Carietta “Carrie” White Character Analysis

A tampon suddenly struck her in the chest and fell with a plop at her feet. A red flower stained the absorbent cotton and spread.

Then the laughter, disgusted, contemptuous, horrified, seemed to rise and bloom into something jagged and ugly, and the girls were bombarding her with tampons and sanitary napkins, some from purses, some from the broken dispenser on the wall. They flew like snow and the chant became: “Plug it up, plug it up, plug it up, plug it—”

There was a bright flash overhead, followed by a flashgun-like pop as a lightbulb sizzled and went out. Miss Desjardin cried out with surprise, and it occurred to her
(the whole damn place is falling in)
that this kind of thing always seemed to happen around Carrie when she was upset, as if bad luck dogged her every step.

If only [the Day of Judgement] would be today and Jesus coming not with a lamb and a shepherd’s crook, but with a boulder in each hand to crush the laughers and the snickers, to root out the evil and destroy it screaming—a terrible Jesus of blood and righteousness.

And if only she could be His sword and His arm.

Tommy Erbter, age five, was biking up the other side of the street. He was a small, intense-looking boy on a twenty-inch Schwinn with bright-red training wheels. He was humming “Scooby Doo, where are you?” under his breath. He saw Carrie, brightened, and stuck out his tongue.

“Hey, ol’ fart face! Ol’ prayin’ Carrie!”

Carrie glared at him with sudden smoking rage. The bike wobbled on its training wheels and suddenly fell over. Tommy screamed. The bike was on top of him. Carrie smiled and walked on. The sound of Tommy’s wails was sweet, jangling music in her ears.

If only she could make something like that happen whenever she liked.

(just did)

She lowered her head and said something so softly I couldn’t hear it. When I asked her to repeat it, she looked at me defiantly and said that her momma had been bad when she made her and that was why she had [breasts]. She called them dirtypillows, as if it was all one word.

Nobody wants to believe it, not even now. You and all the people who’ll read what you write will wish they could laugh it off and call me just another nut who’s been out here in the sun too long. But it happened. There were lots of people on the block who saw it happen, and it was just as real as that drunk leading the little girl with the bloody nose. And now there’s this other thing. No one can laugh that off, either. Too many people are dead.

And it’s not just on the Whites’ property any more.

She was quite sure (or only hopeful) that she wasn’t that weak, not that liable to fall docilely into the complacent expectations of parents, friends, and even herself. But now there was this shower thing, where she had gone along and pitched in with high, savage glee. The word she was avoiding was expressed To Conform, in the infinitive, and it conjured up miserable images of hair in rollers, long afternoons in front of the ironing board in front of the soap operas while hubby was off busting heavies in an anonymous Office; [...] of fighting with desperate decorum to keep the Kleen Corners white, standing shoulder to shoulder with Terri Smith (Miss Potato Blossom of 1975) and Vicki Jones (Vice President of the Women’s League), armed with signs and petitions and sweet, slightly desperate smiles.

And Eve was weak and loosed the raven on the world, […] and the raven was called Sin, and the first Sin was Intercourse. And the Lord visited Eve with a Curse, and the Curse was the Curse of Blood. And Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden and into the World and Eve found that her belly has grown big with child.

Looking at Chris was like looking through a slanted doorway to a place where Carrie White crouched with hands over her head.

The mean tricks have been going on ever since grammar school. I wasn’t in on many of them, but I was on some. If I’d been in Carrie’s groups, I bet I would have been in on even more. It seemed liked…oh, a big laugh. Girls can be cat-mean about that sort of thing, and boys don’t really understand. The boys would tease Carrie for a little while and then forget, but the girls...it went on and on and on and I can’t even remember where it started any more. If I were Carrie, I couldn’t even face showing myself to the world. I’d just find a big rock and hide under it.

But he saw for the first time (because it was the first time he had really looked) that she was far from repulsive. Her face was round rather than oval, and the eyes were so dark that they seemed to cast shadows beneath them, like bruises. Her hair was darkish blonde, slightly wiry, pulled back in a bun that was not becoming to her. The lips were full, almost lush, the teeth naturally white.

She was intimidated but not stopped. Because if she wanted to, she could send them all screaming into the streets. Mannequins toppling over, light fixtures falling, bolts of cloth shooting through the air in unwinding streamers. Like Samson in the temple, she could rain destruction on their heads if she so desired.

“There’s going to be a judgment!” Margaret White raved. “I wash my hands of it! I tried!”

“Pilate said that,” Carrie said.

And if he didn’t come, if she drew back and gave up? High school would be over in a month. Then what? A creeping, subterranean existence in this house, supported by Momma, watching game shows and soap operas all day on television at Mrs. Garrison’s house when she had Carrie In To Visit (Mrs. Garrison was eighty-six), walking down to the Center to get a malted after supper at the Kelly Fruit when it was deserted, getting fatter, losing hope, losing even the power to think?

No. Oh dear God, please no.

(please let it be a happy ending)

They’ve forgotten her, you know. They’ve made her into some kind of symbol and forgotten that she was a real human being, as real as you reading this, with hopes and dreams and blah, blah, blah. Useless to tell you that, I suppose. Nothing can change her back now from something made out of newsprint into a person. But she was, and she hurt. More than any of us probably know, she hurt.

And so I’m sorry and I hope it was good for her, that prom. Until the terror began. I hope it was good and fine and wonderful and magic.

The only way to kill sin, true black sin, was to drown it in the blood of
(she must be sacrificed)
a repentant heart. Surely God understood that, and had laid His finger upon her. Had not God Himself commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac up upon the mountain?

She shuffled out into the kitchen in her old and splayed slippers, and opened the kitchen utensil drawer. The knife they used for carving was long and sharp and arched in the middle from constant honing. She sat down on the high stool by the counter, found the sliver of whetstone in its small aluminum dish, and began to scrub it along the gleaming edge of the blade with the apathetic, fixated attention of the damned.

The Black Forest cuckoo clock ticked and ticked and finally the bird jumped out to call once and announce eight-thirty.

He shrugged. “Let’s vote for ourselves. To the devil with false modesty.”

She laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound was almost entirely foreign to her. Before she could think, she circled their names, third from the top. The tiny pencil broke in her hand, and she gasped. A splinter had scratched the pad of one finger, and a small bead of blood welled.

That was what made people laugh. We couldn’t help it. It was one of those things where you laugh or go crazy. Carrie had been the butt of every joke for so long, and we all felt that we were part of something special that night. It was as if we were watching a person rejoin the human race, and I for one thanked the Lord for it. And that happened. That horror.

And so there was nothing else to do. It was either laugh or cry, and who could bring himself to cry over Carrie after all those years?

She would pick herself up very soon now, and sneak home by the back streets, keeping to the shadows in case someone came looking for her, find Momma, admit she had been wrong—
(!! NO !!)
The steel in her—and there was a great deal of her—suddenly rose up and cried the word out strongly. The closet? The endless, wandering prayers? The tracts and the cross and only the mechanical bird in the Black Forest cuckoo clock to mark off the rest of the hours and days and year and decades of her life?

[…]

She rolled over on her back, eyes staring wildly at the stars from her painted face. She was forgetting
(!! THE POWER !!)

It was time to teach them a lesson. Time to show them a thing or two. She giggled hysterically. It was one of Momma’s pet phrases.

“I almost killed myself […] And Ralph wept and talked about atonement and I didn’t and then he was dead and the I thought God had visited me with cancer; that He was turning my female parts into something as black and rotten as my sinning soul. But that would have been too easy. The Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. I see that now. When the pains began I went and got a knife—this knife”—she held it up—“and waited for you to come so I could make my sacrifice. But I was weak and backsliding. I took this knife in hand again when you were three, and I backslid again. So now that devil has come home.”

If overt TK ability occurs as a part of puberty and if this hypothetical TK test is performed on children entering the first grade, we shall certainly be forewarned. But in this case, is forewarned forearmed? If the TB test shows positive, a child can be treated or isolated. If the TK test shows positive, we have no treatment except a bullet in the head. And how is it possible to isolate a person who will eventually have the power to knock down all walls?

The overall impression is one of a town that is waiting to die. It is not enough, these days, to say that Chamberlain will never be the same. It may be closer to the truth to say that Chamberlain will simply never again be.

A tampon suddenly struck her in the chest and fell with a plop at her feet. A red flower stained the absorbent cotton and spread.

Then the laughter, disgusted, contemptuous, horrified, seemed to rise and bloom into something jagged and ugly, and the girls were bombarding her with tampons and sanitary napkins, some from purses, some from the broken dispenser on the wall. They flew like snow and the chant became: “Plug it up, plug it up, plug it up, plug it—”

There was a bright flash overhead, followed by a flashgun-like pop as a lightbulb sizzled and went out. Miss Desjardin cried out with surprise, and it occurred to her
(the whole damn place is falling in)
that this kind of thing always seemed to happen around Carrie when she was upset, as if bad luck dogged her every step.

If only [the Day of Judgement] would be today and Jesus coming not with a lamb and a shepherd’s crook, but with a boulder in each hand to crush the laughers and the snickers, to root out the evil and destroy it screaming—a terrible Jesus of blood and righteousness.

And if only she could be His sword and His arm.

Tommy Erbter, age five, was biking up the other side of the street. He was a small, intense-looking boy on a twenty-inch Schwinn with bright-red training wheels. He was humming “Scooby Doo, where are you?” under his breath. He saw Carrie, brightened, and stuck out his tongue.

“Hey, ol’ fart face! Ol’ prayin’ Carrie!”

Carrie glared at him with sudden smoking rage. The bike wobbled on its training wheels and suddenly fell over. Tommy screamed. The bike was on top of him. Carrie smiled and walked on. The sound of Tommy’s wails was sweet, jangling music in her ears.

If only she could make something like that happen whenever she liked.

(just did)

She lowered her head and said something so softly I couldn’t hear it. When I asked her to repeat it, she looked at me defiantly and said that her momma had been bad when she made her and that was why she had [breasts]. She called them dirtypillows, as if it was all one word.

Nobody wants to believe it, not even now. You and all the people who’ll read what you write will wish they could laugh it off and call me just another nut who’s been out here in the sun too long. But it happened. There were lots of people on the block who saw it happen, and it was just as real as that drunk leading the little girl with the bloody nose. And now there’s this other thing. No one can laugh that off, either. Too many people are dead.

And it’s not just on the Whites’ property any more.

She was quite sure (or only hopeful) that she wasn’t that weak, not that liable to fall docilely into the complacent expectations of parents, friends, and even herself. But now there was this shower thing, where she had gone along and pitched in with high, savage glee. The word she was avoiding was expressed To Conform, in the infinitive, and it conjured up miserable images of hair in rollers, long afternoons in front of the ironing board in front of the soap operas while hubby was off busting heavies in an anonymous Office; [...] of fighting with desperate decorum to keep the Kleen Corners white, standing shoulder to shoulder with Terri Smith (Miss Potato Blossom of 1975) and Vicki Jones (Vice President of the Women’s League), armed with signs and petitions and sweet, slightly desperate smiles.

And Eve was weak and loosed the raven on the world, […] and the raven was called Sin, and the first Sin was Intercourse. And the Lord visited Eve with a Curse, and the Curse was the Curse of Blood. And Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden and into the World and Eve found that her belly has grown big with child.

Looking at Chris was like looking through a slanted doorway to a place where Carrie White crouched with hands over her head.

The mean tricks have been going on ever since grammar school. I wasn’t in on many of them, but I was on some. If I’d been in Carrie’s groups, I bet I would have been in on even more. It seemed liked…oh, a big laugh. Girls can be cat-mean about that sort of thing, and boys don’t really understand. The boys would tease Carrie for a little while and then forget, but the girls...it went on and on and on and I can’t even remember where it started any more. If I were Carrie, I couldn’t even face showing myself to the world. I’d just find a big rock and hide under it.

But he saw for the first time (because it was the first time he had really looked) that she was far from repulsive. Her face was round rather than oval, and the eyes were so dark that they seemed to cast shadows beneath them, like bruises. Her hair was darkish blonde, slightly wiry, pulled back in a bun that was not becoming to her. The lips were full, almost lush, the teeth naturally white.

She was intimidated but not stopped. Because if she wanted to, she could send them all screaming into the streets. Mannequins toppling over, light fixtures falling, bolts of cloth shooting through the air in unwinding streamers. Like Samson in the temple, she could rain destruction on their heads if she so desired.

“There’s going to be a judgment!” Margaret White raved. “I wash my hands of it! I tried!”

“Pilate said that,” Carrie said.

And if he didn’t come, if she drew back and gave up? High school would be over in a month. Then what? A creeping, subterranean existence in this house, supported by Momma, watching game shows and soap operas all day on television at Mrs. Garrison’s house when she had Carrie In To Visit (Mrs. Garrison was eighty-six), walking down to the Center to get a malted after supper at the Kelly Fruit when it was deserted, getting fatter, losing hope, losing even the power to think?

No. Oh dear God, please no.

(please let it be a happy ending)

They’ve forgotten her, you know. They’ve made her into some kind of symbol and forgotten that she was a real human being, as real as you reading this, with hopes and dreams and blah, blah, blah. Useless to tell you that, I suppose. Nothing can change her back now from something made out of newsprint into a person. But she was, and she hurt. More than any of us probably know, she hurt.

And so I’m sorry and I hope it was good for her, that prom. Until the terror began. I hope it was good and fine and wonderful and magic.

The only way to kill sin, true black sin, was to drown it in the blood of
(she must be sacrificed)
a repentant heart. Surely God understood that, and had laid His finger upon her. Had not God Himself commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac up upon the mountain?

She shuffled out into the kitchen in her old and splayed slippers, and opened the kitchen utensil drawer. The knife they used for carving was long and sharp and arched in the middle from constant honing. She sat down on the high stool by the counter, found the sliver of whetstone in its small aluminum dish, and began to scrub it along the gleaming edge of the blade with the apathetic, fixated attention of the damned.

The Black Forest cuckoo clock ticked and ticked and finally the bird jumped out to call once and announce eight-thirty.

He shrugged. “Let’s vote for ourselves. To the devil with false modesty.”

She laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound was almost entirely foreign to her. Before she could think, she circled their names, third from the top. The tiny pencil broke in her hand, and she gasped. A splinter had scratched the pad of one finger, and a small bead of blood welled.

That was what made people laugh. We couldn’t help it. It was one of those things where you laugh or go crazy. Carrie had been the butt of every joke for so long, and we all felt that we were part of something special that night. It was as if we were watching a person rejoin the human race, and I for one thanked the Lord for it. And that happened. That horror.

And so there was nothing else to do. It was either laugh or cry, and who could bring himself to cry over Carrie after all those years?

She would pick herself up very soon now, and sneak home by the back streets, keeping to the shadows in case someone came looking for her, find Momma, admit she had been wrong—
(!! NO !!)
The steel in her—and there was a great deal of her—suddenly rose up and cried the word out strongly. The closet? The endless, wandering prayers? The tracts and the cross and only the mechanical bird in the Black Forest cuckoo clock to mark off the rest of the hours and days and year and decades of her life?

[…]

She rolled over on her back, eyes staring wildly at the stars from her painted face. She was forgetting
(!! THE POWER !!)

It was time to teach them a lesson. Time to show them a thing or two. She giggled hysterically. It was one of Momma’s pet phrases.

“I almost killed myself […] And Ralph wept and talked about atonement and I didn’t and then he was dead and the I thought God had visited me with cancer; that He was turning my female parts into something as black and rotten as my sinning soul. But that would have been too easy. The Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. I see that now. When the pains began I went and got a knife—this knife”—she held it up—“and waited for you to come so I could make my sacrifice. But I was weak and backsliding. I took this knife in hand again when you were three, and I backslid again. So now that devil has come home.”

If overt TK ability occurs as a part of puberty and if this hypothetical TK test is performed on children entering the first grade, we shall certainly be forewarned. But in this case, is forewarned forearmed? If the TB test shows positive, a child can be treated or isolated. If the TK test shows positive, we have no treatment except a bullet in the head. And how is it possible to isolate a person who will eventually have the power to knock down all walls?

The overall impression is one of a town that is waiting to die. It is not enough, these days, to say that Chamberlain will never be the same. It may be closer to the truth to say that Chamberlain will simply never again be.