Carrie By Stephen King Essay

Stephen King’s novel Carrie is about a teenage girl Carrie White, a teenage girl who is constantly getting bullied by people at school. Carrie is an outcast at school and home because of her mother, Margaret White. Margaret has unusual religious beliefs, keeps Carrie sheltered at home from the outside world, and teaches Carrie that bodily functions are sinful. Margaret’s left Carrie with a lack of social skills, making Carrie an easy target for bullies. Instead of Carrie standing up for herself, she suffers in silence because Carrie does not know how to stand up for herself. Carrie was brought up in a household that believed the world was full of sins when “Her mother told her that the world was full of sin and that she was born into it.

That is because Margaret mentally abuses Carrie with her unusual religious beliefs. When Carrie is in the beginning stages of puberty, Margaret told her something evil will come to her. The evil figure that Margaret tells Carrie about “Comes at night. It will make you think the evil goes in the parking lots and roadhouses” (King 51). Now that Carrie had began to develop breasts, her mother thinks Carrie will have evil figures come to her. Margaret thinks something evil is out for Carrie because she thinks puberty is a sin. Carrie and her neighbor, Stella Horan were discussing breasts, Carrie thought breasts were for bad girls only, so Horan explained to Carrie all girls get breasts eventually. Carrie responded to Horan saying “No, I won’t,’ she said. ‘Momma says good girls don’t’” (King

When Carrie went to school, “She was always afraid, it seemed; always the outsider, always the freak. And she was in a constant state of nervousness and jerky readiness, as if there was a gun aimed at her at all times” (King 13). Carrie feels like an outsider because everyone looks at her differently. Carrie is looked at differently from how she was raised. Carrie was raised to not sin, even though that was impossible not to do because of her mother's beliefs. Carrie was also raised to do whatever her mother wished. Everyone else was raised where it was okay to mess up sometimes but to learn from their mistakes. Carrie does not get that opportunity, when she is in trouble Margaret does not tell Carrie what she could have done