Carrie – Stephen King Book Review and Summary
Spoiler free review and full summary of Stephen King’s Carrie.
Spoiler Free Review
You probably already know this story. Carrie is a book by Stephen King published in 1974 that has been adapted into two movies which automatically means it’s popular. I’m actually fairly new to reading King but I have seen both movies so nothing in the book really came as a surprise. However, the story is still impactful.
King very often includes childhood bullying into his stories and this novel brings the bar up to incredible heights of cruelty. The book also includes his common theme of having a very religious character, in this case Carrie White’s mother, who serves as a sort of anti moral compass displaying behavior that is certainly not what any loving god intended.
Carrie’s stress, both at home and at school, activates her telekinetic powers. She slowly learns to control and strengthen her ability to move objects with her mind. By the end of the story she will have become a master at this but she won’t be using it in a positive way.
Most of us already know how Carrie ends. Horrible acts by horrible people cause her to lash out against them in a fit of anguish that had been built up throughout her whole life. Her actions are understandable in a fantasy sort of way. We’ve all had day dreams of taking revenge against our bullies and persecutors but most of us don’t act on them. She does.
Carrie is a sympathetic character but it’s not out of love, it’s out of pity. The whole horror novel is based on a tone of “poor Carrie” because we know she doesn’t stand a chance. We can’t root for her because there’s no way out. No matter what happens her life will end in tragedy and have very few positive moments along the way.
This, paired with pretty much every other character in the book being an awful or at best, misguided, person makes the novel a somewhat difficult read. It’s not very long, 274 pages, but there’s no reprieve from the misery of this small town and everyone in it. I’m not saying that a horror book should have more levity just that I didn’t really enjoy sitting down to read about the plight of poor Carrie.
4/5 blood spills 🩸🩸🩸🩸
in order to keep me up to my ears in books please consider using the following affiliate links to purchase these products. it’s at no extra cost to you and would really help me out, thank you and happy reading!
Carrie Summary
Stephen King’s Carrie opens with an iconic scene of high school bullying. Carrie White is in the showers after gym class when she gets her very first period. As sheltered as she is she has no idea what this means.
The girls in the locker room taunt her mercilessly and embarrass her by throwing pads and tampons at her while she thinks she’s bleeding to death. This stress causes a rise from her telekinetic powers and bursts an overhead light. Nobody, not even Carrie herself, knows about her powers yet.
Her ultra religious mother believes that menstruation is a result of sin and never explained it to her. Her gym teacher is left to explain and comfort her before ultimately sending her home for the day.
Slowly throughout the book Carrie will realize that she can control her powers and can grow these mental muscles.
The story is told with intersections of different narrators investigating the incident that will be shown at the end of the book. All the reader knows is that some people died and that it was Carrie’s fault. This includes flashbacks and retellings of times in her youth that could have tipped people off to her telekinesis such as the time she made rocks rain down on her house after her mom screamed at her.
Back in the main storyline Carrie returns home where her mother punishes her for whatever sin she must have committed to start her periods. She beats her and forces her to pray locked in a closet for hours. This is not unusual behavior in this household.
The next morning at school the gym teacher punishes the girls who took part in the bullying. She wanted to suspend them and revoke their prom privileges but the all male school board decided that a week’s detention would be sufficient for this crime they do not understand.
Main bully Chris has an aggressive lawyer of a father who threatens to sue the school over the very mild punishment of his daughter. With her inherited sense of entitlement she skips the detention and gets her prom taken away. This makes her extremely mad and she intends to serve justice to the poor girl she blames.
Another girl, Sue, who actually does feel bad about the bullying attempts to make things right. In a very misguided plan she begs her boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom and give her a lovely night of fun for once. He reluctantly agrees.
Carrie is highly suspicious of this proposal but accepts. Her mother, of course, objects but Carrie stands her ground and flexes her powers. She throws a pie across the room with just her mind and scares her mother enough to be able to be left alone to sew her dress for the big night.
Chris’ boyfriend and his friends agree to do her bidding for an awful plan of revenge. With very little convincing they go to a local farm and kill two pigs. They collect the blood and prepare for prom night.
At prom Carrie is actually having a really good time. People are being civil to her for once with Sue’s boyfriend Tommy by her side. In a twist of events the two of them are voted King and Queen. This is likely due to many ironic votes but they win either way.
Chris and her boyfriend are waiting backstage. Chris had been nagging her minions to vote for them and is prepared for them to head to the stage. They dump the pig blood onto Carrie but Tommy suffers the most as he takes the bucket to the head and is rendered unconscious. He’ll be the lucky one who doesn’t have to witness what comes next.
Civility breaks as everyone points and laughs at the poor blood covered girl. She flees the gym but returns a moment later to lock everyone in. She sets off the overhead sprinklers which trigger sparks from the band’s poorly wired equipment. This starts a fire which leads to an explosion.
We discover that in the moments Carrie was gone she sabotaged the fire hydrants and set the gas station pumps to leak from across the street. She continues this pattern walking down mainstreet to guarantee that the fire station cannot accomplish their goals.
She stops at a church to pray. Receiving no answer from God she decides to head home, exploding street lamps and downing power lines along the way.
At home her mom stabs her in the shoulder but she is no match for Carrie’s telekinesis. She stops her mother’s heart with her mind.
Bleeding, our young anti-hero journeys to her final murders. She finds Chris and her boyfriend and crashes their car as they attempt to get away. With her goals complete she lays down to die. Sue finds her through a sort of telepathy that’s been coursing through the townsfolk. Carrie dies from her stab wound being held in Sue’s arms.
The town never recovers from Carrie’s destruction. The government buries the knowledge of her powers in order to not cause a panic elsewhere.
The final death toll for her massacre was 409 dead with 49 missing.