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Carrie
Summary
By Stephen King

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Carrie Summary
You probably know how Carrie begins: a young girl
(Carrie, naturally) gets her 9rst period in the shower
at high school. The other girls, being the sensitive
creatures they are, yell at her and pelt her with
tampons. One girl, Sue Snell, feels bad about the
whole cruel scene.

But of course, she doesn't do anything to stop it.

That would just be too… well… Nice. And logical.

After Miss Desjardin, the gym teacher, 9gures out

what's going on, she punishes the troublemakers.
The bullies' ringleader then blames Carrie for
getting her in trouble. Because it's totally the victim's
fault when you abuse someone. (Not.) Anyway, this
chick, who's named Chris Hargensen, starts plotting
her revenge.

Meanwhile, Carrie discovers that she's telekinetic.

She can lift hairbrushes and knock over bratty kids
on bicycles with her mind. (Can she carry our
groceries for us? Get it? Carry? Ugh, we just have
not had enough coffee today.)

Carrie has a lot of time to explore her special

powers because she doesn't have any friends. Poor
Carrie. Also, her super religious mother isn't much
of a social butterQy herself. Margaret White blames
sin for everything… like Carrie getting her period, for
example.

Margaret makes Carrie's very existence seem like a

sin. That's no good for self-esteem. Did we write,
"poor Carrie" yet? Oh, we did? We feel that way a lot
when we read this book. Until the end, at least.

Anyway, Sue Snell, still feels guilty about that whole

tampon episode. So she convinces her boyfriend,
Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the prom. He asks
her, and she accepts. Carrie makes her own
beautiful dress and goes with Tommy to the prom.

She's scared the whole time that it's going to be a

prank, because she's so used to the other kids being
awful to her. Tommy is really nice to her, though.

Sadly, that's not the end of the story. No happily ever

after here, kiddos. See, unbeknownst to Carrie, Chris
Hargensen has rigged the prom elections so that
Carrie and Tommy win King and Queen. And that's a
crucial part of her plan to humiliate Carrie in front of
the whole school.

When Carrie and Tommy get up on stage, Chris and

her boyfriend dump buckets of pig's blood on Carrie
and Tommy. A bucket even falls on Tommy's head
and kills him.

But the whole school is preoccupied with laughing

at Carrie. Or, at least in Carrie's mind, the girl who is
now standing on-stage covered in pig's blood,
everyone is laughing.

So she unleashes her telekinetic powers and kills

everyone. She has people burned alive, electrocuted,
you name it. Then, when she's 9nished with that,
Carrie then starts taking out the whole town of
Chamberlain, Maine. She lays waste to gas stations
and churches in her path.

Nothing is sacred to Carrie, we guess. Especially not

the religious institutions that seem to inspire her
mom's abuse.

Finally, Carrie goes home. Now everyone (who's left,

anyway) is safe and sound, right? Wrong. Carrie's
mother tries to kill her.

But our Carrie kills Momma instead, then goes to

the roadhouse where Chris and Billy are staying.
She burns that roadhouse down to the ground.

Billy seeks revenge by trying to run Carrie over with

his car. Carrie employs those special powers again,
Qips the car over, and kills both Chris and Billy. Then
she feels kind of tired, so she lies down in the road
to die.

At that moment, Sue is able to use her previously-

unmentioned psychic powers to 9nd Carrie's body.
(No, we don't get this part either.) Sue stays with
Carrie until she dies. And, using those powers we
don't quite understand yet again, Sue 9nds out what
it's like to die.

Needless to say, that kind of freaks her out.

At the very end of the novel, we see a letter from a

mother to her sister. No, not from Carrie to
Margaret. This is a communication between two
characters we've never seen before.

In it, the mom describes her daughter, who can

levitate marbles with her mind. "Hm, do we have
another Carrie on her hands?" is clearly the question
we're meant to be asking ourselves.

Our advice: keep your tampons to yourself.

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