Carrie

Carrie By Stephen King

  Carrie is a classic horror novel about a teenage girl with telekinesis.  The eerie story, however, trickles into disappointing idiocy.  The climax induces readers with a feeling of disgust for the lameness of King's erratic creativity.  Stephen King's Carrie grudgingly endures with an overrated, absurd story line.

King wrote Carrie with a seemingly over-simplistic style that leaves much to be imagined by the reader.  Details are present but scarce.  I was not impressed with the writing technique and found myself bored.  King's creativity was ruined by over-dramatization  and the stereotyping of important characters.  His story did not really disgust me, though, until the part in which Carrie begins blowing up everything with her mind and killing her mother without lifting a finger.  At this point, my suspension of disbelief disintegrated because the characters were unrealistic and, obviously, the story was spiraling into oblivion.  

Carrie, who has always been the super-religious 'freak' everyone picks on, is a decently developed character in the book.  She portrays emotions appropriately through her measly dialogue. Her mother is completely psychotic and obsessed with the bible and avoiding everything that could possibly be considered sinful.  Carrie's fellow high school students include Sue Snell, a sympathetic, typical, and very popular girl, Sue's athletic and, also, popular boyfriend, Tommy, and Chris, the girl most notorious for tormenting Carrie.  Together, they are the formula for the crazed tale in which Carrie finally snaps. 

The story opens in the school girl's shower room right after P.E. class.  Carrie, slumping naked in the shower with visible pimples and fat rolls, abruptly has her first period.  The sixteen-year-old is shocked because her mother, who thinks periods are sins, has never taught her a single thing about menstruation.  Carrie begins screaming and all of the other girls start to tease her by throwing tampons and chanting at her.  Eventually, the coach rushes to the scene and aids Carrie, and the girls are all punished. Sue Snell, who joined the others in the torment, now regrets her actions and wants to apologize to Carrie by getting her popular boyfriend, Tommy, to ask Carrie to prom.  After a slight hesitation during which distrust enters Carrie, she accepts.  But Chris, highly annoyed by the situation, to say the least, produces a vicious plan to attack Carrie.  The plan works, but the effects are deadly.

Carrie is mediocre at best and ridiculously dumb at least.  The book was similar to the the movie Frailty, in which an insanely religious father becomes a serial killer because he believes it is "God's way" and passes his belief to one of his sons, which is like Carrie's mother making Carrie into an insanely religious and superstitious person like herself. I recommend this novel to those who have trouble reading well or just want to be reminded that not every book can be great.