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Carrie
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Carrie (1974) (edit title/settings)

by Stephen King (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Carrie White is a mousy, shy, repressed girl who is mercilessly teased by her fellow classmates. Her mother is a religious fanatic who walks around in a black cape and imposes her rigid restrictions on Carrie. After Carrie unexpectedly has her first period in the school showers, she is teased... read more

Summary edit see section history

The book uses fictional documents, such as book excerpts, news reports, and hearing transcripts, to frame the story of Carietta "Carrie" White, a 17-year-old girl from Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie's mother, Margaret, a fanatical Christian fundamentalist, has a vindictive and unstable... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The book uses fictional documents, such as book excerpts, news reports, and hearing transcripts, to frame the story of Carietta "Carrie" White, a 17-year-old 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, as well as occasional physical abuse. Carrie does not fare much better at school. Her frumpy looks, lack of friends and lack of popularity with boys make her the object of ridicule, embarrassment, and public humiliation by her peers.

At the beginning of the novel, Carrie has her first period while showering after a physical education class. Her classmates use the event as an opportunity to humiliate her. Led by Chris Hargensen, they throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. The 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. Margaret shows no sympathy for her first encounter with what she calls "the woman's curse", as she had earlier given Carrie trouble about her "dirty pillows" (breasts) when Carrie wanted to buy a bra.

Miss Desjardin, still incensed over the locker room incident and ashamed at her initial disgust with Carrie, wants all the girls who made fun of Carrie suspended and banned from attending the school prom, but the principal instead punishes the girls by giving them several detentions. Chris, after an altercation with Miss Desjardin, refuses to appear for the detention, she is suspended and barred from the prom and tries to get her father, a prominent local lawyer, to intimidate the school principal into reinstating her privileges. Carrie gradually discovers her telekinetic powers, which she has apparently possessed since birth, but had not had conscious control over after her infancy, though she remembers several incidents from throughout her life. Carrie practices her powers in secret, developing strength, and also finds that she is somewhat telepathic.

Meanwhile, Sue Snell, another popular girl, regrets her participation in the locker room antics. Her reflections on her own life and future reveal her to be as trapped as Carrie. She convinces her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, one of the most popular and gifted boys in the school, to ask Carrie to the prom. Carrie is suspicious but accepts, and makes a red velvet gown. Carrie's mother won't hear of her daughter doing anything so "carnal" as attending a school dance. Carrie is determined to go; 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 and Tommy finds himself attracted towards her. Chris, still furious, devises her plan with her boyfriend Billy to humiliate Carrie. They fill a bucket full of pig's blood and suspend it over the stage. They rig Carrie's election as prom queen and Chris dumps the pigs blood on Carrie's head. Tommy is knocked unconscious by the bucket, and Carrie is soaked in pig's blood. Nearly everyone in attendance, even the teachers, begin pointing, and laughing at Carrie, and taking pictures for the yearbook, and school paper. Carrie is finally pushed over the edge. She leaves the building in agonized humiliation, remembers her telekinesis, and decides to use it for vengeance. Initially planning only to lock all the doors and turn on the sprinklers, Carrie remembers the electrical equipment set up for the sound system—but turns the sprinklers on anyway. Watching through the windows, she witnesses the deaths of two students and a school official by electrocution, and decides to kill everyone, causing a massive fire that destroys the school and traps almost everyone inside.

Walking home, she undoes the lugnuts on each of the city's fire hydrants, so firemen can't put out the blaze. She also undoes the gas pumps at a downtown station, and a carelessly tossed cigarette sets off another fire. When people come out into the street to see what's going on, Carrie looses some power lines to electrocute them, although again, a few people escape. A side effect of her telekinesis is "broadcast" telepathy, which causes the city's inhabitants to become aware that the carnage was caused by Carrie White, even if they do not know who she is. 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 marital rape (although she admits she enjoyed the sex), she stabs Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife. In self-defense, Carrie kills her mother by stopping her heart.

Mortally wounded but still alive, Carrie makes her way to a roadhouse where she sees Chris and Billy leaving. After Billy attempts to run her over, she telekinetically takes control of the vehicle and wrecks the car, killing them both. Sue Snell, who has been following Carrie's telepathic "broadcast," finds Carrie collapsed in the parking lot. The two have a brief telepathic conversation. Though Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, Carrie realizes that Sue is innocent and has never really felt a real urge to humiliate her. Carrie then forgives Sue, and dies.

The horrifying events are covered thoroughly in the national press. A blue-ribbon commission is set up to investigate the "Black Prom", concluding that it took place under a set of circumstances that are unlikely to happen again. Numerous magazine articles and books contradict the commission's findings, notably The Shadow Exploded by David Congress, which compares the destruction of Chamberlain to the John F. Kennedy assassination in the impact it's had on society; and My Name is Susan Snell, a personal account by Sue, whom the commission portrayed as partly responsible for the plot to humiliate Carrie. These and other writings warn that it would be a huge mistake to forget Carrie or what she did. Telekinesis and the "TK gene", now known to be real, becomes the subject of several scientific studies. Miss Desjardins, blaming herself for not doing more to help Carrie, resigns from teaching. At the novel's end, Chamberlain is a virtual ghost town, and a Tennessee woman named Amelia Jenks writes a cheery letter to her sister Sarah, mentioning her little daughter's playful telekinetic tricks.

Characters/People edit see section history

  • Carrie White: Main character of the story. Introvert who is constantly mocked by her peers, and lives under the thumb of her mother.
  • Tommy Ross: A hunk and jock, but also an academic who is Sue's boyfriend. Sue prompts him to ask Carrie to the prom, in a kind of atonement for joining in bullying her. A socially conscientious young man.
  • Billy Nolan: A hard core thug and Chris Hargensen's boyfriend. Mean and violent, Billy helps plan Carrie's humiliation at the prom.
  • Miss Desjardin: Gym teacher who is sympathetic to Carrie. She trys to help Carrie but Carrie won't let her.
  • Margaret White: Carrie's mother, an unbalanced woman with obsessive devotion to her fundamental Christianity, which she also pushes on Carrie.
  • Otis Doyle: Police officer
  • Susan Snell: Tommy's girlfriend, one of the girls who had earlier teased Carrie but then feels bad about it and asks Tommy to invite Carrie to the prom instead. A generally nice girl who becomes Carrie's friend, whom she feels sympathetic to.
  • Norma Watson: Friend of Chris, bully.
  • Carrie White: Carrie is a shy girl, bullied all her life. She had no friends, a horrible home life, why did the people at school have to hurt her too? And then something happens, and she realizes this might be just what she needed for revenge.
  • Mr. Morton: Headmaster at the high school.
  • Tina Blake: A bully to Carrie!
  • Mrs. White: Carrie's Christian-Nutjob Mother.
  • Grayle: A wallflower that wants to be more then the picked on girl with a mother that wants to keep her locked down. Then starts to use powers on all those that did her wrong.
  • Mr. Stephens: Add a description of this character.
  • Mrs. Simard
  • Vic Mooney
  • Christine Hargensen: A popular, pretty girl and a bully. Helped instigate the episode in the showers and then plots Carrie's humiliation at the prom.
  • Georgette
  • Plessy: Police officer
  • Henty
  • Ralph White: Carrie's deceased father
  • George Dawson
  • John Hargensen: Christine's father. A lawyer.
Show all 23 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutterball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.
    Highlighted by 52 Kindle customers
  • Jesus watches from the wall, But his face is cold as stone, And if he loves me As she tells me Why do I feel so all alone?
    Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers
  • “But hardly anybody ever finds out that their actions really, actually, hurt other people! People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it. Lots of kids say they feel sorry for Carrie White—mostly girls, and that's a laugh—but I bet none of them understand what it's like to be Carrie White, every second of every day. And they don't really care.”
    Highlighted by 26 Kindle customers
  • Blood, fresh blood. Blood was always at the root of it, and only blood could expiate it.
    Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers
  • “Margaret had a face like the ass end of a gasoline truck and a body to match.”
    Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers
  • Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, but Carrie White eats shit.
    Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers
  • Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow.
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • Everybody's guessed/that baby can't be blessed/'til she finally sees that she's like all the rest. . . .*1
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • Billy's cigarette winked fitfully in the dark, like the eye of an uneasy demon.
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • It was a huge and awful grin, a Cheshire cat grin, floating dreamily in the fireshot darkness like a trace memory of lunacy.
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
Show all 11 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

News item from the Westover (Me.) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1996: Rain of Stones Reported- It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlin on August 17th.

Table of Contents edit see section history

3 parts, no chapters

Part One: Blood Sport
Part Two: Prom Night
Part Three: Wreckage

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Young Adult. (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Stephen King (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Sissy Spacek (Narrator) - reads audio edition

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Doubleday
Country: USA
Publication Date: April 5, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 199

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PZ4.K5227 Car PS3561.I483
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

Violence and horror

Movie Connections edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Conjure Wife
  • Incarnate
  • Ring
  • Firestarter
  • Julia

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Danse Macabre
  • On Writing
  • The Stephen King Companion
  • Complete Stephen King Universe
  • The Stephen King Illustrated Companion
  • Stephen King From A To Z: An Encyclopedia Of His Life and Work

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Monster Show
  • Shock Value

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