Carrie
Webpages concerning "Carrie"
|
The contents has been generating using technology developed by scientec.
Wikipedia-Article "Carrie"
- In 1952, a film of Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie was made under the title Carrie; for that film, see: Sister Carrie. For the digital library see Carrie (digital library).
Carrie (1974) was Stephen King's first published novel and also one of his shortest. King has commented that he finds the work to be "raw" and "with a surprising power to hurt and horrify". It is one of the most frequently banned books in U.S. schools [1] and the film version was banned in Finland. Fans often see it as more of an emotionally touching story and it has, at times, been a favorite amongst the Goth subculture.
Contents |
Plot summary
The book uses fictional documents to frame the story of Carrie (short for Carrietta) White, a teenager from Chamberlain, Maine, who has been bullied at home for years by her vindictive Christian fundamentalist mother, Margaret White.
She does not fare much better at her school, Thomas Ewin High School; at the beginning of the novel, she has her first period while showering after her physical education class. Carrie, who is terrified, has no concept of menstruation; her mother never spoke to her about it, and she has been a social outcast throughout high school. But the thought that this could be Carrie's first period never occurs to her classmates; instead of sympathizing with the frightened Carrie, they use it as an opportunity to taunt her, throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at her instead of helping. When gym teacher Miss Desjardin sees what is going on, she at first berates Carrie, but is horrified when she realizes that Carrie was traumatized and never had had a period before. She helps her clean up. Later, she talks to the principal and wants all the girls who taunted her barred from attending the upcoming school prom as punishment.
Carrie gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Carrie tries to keep these powers under control, even though she is continually pressed to the limit.
Meanwhile, Sue Snell, one of the girls who had earlier teased Carrie, begins to feel remorseful for her participation in the locker room antics, takes pity on her and offers to become her friend. With prom fast approaching, Sue sets Carrie up with her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (the class hunk).
However, Chris Hargenson (the girl who hates Carrie and helped instigate the earlier episode in the showers) is incensed that she is unable to attend prom. She initially attempts to get her father, a lawyer, to force the school principal to sue for her right to go to prom. Mr. Hargenson is rebuffed. She eventaully devises a plan of revenge. She and her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, decide to humiliate her at prom. They drive out to a farm and slit two pigs' throats to fill a bucket full of pig blood, and rig the bucket over the stage with a pull cord. Both parties tell all of their friends to vote for Carrie and Tommy Ross. When they go up to get crowned, one of Hargenson's friends will pull the cord and Carrie in her happiest moment of her life.
After drenching Carrie and Tommy in pig's blood, Carrie is finally pushed over the edge. Perceiving everyone to be laughing at her (not everyone was), she finally demonstrates her full telekinetic powers, wrecking her revenge on her terrified classmates. After causing a massive fire that destroys Thomas Ewin High School and trapping almost everyone inside, Carrie gets revenge on Billy and Chris (who had fled). Then, after burning virtually all of downtown Chamberlain, returns home to confront her mother, who stabs Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife. Carrie kills her mother, using her telekinesis to cause her heart to slow and ultimately stop.
Carrie, mortally wounded but still alive, makes her way to the roadhouse where her father got drunk the night she was conceived (he more-or-less raped her mother, who felt that even though they were married, it was still a sin to have sex), intending to destroy it. However, she succumbs to blood loss before she can destroy it. Sue Snell finds Carrie collapsed in the parking lot of the roadhouse. Carrie dies in her arms, the knife still protruding from her shoulder. Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, but she uses her telekinesis to scan inside of Sue and, in one of the book's more uplifting moments, finds no animosity towards her.
The novel also includes fictional news accounts detailing the town's destruction, the aftermath, "interviews" from survivors and transcripts from court proceedings concerning the investigation. A letter at the end of the book foreshadows a young girl with the same telekinetic abilities as Carrie.
Differences between film and novel
The film ends differently:
- Carrie kills her mother by impaling her with kitchen knives and, afterwards, feels guilty and forces the house to collapse onto her, committing suicide.
- Both the film and the book see Carrie dying in guilt for killing her mother, but the film has her committing suicide, whilst the book has her dying of telekinetic exhaustion.
- After this scene, Sue is dreaming of a time in the future, where she is laying some flowers on Carrie's grave. As she bends down, a bloody hand arises from the ground and grabs her. Stephen King said that he wished that he had thought of the ending himself. Whilst some see this as a nice shock to end with, others see it as too much of a farcical end to one of horror's more serious films.
Carrie draws strong parallels between the onset of the title character's adolesence, especially her menstruation and sexuality, and her psychic powers.
Movie and musical adaptations
Brian de Palma directed a film version of Carrie in 1976 with Sissy Spacek as Carrie. Amy Irving, William Katt, Betty Buckley, Piper Laurie, Nancy Allen and John Travolta are also featured. A much-belated and poorly-received sequel appeared in 1999; it featured another girl with telekinetic powers (who is eventually revealed to have shared a father with Carrie), but the overall plot was painfully similar to the first story. A TV movie remake, starring Angela Bettis in the title role, was released in 2002, but the 1976 version is widely regarded as superior in both technique and fidelity to the source material (in fact, Carrie lives at the end of the 2002 remake, as it was meant to be a pilot for a Carrie series).
Although always marketed as a horror story, the main appeal of "Carrie" has been as a sad and emotionally intense story of being excluded and victimised (a concept that would be re-explored in "Ringu 0" with the character of Sadako Yamamura). The film and book retain a cult following that includes many who experienced bullying at school or overzealous parenting. It was the first horror film to be nominated for Academy Awards, for the performances of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie; it also won the grand prize at Avoriaz film festival and Sissy Spacek was rewarded with "Best Actress" by the American National Society of Film Critics Awards.
A 1988 Broadway musical, starring Betty Buckley, Linzi Hateley, and Darlene Love closed after only five performances and 16 previews. An English pop opera filtered through Greek tragedy, the show was such a notorious turkey it provided the title to Ken Mandelbaum's survey of theatrical disasters, Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops.
The 1976 film's soundtrack was composed by frequent DePalma collaborator Pino Donnagio. Donnagio's work has gone mostly unrecognized, but the subtlely and ominous themes demonstrated give the film an eerie, yet beautiful essence. Donnagio has been repeatedly referred to as the equivalent of Brian DePalma's outspoken role model director Alfred Hitchcock's score collaborator Bernard Hermann.
ISBN numbers
- ISBN 0606008233 (prebound, 1975)
- ISBN 0385086954 (hardcover, 1990)
- ISBN 1567800572 (paperback, 1992)
- ISBN 0816156883 (library binding, 1994, Large Type Edition)
- ISBN 8401499666 (hardcover, 1999)
- ISBN 0671039733 (paperback, 2000)
- ISBN 0606205942 (prebound, 2001)
- ISBN 0609810901 (paperback, 2001)
- ISBN 0671039725 (paperback, 2002)
- ISBN 8401498880 (hardcover)
- ISBN 0743470605 (mass market paperback)
External links
- Carrie at the Internet Movie Database (1976 movie)
- The Rage: Carrie 2 at the Internet Movie Database
- Carrie at the Internet Movie Database (2002 TV movie)
- Internet Broadway Database entry for Carrie
- Fan site on all the Carrie films and novel