C
Stephen King really came out swinging on his first novel. Carrie is iconic horror. I’m not sure how many of the classic horror tropes originated here, but there are a ton, and none of them feel out of place or overdone.
I’d warn about spoilers, but I think everyone knows what happens in Carrie, much like the majority of King’s horror stories. Carrie is a teenager with psychic powers that goes on a killing spree on Prom night after being bullied by her peers constantly. My experience with Stephen King before this was trying to read The Stand and seeing both the miniseries for that and It, so I was kind of surprised that the story was actually that simple (I guess this was pre-cocaine co-author). But being so simple doesn’t mean there’s not much to appreciate. Every character and their personalities are immediately understood just by their name alone. Seriously, I don’t know what it is about King’s characer names, but I already have a perfect picture of who someone named Chris Hargensen or Billy Nolan are going to be like. Even minor characters who show up only once have that aura around their name. But characters aren’t all as one-note as that kind of description would imply. I was surprised to be sympathizing with characters like Sue Snell and Miss Desjarden after what they did in the opening, and even more surprised to feel that for Carrie’s mother by the end after all of the horrible things she did to her daughter. While there is some catharsis in seeing Carrie get revenge on the world who continued to shove her into the ground at every step of her life, it’s ultimately a deeply sad story about how poisonous a society built around maintaining an in-group and evangelical zealotry ends up being, and what happens when it finally breaks an individual.
As enjoyable as it is, there are certainly some issues I have with the novel. One of the more mild criticisms I have are the interjection of excerpts from fictional interviews and articles written about the incident that literally just spoil the plot throughout the first half of the book. The other more serious one is the exploitative description of the women and even some bizarrely racist descriptions that appear once or twice. I know Stephen King’s wife provided input while he was writing and that puberty and the sexualization of women play an important role in Carrie’s character, but it gets really fucking weird when reading about what every other women’s breasts look like. And what the hell was King thinking when describing a swollen lip as that of a black person’s (he even used a slur for that description)? Maybe he was already on the coke at this point.
Unlike some of his later work, King sticks the landing at the end of Carrie. I really did appreciate how the last 20 or so pages (at least in my print) were dedicated to what happened to the town and the survivors. Many imitators of stories like this often forget to have that sort of falling action which drives home the impact of the preceding events. And of course, the little sting at the end that it could happen again is great. It feels like something out of The X-Files, which is funny because that show no doubt took that trend from books like this.
Stephen King really came out swinging on his first novel. Carrie is iconic horror. I’m not sure how many of the classic horror tropes originated here, but there are a ton, and none of them feel out of place or overdone.
I’d warn about spoilers, but I think everyone knows what happens in Carrie, much like the majority of King’s horror stories. Carrie is a teenager with psychic powers that goes on a killing spree on Prom night after being bullied by her peers constantly. My experience with Stephen King before this was trying to read The Stand and seeing both the miniseries for that and It, so I was kind of surprised that the story was actually that simple (I guess this was pre-cocaine co-author). But being so simple doesn’t mean there’s not much to appreciate. Every character and their personalities are immediately understood just by their name alone. Seriously, I don’t know what it is about King’s characer names, but I already have a perfect picture of who someone named Chris Hargensen or Billy Nolan are going to be like. Even minor characters who show up only once have that aura around their name. But characters aren’t all as one-note as that kind of description would imply. I was surprised to be sympathizing with characters like Sue Snell and Miss Desjarden after what they did in the opening, and even more surprised to feel that for Carrie’s mother by the end after all of the horrible things she did to her daughter. While there is some catharsis in seeing Carrie get revenge on the world who continued to shove her into the ground at every step of her life, it’s ultimately a deeply sad story about how poisonous a society built around maintaining an in-group and evangelical zealotry ends up being, and what happens when it finally breaks an individual.
As enjoyable as it is, there are certainly some issues I have with the novel. One of the more mild criticisms I have are the interjection of excerpts from fictional interviews and articles written about the incident that literally just spoil the plot throughout the first half of the book. The other more serious one is the exploitative description of the women and even some bizarrely racist descriptions that appear once or twice. I know Stephen King’s wife provided input while he was writing and that puberty and the sexualization of women play an important role in Carrie’s character, but it gets really fucking weird when reading about what every other women’s breasts look like. And what the hell was King thinking when describing a swollen lip as that of a black person’s (he even used a slur for that description)? Maybe he was already on the coke at this point.
Unlike some of his later work, King sticks the landing at the end of Carrie. I really did appreciate how the last 20 or so pages (at least in my print) were dedicated to what happened to the town and the survivors. Many imitators of stories like this often forget to have that sort of falling action which drives home the impact of the preceding events. And of course, the little sting at the end that it could happen again is great. It feels like something out of The X-Files, which is funny because that show no doubt took that trend from books like this.