Prof. Myrna Monllor
English 124
All images taken from www.google.com
solely for educational purposes.
©Myrna Monllor Jiménez June 2015

• Published Carrie in 1974
• Threw out his first draft which was rescued by his wife
• His shortest novel
• Thinks it is not his best work
• Based the character of
Carrie on two childhood classmates
• Meant originally as a short story

• “One reason for [Carrie’s] success in both print and film, I think, lies in this: Carrie’s revenge is something that any student who ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of. In Carrie’s destruction of the gym .
. . we see a dream revolution of the socially
downtrodden.” ((Stephen King, Danse
Macabre p 174 (New York: Everest House
Publishers, 1981).))

• Epistolary novel
• Constantly shifting point of view
• Because of the unusual structure, the narrative seems disjointed.
• Predated the slasher stories.
• Unusual for a male writer to tackle the subject of female sexuality. specifically adolescent sexuality

• Character based writing
• Uses stream of consciousness through italicized sections
• Uses run on sentences
• Uses parenthetical asides
Example:
She looked back (old bitch
hates my momma) over her shoulder

• Third-person narrative voice interspersed with extracts from other media
• Internal monologue
• Brackets or italicized thoughts inserted into the third-person narrative
• Because of the unusual structure, the narrative seems disjointed.

• King makes the reader wait for something to happen. The reader knows that something bad is going to happen but doesn’t know why or how.

• straight narrative
• transcripts of hearings
• excerpts from academic papers
• eyewitness interviews
• hospital admissions records
• newspaper articles
• excerpts from Sue
Snell’s memoir

At the climax King abandons
Carrie’s point of view. We’re in her head right until she gets crowned Queen. Then, the writer switches to other points of view.
• Billy’s and Chris’ POV
• an excerpt from Reader’s
Digest
• Tommy’s POV
Until the narrative returns to Carrie’s head

New item from the Westover (Me.) weekly
Enterprise, August 18, 1966:
Rain of Stones Reported
It was reliably reported by several persons that a
Rain of stons fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin
Street in the town of Chamberlain on August
17 th ….Mrs. White, a widow, lives with her threeyear old daughter, Carietta.

The Beginning
Setting the Tone
Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow. On the surface, all the girls in the shower room were shocked, thrilled, ashamed, or simply glad that the White bitch had taken it in the mouth again.

Carrie’s Description
What incidents of violence had marked her?
…a frog among swans.
She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color.
…she looked around bovinely…At sixteen, the elusive stamp of hurt was already marked clearly in her eyes.

Jesus watches from the wall,
But his face is cold as stone,
And if he loves me
As she tells me
Why do I feel so all alone?

• Became popular because not many books about contemporary teenagers were written at the time.
• The book also includes a lot of sexuality which was unusual at the time.
• Unusual for a male writer to tackle the subject of female sexuality, specifically adolescent sexuality

• Inverts horror tropes because it’s a female who is seeking revenge and destroying her predators. You empathize with the killer, not with the victims
• You empathize with
Carrie’s empowerment.

• Blood is used as a symbol of humiliation.
• Carrie’s telekinetic powers symbolize her sexuality.
• Carrie has suffered the ultimate humiliation from her classmates.
• At the end, by destroying them, she recovers her dignity.

• When Carrie uses her power she uses the words of her mother.
• Even though she has rebelled against her mother throughout the novel, at the end of the she turns into her mother.

• Mrs. White
• Sue Snell
• Tommy
• Billy
• Chris
• John Hargensen
• The school principal
• Miss Dejardin
• Ralph White
• Estelle Horan
• Thomas K. Quillan
• Sheriff Otis Doyle

…and so we must conclude that, while an autopsy performed on the subject indicates some cellular changes which may indicate the presence of some paranormal power, we find no reason to believe that a recurrence is likely or even possible.
Excerpt from a letter dated May 3, 1988, from
Amelia Jenks, Royal Knob, Tennessee, to Sandra
Jenks, Macon, Georgia

• Background Information about Carrie as a little girl creating a rain stone out of anger
• Chris’ father and his abuse of power
• The fact that Carrie’s mother wanted to kill her when she was an infant.
• The investigations with Sue Snell’s testimonies
• Journalistic structure of the book.
• In the book Carrie destroys the whole town.

• The psychic connection between Sue Snell and
Carrie.
• The 409 deaths and 49 missing persons
• Miss Collins survives but resigns from school
• Carrie’s mom dies from a heart attack.

• Carrie
• Scarface
• The Untouchables
• Carlito’s Way
• Mission Impossible
“De Palma’s approach to the material was lighter and more deft than my own — and a good deal more artistic . . .” Stephen King

“what you ultimately take away from Brian De Palma's adaptation is a sense of growing frustration with a world that allows good people to be tormented and then turned into monsters themselves. Carrie was so harried, so abused by everyone in her life that she finally retaliated with the very force of hatred she despised so much in others. In charting this story, Stephen King and Brian De Palma chart a cycle of violence. They remind us how children turn to us -- adults -for guidance and compassion. How they turn to us as role models, and how they sometimes fall through the cracks and find themselves lost, rudderless..emulating only the worst angels of human nature.” John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on
Cult Movies and Classic TV September 11, 2009

• Meant as social satire
• Shot in fifty-two days
• Budget of $1.8 million
• Went on to become De Palma’s first mainstream hit.

• Hollywood’s first major Stephen King adaptation
• De Palma reinterprets King’s angry, heavy text
• the director’s approach considers with great care the emotional state of his maligned main character
• “Carrie’s horror comes not from the unknown or some fantastical abomination, but from the worst suspicions and contempt for women, realized through religion, social cruelty, and supernatural elements that have a direct connection to the film’s metaphor for the misunderstood and feared feminine prowess.”

• “the subject of Carrie is not an inhuman monster. Carrie White is a protagonist worthy of our sympathy, whose supernatural abilities give her a unique opportunity to be seen as a monster, and later to resort to horrible acts of violence.” http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/carri e.asp

• We tend to accept what the popular kids in school so that we are accepted
• We are marked by our experiences in high school life.

• God’s Eye View
• her positioning at the back showing her isolation from the other characters.
• Our first view of her marks her as weak, as she has missed the ball.
• Most shocking to the audience is the full frontal nudity shown in these scenes. The naked girls are fully fletched women as contrasted to Carrie who is small breasted and doesn’t seem to have pubic hair
• The girls’ playfulness is then contrasted to Carrie’s fear at getting her period.

Carrie’s Relationship with her Mother

• “And God made Eve from the rib of Adam. And
Eve was weak and loosed the raven on the world. And the raven was called sin… The first sin was intercourse… And Eve was weak… And the Lord visited Eve with the curse, and the curse was the curse of blood!”
• atone for her misdeeds by setting up Carrie with her own boyfriend, Tommy Ross

Carrie’s Relationship with her
Mother/Distance

Carrie’s Relationship with her Mother

Carrie’s Relationship with her Mother

Setting up the Scene
At the Prom
The camera orbits around the couple, but gradually gains speed and seems to spiral out of control, just as Carrie has lost herself in happiness and hope for normalcy. Dream like dance.

De Palma uses our awareness of the bucket to drive us mad with equal parts anticipation and suspense toward the climax.

From Carrie’s perspective, everyone begins to laugh in a kaleidoscopic nightmare.

De Palma uses a split screen to show both Carrie’s expression and how she gets her revenge.

Hendrix, Grady. The Great Stephen King Reread: Carrie
• http://www.tor.com/2012/10/18/the-great-stephen-king-rereadcarrie/
• Hawking, Tom. Stephen King’s “Carrie” is even stranger and more radical than you remember
• http://flavorwire.com/420135/stephen-kings-carrie-is-evenstranger-and-more-radical-than-you-remember
• Smythe, James Rereading Stephen King
• http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/24/rereadingstephen-king-carrie
• King, Stephen. How I wrote Carrie
• http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/04/stephen-kinghow-i-wrote-carrie-horror

Analysis of Opening Scene “Carrie” 1976 https://37thriller2013.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/analysis-ofopening-scene-carrie-1976/
Deep Focus Review, The Definitives: Carrie 1976 http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/carrie.asp
John Kennet Muir’s Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2009/09/cul t-movie-review-carrie-1976.html
Mind over Mother: Ecstasy and Cruelty in Brian De Palma’s
Carrie http://brightlightsfilm.com/mind-over-mother-ecstasy-andcruelty-in-brian-de-palmas-carrie/#.VXysBOcyVKo