 |
| Followed by | 'Salem's Lot |
Carrie (1974) is Stephen King's first published novel. King has commented that he finds the work to be "raw" and "with a surprising power to hurt and horrify". It is one of the most frequently banned books in U.S. schools[1] and the film version was banned in Finland. Much of the book is written in epistolary structure in the form of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, excerpts from books, etc. Brian De Palma created a film version in 1976.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The book uses fictional documents, such as book excerpts, news reports, and hearing transcripts, to frame the story of Carietta "Carrie" White, a teenage girl from Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie's mother, Margaret, a fanatical Christian fundamentalist, has a vindictive and unstable personality, and over the years has ruled Carrie with an iron rod and repeated threats of damnation. Margaret's mentally and emotionally abusive behavior has occasionally crossed over into physical abuse as well.
Carrie does not fare much better at her school, Thomas Ewen High School, where her frumpy looks, unfashionable attire, lack of friends and no popularity make her the butt of ridicule; at the beginning of the novel, she has her first period while showering after a physical education class, at the age of sixteen. The terrified Carrie has no understanding of menstruation; her mother never spoke to her about it, and being a social outcast throughout high school had no friends who might have discussed it with her.
That this could be Carrie's first period, or that sympathy might be appropriate, never occurs to her classmates; they use the event as an opportunity to taunt her. Led by Chris Hargensen, a spoiled rich girl who has a record of targeting outsiders, they throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. When gym teacher Miss Desjardin happens upon the scene, she at first berates Carrie for her stupidity but is horrified when she realizes that Carrie has no idea what has happened to her. She helps her clean up and tries to explain. Meanwhile an overhead light suddenly goes out, a sign of Carrie's telekinetic powers that have been strengthened by her menarche. Carrie is excused from school by the assistant principal and sent home to her mother, who shows no sympathy for Carrie's first encounter with "the woman's curse."
Miss Desjardin, still incensed over the locker room incident and ashamed of her initial disgust with Carrie, wants all the girls who taunted Carrie suspended and banned from attending the upcoming school prom as punishment. The school principal finds this too harsh and instead punishes the girls by giving them several detentions under the gym teacher's unforgiving eye. When Chris, after an altercation with Miss Desjardin, refuses to appear for the detention, she is suspended and barred from the prom. She tries to get her father, a prominent local lawyer, to intimidate the school principal into reinstating her prom privileges. The principal threatens to counter-sue on behalf of Carrie, and Mr. Hargensen decides not to sue.
Carrie gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers. She has apparently possessed the gift since birth, but conscious control over it disappeared after her infancy, although she remembers incidents throughout her life that could be attributable to telekinesis; for example, a shower of rocks on her house at the age of three. Carrie practices her powers in secret, developing strength, even though this is physically tiring and she is frequently pressed to the limit. She also finds that she is somewhat telepathic, enough to be able to discern people's thoughts about her; for instance, she knows that the gym teacher has mixed feelings of sympathy and disgust towards her.
Meanwhile, Sue Snell, another popular girl who had earlier teased Carrie, begins to feel remorseful about her participation in the locker room antics. With the prom fast approaching, Sue convinces her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, one of the most attractive and popular boys in the school, to ask Carrie to the prom (Sue suspects that she is pregnant by Tommy). Carrie is suspicious but accepts, and makes her own outfit, a red velvet gown. Carrie's mother won't hear of her daughter doing anything so "carnal" as attending a school dance and reveals much of her own past as she explains why. She believes that sex in any form is sinful, even after marriage. She also knows all about Carrie's telekinetic powers, which she considers a form of witchcraft; it seems that they appear every third generation in her family. Carrie, however, is tired of hearing that everything is a sin; she wants a normal life and sees the prom as a new beginning.
The prom initially goes well for Carrie; Tommy's friends are welcoming towards her, and Tommy finds himself growing attracted towards Carrie. Chris Hargenson, still furious with Carrie, has devised her own plan of revenge with her boyfriend Billy Nolan. Billy, along with some friends, had driven out to a farm, slaughtered two pigs and filled two buckets full of blood, and, breaking into the school gym, suspended the buckets over the stage with a pull cord. Chris then rigged Carrie's election as prom queen. When Carrie and Tommy go up to be crowned, Chris will pull the cord, ruining the happiest moment of Carrie's life.
The plan succeeds beyond their wildest hopes. Tommy is knocked unconscious by one of the falling buckets -- he dies within minutes -- and he and Carrie are drenched in blood. Nearly everyone in attendance, even some of the teachers, find themselves laughing at Carrie, albeit largely out of shock. As Sue says later, "after all those years of laughing at Carrie, what else could you do?" Carrie is finally pushed over the edge. She leaves the building in agonized humiliation, but once outside, she remembers her telekinetic gift and decides to use it for vengeance. Initially planning only to lock all the doors and turn on the sprinklers to destroy the dresses and ruin the hair of all of the snobbish girls who had bullied her, Carrie remembers about the electrical equipment set up for the dance band and the PA system. Carrie turns the sprinkler system anyway, finally going over the edge. Watching through the windows, she witnesses the death of two of the students and a school official by electrocution. She decides to kill everyone, eventually causing a massive fire that destroys Thomas Ewen High School, trapping almost everyone inside.
Walking home, she burns virtually all of downtown Chamberlain. A side-effect of Carrie's gift is "broadcast" telepathy; anyone within a certain radius becomes aware that the hideous carnage at the school and the explosions and fires downtown are being caused by Carrie White, even if they do not know who Carrie is. A few even catch details of her thoughts. She makes power lines break, gas stations explode, and wreaks other forms of vengeance on the town. She also mentally keeps the school's doors locked, although she allows the few students who remember the fire escape to leave, thinking that she'll get to them later.
Carrie returns home to confront her mother, who believes Carrie has been possessed by Satan and that the only way to save her is to kill her. Revealing that Carrie's conception was a result of what may have been marital rape (although she admits she enjoyed the sex), she stabs Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife. Carrie kills her mother, using her telekinesis to cause her heart to slow and ultimately stop.
Mortally wounded but still alive, Carrie makes her way to the roadhouse where her father got drunk the night she was conceived. She sees Chris and Billy leaving, and after Billy's attempt to run her over, she telekinetically takes control of the vehicle and wrecks the car, killing them both and setting the roadhouse on fire. Sue Snell, who has been following Carrie's telepathic "broadcast," finds Carrie collapsed in the parking lot.
Carrie and Sue have a brief telepathic conversation. Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, but Sue invites her to look into her mind. Realizing that Sue is innocent and has never felt real animosity towards her, Carrie forgives her and dies. Later, Sue finally has her period.
One of the few survivors of the fire at the prom is Miss Desjardins, who resigns shortly afterwards, believing that she might have prevented the catastrophe if she had reached out more to Carrie. The principal also resigns. The surviving seniors attend a sad, grim graduation ceremony, with no parties or celebrations afterwards.
The narrative is interlaced with excerpts from various books and studies written about Carrie after the fact, including transcripts of Congressional hearings and the final "White Committee" report. At the very end, the report concludes that at least there are no others like Carrie, so that events like these will not happen again. However, the final document in the book is a cheery letter from an Appalachian woman to her sister, talking about her daughter's telekinetic powers and reminiscing about her grandmother, who had similar abilities. Her relaxed tone implies that the child will grow up in full possession of the gift, but with better mental and emotional health.
[edit] Continuity Errors
Early in the novel, King tells the reader that Carrie's father, Ralph, died in an accident seven months before she was born. Later on, however, Carrie's mother recalls that Ralph had stopped her from killing Carrie when she first exhibited telekinetic powers as an infant.
[edit] Background
Carrie was actually King's fourth novel [2] but the first to be published. It was written while he was living in a trailer in Hermon, Maine, on a portable typewriter that belonged to his wife, Tabitha. It started as a short story originally intended for Cavalier magazine, but King tossed the first three pages [3] of his work-in-progress in the garbage. Of King's published short stories at the time, he recalled, "Some woman said, 'You write all those macho things, but you can't write about women.' I said, 'I'm not scared of women. I could write about them if I wanted to.' So I got an idea for a story about this incident in a girls' shower room, and the girl would be telekinetic. The other girls would pelt her with sanitary napkins when she got her period. The period would release the right hormones and she would rain down destruction on them... I did the shower scene, but I hated it and threw it away."[4]
His wife, Tabitha King, fished the pages out of the garbage and encouraged him to finish the story. He followed his wife's advice and expanded it into a novel.[5] King said, "I persisted because I was dry and had no better ideas...my considered opinion was that I had written the world's all-time loser."[6]
The character of Carietta (Carrie) White was based on a combination of two girls in King's past; one of them went to school with him, the other was a student of his. The young girl King went to school with lived down the street from him when he lived in Durham, Maine. King recalls, in an interview with Charles L. Grant for Twilight Zone Magazine (Apr 1981), "She was a very peculiar girl who came from a very peculiar family. Her mother wasn't a religious nut like the mother in Carrie; she was a game nut, a sweepstakes nut who subscribed to magazines for people who entered contests...the girl had one change of clothes for the entire school year, and all the other kids made fun of her. I have a very clear memory of the day she came to school with a new outfit she'd bought herself. She was a plain-looking country girl, but she'd changed the black skirt and white blouse - which was all anybody had every seen her in - for a bright-colored checkered blouse with puffed sleeves and a skirt that was fashionable at the time. And everybody made worse fun of her because nobody wanted to see her change the mold."
King told biographer George Beahm that she later "married a man who was as odd as her, had kids, and eventually killed herself."[7]
According to the audio commentary for the 1976 Brian DePalma film version of Carrie, Carrie is based on a composite of two girls who were bullied and abused at school, one of whom had a religious fanatic for a mother. King says he wondered what it would have been like to have been reared by such a mother. He based the story itself on a reversal of the Cinderella fairy tale.
Carrie’s telekinetic powers resulted from King’s earlier reading about this topic. King also did a short stint as a high school English teacher at Hampden Academy, a job he eventually quit after receiving the payment for the paperback publishing sale of Carrie. It is presumed that he drew inspiration from his time as a teacher while he was writing the book.[7]
At the time of publication, King was working as a teacher at Hampden Academy and barely making ends meet ($6,400 annually). To cut down on expenses, King had the phone company remove the telephone from his house. As a result, when King received word that the book was chosen for publication, his phone was out of service. Doubleday editor, William Thompson (who would eventually become King's close friend), sent a telegram to King's house which read: "CARRIE OFFICIALLY A DOUBLEDAY BOOK. $2,500 ADVANCE AGAINST ROYALTIES. CONGRATS, KID - THE FUTURE LIES AHEAD, BILL."[8] New American Library bought the paperback rights for $400,000, which, according to King's contract with Doubleday, was split between them.[9]
King recalls, "Carrie was written after Rosemary's Baby, but before The Exorcist, which really opened up the field. I didn't expect much of Carrie. I thought who'd want to read a book about a poor little girl with menstrual problems? I couldn't believe I was writing it."[10]
The book was dedicated to his wife, Tabitha: "This is for Tabby, who got me into it - and then bailed me out of it."
Carrie was published April 5, 1974 with an initial print run of 30,000 copies for a cover price of $5.95 USD.
The hardback sold a mere 13,000 copies, while the paperback, released a year later, sold over 1 million copies in its first year. Brian DePalma's film adaptation was released ten weeks after King's second book, Salem's Lot, was published.[11]
Prior to Carrie, King's novel Getting it On, later retitled Rage and released under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, had been rejected by Doubleday. He had also written The Long Walk and The Running Man, both later published under the Bachman pen name.
In a talk at the University of Maine at Orono, King said of Carrie, "I'm not saying that Carrie is shit and I'm not repudiating it. She made me a star, but it was a young book by a young writer. In retrospect it reminds me of a cookie baked by a first grader- tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom."
[edit] Adaptations
- A 1976 movie, based on the novel, was made, directed by Brian de Palma and starring Sissy Spacek.
- A 1988 Broadway musical, starring Betty Buckley, Linzi Hateley, and Darlene Love closed after only five performances and 16 previews. It is viewed as one of the biggest Broadway flops of all time.
- In 1999, a sequel titled The Rage: Carrie 2 was released. The premise was that Carrie's father had remarried and had another daughter who had telekinetic powers. Sue Snell, the only survivor of the prom, is now a school counselor.
- In 2002, a TV movie remake was released. It starred Angela Bettis, Emilie de Ravin and Patricia Clarkson.
- Playwright Erik Jackson acquired Stephen King's consent[12]to stage a non-musical spoof, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2006 with female impersonator Keith Levy (a.k.a. Sherry Vine) in the lead role.
[edit] Editions
- ISBN 0-606-00823-3 (prebound, 1975)
- ISBN 0-385-08695-4 (hardcover, 1990)
- ISBN 1-56780-057-2 (paperback, 1992)
- ISBN 0-8161-5688-3 (library binding, 1994, Large Type Edition)
- ISBN 84-01-49966-6 (hardcover, 1999)
- ISBN 0-671-03973-3 (paperback, 2000)
- ISBN 0-606-20594-2 (prebound, 2001)
- ISBN 0-609-81090-1 (paperback, 2001)
- ISBN 0-671-03972-5 (paperback, 2002)
- ISBN 84-01-49888-0 (hardcover)
- ISBN 0-7434-7060-5 (mass market paperback)
[edit] References
- ^ ALA | 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000
- ^ "I had written three other novels before Carrie..." King, Stephen, (2000) On Writing. Scribner Books. p. 77
- ^ "I did three single-spaced pages of a first draft, then crumpled them up in disgust and threw them away." King, Stephen. (2000) On Writing. Scribner Books. p. 76
- ^ "Stephen King: 'I Like to go for the Jugular'" Grant, Charles L. Twilight Zone Magazine vol 1 no 1 April 1981
- ^ Introduction to "Carrie" (Collector's Edition) King, Tabitha Plume 1991
- ^ "On Becoming a Brand Name" essay King, Stephen Adelina Magazine Feb 1980 p. 44
- ^ a b Stephen King From A to Z: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Work Beahm, George 1988 Andrews McMeel
- ^ "Stephen King From A to Z: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Work" Beahm, George 1988 Andrews McMeel pp. 28-30
- ^ "The Stephen King Companion" Beahm, George Andrews McMeel press 1989 pp. 171-173
- ^ "From Textbook to Checkbook" Wells, Robert W. Milwaukee Journal Sep 15, 1980
- ^ "The Art of Darkness" Winter, Douglas E. 1984 Signet pp. 28-35
- ^ Eric Jackson Interview. horrorking.com. Retrieved on 2008-02-27.
[edit] External links
- Carrie Book Review
- Bookpoi - Identification characteristics for first edition copies of Carrie by Stephen King.
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