I’ve seen the original Stephen King’s CARRIE and I’ve seen the remake. In the original movie Tommie (William Katt, who takes her to the prom) is killed when she has her little anger management moment. In the remake he is pulled to safety by some of the students escaping through the vents. On the DVD commentary it said that the women’s coach (Betty Buckley character) who is killed in the movie survived in the book (but quit teaching). Sue Snell survives in all versions (and in the remake even Carrie survived- it was a pilot for a series that never happened).
I’ve never read the novel and don’t plan to anytime soon but I was curious: Does Tommie die in the book? And also, does her also mother have telekinetic powers in the book? (I was wondering if her religious mania is overcompensation for believing she’s a witch.)
(And this being such a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ thread, feel free to hijack into any other Carrie/Stephen King/prom-from-hell postings as well.)
I also wondered if Ralph White (Carrie’s father who’s referenced but left before she was born) was an incarnation of Randall Flagg. He usually uses RF as his initials but not always, plus this being his first published novel King hadn’t fleshed out the character yet, but Carrie gets her powers from somewhere presumably and marriage to a religious fanatic who insists on virginity then raping/impregnating her with a mystical spawn would seem like something Flagg would do.
Obviously this is not canon in the books, but in the (horrid) movie sequel The Rage: Carrie 2, Ralph White is basically a drifter and all of his spawn have telekinetic powers. He’s never seen on screen, but I’m convinced the line was thrown in to explain any future sequels in case The Rage did blockbuster business.
But it didn’t because the whole thing crapped on the Carrie name by having the main character be popular, gorgeous and in a stable relationship with a sensitive jock-type guy. Even her adoptive parents are more on the side of “How dare you break curfew! Go to your room!” than “The power of Christ compels you! Die spawn of Satan!”
How’s this for a hijack? Ellen Glasgow’s publisher told her not to waste time writing short stories, because a writer whose work appears everywhere (especially in women’s magazines) loses the respect of critics. Do you think Stephen King (and other writers) would have more respect if they weren’t so prolific? Does rarity make them more special? Is that why books like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird and Gone With the Wind show up so often on people’s favorites lists? If Salinger, Lee, and Mitchell had published a book a year (even if the books were good), would they be less revered?
Something else we could talk about is how we feel about Carrie White, and girls like her. Most of us wouldn’t actively torment a girl like Carrie, but we probably wouldn’t befriend her either. It’d be different if Carrie showed a spark of personality, but she didn’t. Sometimes it ticks me off, the way King wrote her. He doesn’t allow us to have any sympathy for her, but I still feel bad that I don’t. She’s like having a choice between two puppies – one cute, clean and adorable, and the other mangy and snappish. You’re gonna take the cute one but you’re gonna feel bad about it, even though the snappish one would probably bite your child and have to be put down.
I think they’d be less iconic perhaps but not much less revered. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Last Tycoon, The Beautiful and the Damned, This Side of Paradise, and lots of short stories that are forgotten (“Benjamin Button” disappeared for decades before his “reimagining”), and he still has a cult.
Ditto Herman Melville and Pearl S. Buck (so many of her books are totally forgotten that many who’ve read and liked The Good Earth probably don’t realize it’s book one of a trilogy) are also still remembered in high regard.
With Mitchell, I wonder if GWTW would still be remembered if the movie hadn’t been so huge. Edna Ferber sold gazillions of books around the same time, was super popular all over the country, and today Show Boat is probably the only one remembered at all and it’s seldom if fever read by those who haven’t seen the play and film adaptations. Frank Yerby was one of if not the bestselling historical novelist of the '50s and is practically forgotten today.
OTOH, while Good Earth had a great and Oscar winning screen adaptation it’s not watched as often as GWTW yet the book is still widely read, and has there ever been a film made from Salinger’s works?
And that’s a shame. There’s not much of an audience for historical romance/adventure (in books or film) unless it’s from Austen or a Bronte. IMDB listed three movies made from Yerby’s books. I haven’t seen any of them.
She went psychotic. Think about it – she never knew anything but torment and as far as Tommie, she didn’t kill him directly. The whole point was that Carrie was extremely unstable, she had this incredible power, and she snapped. Once it started, she couldn’t control it until it was too late.
She went psychotic. Think about it – she never knew anything but torment and as far as Tommie, she didn’t kill him directly. The whole point was that Carrie was extremely unstable, she had this incredible power, and she snapped. Once it started, she couldn’t control it until it was too late.
And keep in mind, she wasn’t mentally sound. Everyone around her was mostly staring in horror – maybe two or three were laughing. But in her mind, EVERYONE was laughing. In the book it’s the same. When her teacher comes to help her, she still thinks she’s laughing.
How could you feel anything BUT sympathy?
(D’oh, sorry for the double post!!! Stupid editing time limit!)
Auntie Pam has a good point. He does go out of his way to make her extremely unlikeable–even the gym teacher goes out of her way to say that she kind of sympathized with the girls throwing tampons/pads. It’s more like the circumstances are so awful that you pity her. The evil mother, the horrible kids. You kind of wish that deep down in the oppression and abuse is some sensitive poet type. But sometimes there just isn’t.
I actually sympathized (not pitied) Arnie Cunningham in Christine much more. Yeah, he had issues, too, and was kind of the town punching bag, but there was something there…a personality, you know?
Exactly. King hated Carrie so much, he couldn’t even give her a personality – no intelligence, no self-awareness, no sense at all, really. You couldn’t like her even before she destroyed the town.
One thing I remember from the book is that, during the shower scene, Carrie was described as having one of the thrown tampons stuck in her pubic hair. I know the book was written in the 70’s, but that would have to be one magnificent, unruly bush, don’t you think?
We-ell…I kinda tend to doubt that Carrie would be shaving even if it wasn’t the seventies, considering how her mother feels about those parts and the shame and the guilt and the glaben!
Maybe the blood made it stick?
And I definitely wanted to like her…I was kind of a loser outcast myself. But while King has made heroic or sympathetic outcast types (the seven kids in IT, Arnie in Christine–god that sounds dirty–, main guy in The Rage, the kids in The Body), she was not one of them. Even Harold in The Stand, while working for the man in black, is sympathetic. Creepy, but you get him, kind of, you know? Not so with Carrie. She’s just kind of…there. Blank.
I was, for once in terms of a Stephen King book, impressed with the movie in this respect - Sissy Spacek played the character very similarly. There wasn’t much to root for in Carrie, which I think was kind of the point.
Good point. I suppose in a Stephen King book it just grates because they’re actually my favorite part of the story. I feel like he does character better than almost any other writing element. I really feel like I inhabit the skin of all his characters when he puts effort into developing them. To read a King book and not feel that way about a character is often very odd. Then again, it has been said that his female characters (save for little girls and old women) suck. I don’t think he really does adolescent female particularly well. Though I did like Nadine in The Stand. I feel like they’re usually all really hot and very accommodating to their men and that’s about it. I dunno. Carrie does work for me as a story. I just think that he’s done the outcast character anti hero type so much better in other works that this kind of disappoints me, looking back.
I also feel like maybe it’s human nature to, when reading a book at least, see the pariah and hope that deep down there’s something really redeeming. And when there isn’t, it’s sad. Like, we want to see the ugly or deformed as having personalities and wisdom and such to…make us feel better about prejudging them? I don’t know, this rambling took a turn for the worse.
Dolores Claibourne, Rosie McClendon (and most of the women at Daughters and Sisters in Rose Madder), Beverly Marsh, Jo Noonan, Elizabeth Eastlake, etc. All very good female characters. (I THINK King said that Carrie was inspired by his experience as a high school teacher)