Trigger warnings: child abuse, death, violence, bullying, sexual content, and strong language.
By: Alisa Portnova
Carrie all starts and ends with blood, the same way life does. Blood benchmarks the start of life, puberty [for those born female], and death. In Stephen King’s debut 305-page book published in 1974, he winds together paranormal powers, religious shame, and the aforementioned presence of blood to create a horror novel worth reading.
To provide a brief, hopefully spoiler-free summary: Carrie revolves around a 16-year-old girl, Carrie White. She lives trapped in a home with a mother overtaken by religious psychosis, and is an outcast at her school because of her strange disposition and lack of social awareness. A locker-room incident goes too far and gives Carrie conscious awareness of her telekinetic abilities, the knowledge of which seem to take her life on a brief high before crashing down, and taking the town with her.
An avid reader of Stephen King, I was somehow unaware that this was his first published novel. Everyone who has read more than three of his works probably agrees with the sentiment that the earlier on in his career it was written, the better the fiction is. In his memoir On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (2000), King criticizes his past overuse of adjectives and the stretch of his stories. This reflects in his modern writing, where there is no time wasted getting to the gore, or long storylines that culminate in a horrific ending. I am glad that he stumbled upon the idea that led to Carrie as early in his career as possible; the prose and long-windedness of it all is what makes the book what it is.
In terms of formatting, this book has multiple perspectives and multiple writing styles, the latter of which bounce between the present and the future. Through a third-person perspective following Carrie White herself, scientific articles, a memoir, newspaper alerts, and interview transcripts, the audience follows Carrie’s path to destruction. The mix of writing styles and a non-linear timeline keeps it refreshing and interesting, even though the main conflict of the book doesn’t occur until the last forty or so pages.
King uses telekinetic powers as a metaphor for the becoming of oneself; in Carrie’s case, through the menstruation that starts with puberty. Her bloodflow is symbolic of womanhood, but in this novel is more so tied to the shame surrounding her growth.
Religion acts as the main force that turns Carrie into what she is. Her mother Margaret chastises Carrie for things that the girl cannot control [her body, her cycles] and shames her for wanting to fit in with the other teenagers; their “normal” is what Margaret considers the apex of sin. The elder White’s ramblings and punishing of Carrie after an incident that happens very early on in the book release Carrie’s knowledge. This release can be considered cathartic, but too much power left untrained turns into just another punishment.
Like the novel itself, it seems like Carrie White’s life had been culminating towards destruction, and the reader is left with a satisfaction that Carrie got what she deserved, whichever way that can be interpreted.
