Review: Carrie by Stephen King

Rating: 10/10

Synopsis

“Stephen King’s first novel changed the trajectory of horror fiction forever. Fifty years later, authors say it’s still challenging and guiding the genre.” —Esquire

“A master storyteller.” —The Los Angeles Times • “Guaranteed to chill you.” —The New York Times • “Gory and horrifying. . . . You can’t put it down.” —Chicago Tribune

Unpopular at school and subjected to her mother’s religious fanaticism at home, Carrie White does not have it easy. But while she may be picked on by her classmates, she has a gift she’s kept secret since she was a little girl: she can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. Her ability has been both a power and a problem. And when she finds herself the recipient of a sudden act of kindness, Carrie feels like she’s finally been given a chance to be normal. She hopes that the nightmare of her classmates’ vicious taunts is over . . . but an unexpected and cruel prank turns her gift into a weapon of horror so destructive that the town may never recover.

Review

I really wanted to give this a go for its 50th anniversary year, and after loving Pet Sematary, I knew I had to bump this one up. Believe it or not, I’ve been alive for 32 of those 50 years and managed to avoid pretty much all spoilers.

While reading this, which I didn’t know was any form of religious, I also happened to be listening to C.J. Leede’s American Rapture—which is an extreme examination on religion. Both of them start with a kind of deep dive into the bounds in which Catholicism is designed to hold down and punish women simply for existing. While Sophie’s family is simply force feeding her guilt on a biblical scale, Carrie’s mother seems to be well off the deep end. While Sophie is showcased to be so far removed that she truly doesn’t even know how the world itself functions, Carrie is so religiously uneducated in womanhood that she is unaware of menstruation, not even knowing herself. While AR showcases how religious families can be hurtful even within the Bible, Carrie’s mother using god like a hammer. Much more on the side of torture than praising.

I was surprised by how thoroughly this goes into the high school level of bullying. Because she is so sheltered, the other girls view her as weird, because she isn’t allowed to dress normal or use makeup, isn’t super skinny, they consider her ugly. The opening scene of the novel they throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her instead of helping her, solidifying just how other they view her. She is ostracized from her fellow classmates while she can’t even seek solace at home. Kind of similar to Neal Cassidy’s Schroeder that I just finished as well, that level of bullying could be seen as more than enough to push someone over the edge, and yet King’s novel adds an additional layer.

Right from the beginning, the reader understands that Carrie has telekinetic powers. She is not sure how exactly they work, or why she has them, nor are they very strong, but it’s something within her that she can explore. The novel mixes Carrie’s own discoveries with excerpts from scientific research and journals surrounding the phenomenon in a way that almost felt like King was creating his own superpower or mutant gene, even though that is not at all the direction of the novel. And Carrie is anything but a superhero.

And while there are definitely some issues where this is dated—primarily the descriptions of young girls, women in general, and some racial terms—I found it interesting that Chris’ boyfriend is displayed as the quintessential bad guy, his mistreatment of women being the main thing on display. It’s almost a commentary while missing his own mistakes?

And with that being said, Chris is the villain here. In a town that doesn’t treat Carrie right, Chris is the arrowhead driving home the mistreatment. As a ringleader from the opening shower scene, she becomes wholeheartedly hellbent of ruining Carrie’s life…mostly because she got in trouble for doing a terrible thing? As the daughter of a lawyer, who is also displayed as an entitled idiot, it’s no surprise that Chris would blame someone else rather than doing some soul searching. This hellbent desire to get back at Carrie is the straw that breaks the camels back. The ending is fast, violent, and gruesome in a way I don’t think I’ve ever read before.