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Carrie

 

Carrie
Written by Stephen King

About 290 pages
Originally published in 1974
Rate 4.5/5
This is the first time I have ever finished reading a horror book. Back when I was in elementary school, my peers read "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". When I tried to read a couple of the stories in that book, I felt terrified and I remembered the stories for too long after so I stopped reading. 

This year I decided to take a course called 'Themes in Literature'. This course focuses on Stephen King's stories. I knew what the course was about before hand, and I knew that I had never felt great about reading ghost stories, but I wanted to read some of King's work. Carrie is the first book the class is reading. We have a set required list, nine books in total so there will be an abundance of Stephen King's books on here in the near future.

I had, of course, seen clips from the 2013 Carrie movie on social media and was intrigued. I was planning on reading Carrie before I joined this class, but hadn't started it yet. Reading Carrie with a crowd was a little difficult because some people shared major spoilers in class. I started reading Carrie knowing little to nothing about the story. 

What is Carrie about?

Carrie is a teenage girl who is constantly the butt of the joke until one day, on prom night, the power dynamics shift. This is a revenge story. 

My thoughts on Carrie (some spoilers) 

There are so many elements in this story that make me love it so much. 

After years of being tormented by her peers, and even random people from town, Carrie finally has a night where everything is seemingly normal. It's hard to say whether everyone had the best intentions when they were nice to her, but I think that Tommy and Sue's actions were genuine toward Carrie in the end.

I also really liked the religious aspect of the story. Carrie's mom is so extreme and there are a lot of people out there just like that with kids just like Carrie, however, they won't be able to attain the same amount of power as Carrie. They might be stuck living the same lives as their parents. It's tragic.

This didn't feel like a super crazy horror story because there were no ghosts in it and my perception of horror revolved around there being ghosts. My definition was wrong. I liked reading Carrie and I did watch the 2013 Carrie movie and liked that as well. 

I feel for Carrie. I think the real horror of this story would be not understanding where Carrie is coming from. Yes, she went wild in the end, but my god, look what they did to her. Look what her mother did to her. Her life was so unfair. 

In class, my professor told us that horror stories always contain allegories. In Carrie I found that people experience different types of horror, but the one horror we can all face at any given time is being unloved by people who were born to care for us. So be kind to everyone, always. 

Also, random connection but, it seems like Taylor Swift's song "You're On Your Own, Kid" mentions Carrie. She sings, "I looked around in a blood soaked gown and I saw something they can't take from me."

Quotes

I couldn't find a lot of out-of-context-good quotes, but here are two.

"It is so easy to forget one thing: we were kids. We were kids. We were kids trying to do our best..."

"She would never be quite the same golden girl again in the eyes of her mates. She had done an ungovernable, dangerous thing--she had broken cover and shown her face." 

Links

Stephen King's website

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