A week ago, Carrie came up in one of my writing groups. I was working on a epistolary short story — a form I have always appreciated when done well and have not been able to accomplish myself. My friends suggested I look at Carrie, and I had to admit I didn’t even remember it was epistolary. I read it thirty years ago, when I was twelve, and in my mind the entire book was told from Carrie’s point of view. It was another young woman, like me, screaming into the unfair void that surrounds each of us. My friend told me that, no, the book had very little of Carrie’s POV.

Sure enough, he was right. And I decided I needed to re-read Carrie.

Now, I have a shit memory. My existence is lived almost entirely in “feeeeeeeling”. If you ask me about a book I read last month, I might have difficulties recalling the plot or the characters. But little nuggets of truth seep into my body — I am changed. But what is it like to read a book as a twelve-year-old girl, curled up with a lamp under the blankets, hiding a book she isn’t allowed to read because her parents believe Stephen King novels are evil, and then to read that same book forty years later, in the light of day? Will different truths stick? Or is the heart of the book the same despite how much the reader has changed?

The Benefit of an Introduction

I read the fiftieth anniversary version with an introduction by Margret Atwood. I go back and forth on introductions. They can give great context to a book that deepens my understanding. But sometimes they feel like cheating — and I’d rather go in not knowing what other people thing is important. Because there was no introduction in the original, I skipped it. But I went back and read it afterwords. One of the comments in the intro was looking at Carrie from a Jungian perspective, and supposed that once the pig blood covered Carrie, she was no longer her own horror, but the collective pain of the town. It was a point I hadn’t considered, and made the story make more sense… giving Carrie an even softer, heart-wrenching feel.

I definitely had more of an interest in the epistolary aspects of the novel than I did as a kid. I’ll admit that I often skim over newspaper articles in books, but this time I was particularly drawn into the sections of The Shadow Exploded. I wonder if, reading as an adult who has grown out of the myopia of adolescence, allowed me to care more about the social question the book posits rather than Carrie’s personal tragedy. The “jump scare” at the end is that we are doomed to repeat prom night over again unless we believe in TK and create a society around it. But, of course, the real lesson is more simple: treat people kindly, and they won’t blow up your city. Maybe? Because if we are to believe Carrie took on the weight of the entire town’s struggle, then that would remain even in a high school where people are kind to each other. Because life is hard and people struggle. And there is anger and fear and shame. Even if people are, mostly, kind.

Carrie Was More “Evil” Than I Remember

What I had remembered from Carrie was a teen who was abused by her mother and tormented by her classmates going to prom and getting blood dumped on her. So far, the story tracks. But my adolescent brain filed the actual prom night as something much more instinctual than what King actually wrote. I remembered Carrie as a girl who was out of control, horrified by her power. Carried through the night without malice or awareness. But King actually wrote her as a girl getting revenge. People felt her giddiness at the town’s destruction, and it was a choice she made each step of the way. Now… how much awareness Carrie had after the blood, and how much of her “glee: was actual happiness vs. uncontrolled giddiness is up for debate, but it definitely seems she was written as a vengeful girl.

Some might argue that if she’s carrying the town’s darkness, she’s also carrying their glee — the same glee that rose in them when throwing tampons at her in the shower, but my twelve-year-old self was not aware enough to come to that conclusion. I just read her as completely out of control, despite the words on the page saying differently. Why? The answer is obvious. As a twelve-year-old, I felt completely out of control. This was maybe a year after I started cutting, which I can look back and see as driven by a desire for control (among so many other things). I identified so much with Carrie that I wanted her to be a heroine. Blameless. I wanted her to be, like me, out of control, and yet powerful at the same time. In other words — I still wanted a powerful force (God, for me at the time) to come down and rescue me. So I wrote that powerful force into the my own memory of that book. Ironic when we look at the religious aspects of the book and how the power was considered evil by her momma. But was it evil? Or was it just… in existence. Free of religion?

Why Aren’t Families Considered Cults?

While reading the book, I wouldn’t think it was about cults. But because I’m reading so many books about cults lately, I had to wonder why Carrie isn’t considered a book about a cult. The mother was a religious fanatic, and it was that fanaticism that stunts Carrie’s social life. The mother practices strict control over Carrie’s life. She gives her a warped perception of the world, and the two live together in paranoia. They are all the classic markings of a cult, but the book is decidedly not about a cult.

It makes me wonder about what makes a cult as opposed to a fanatic family. If you look at true crime, many of the deep dives into cults focus on small family units. Often four to, at most, ten people who live together and are usually controlled by the patriarch. The patriarch gives them a twisted form of religion that shapes their lives — usually one with paranoia of the outside world, distorted views of sex, complete control by the father, and plenty of abuse. These families are sometimes extended family groups with grown children and their spouses. Sometimes they are cousins or siblings who come together as adults. Maybe these aren’t actually cults, and true crime is lumping abusive families with skewed religious ideas into cults to have more content. Either way, these families are not written about in cult books. Cult fiction always seems to involve an outsider who you give your power to. Even children who are born into cults, in fiction, are born into cults where their parents have vicariously given their power to an outside leader. If we do see children of the leader, they are part of a greater dynamic in which they have to balance their place in the cult among people who are not the leader’s children. I have yet to read a book where the cult is a small family, isolated by the parent. And if there were books like that (which I am sure there are), I don’t think they would be shelved with the cult books.

I guess with families, control is never given. It is assumed. And that’s a completely different type of tension — coming out of power that was taken since birth as opposed to coming out of power that you willingly gave as an adult. But there’s just as much shame. There’s just as much questioning of reality. There’s just as much wanting to hold onto the world as you know it. I think, because I’m reading so many cult books, Carrie’s defiance felt too quick and unrealistic to me. She didn’t read as an abused child any more than she read as a cult member. She read as any, ordinary teen rebelling against their parents the moment they feel the power of adulthood flowing into them. Of course, it’s a novella. There’s no room for the slow awakening from abuse and control. It’s much more “exciting” to read as her getting her power and immediately accepting it. As a preteen, that’s all I wanted. “Power, freedom, destruction.” But as an adult, I want all of those intricacies. I want that slow labor of finding yourself. I want the truth of power struggle and relearning reality.

All that being said — it was Carrie. I loved it, again. But for different reasons. Because the writing is great. Because the details are fantastic. Because I can read it and feel the 1970s around me. Because I still have a lot to learn about all the things I can do in writing — the things I can get away with. The way I can play with language and form. It reminded me to stop being so serious and enjoy myself while writing. Which is no small thing.