Carrie

The scene between Chris and Billy at the Cavalier mirrors but also inverts the earlier scene between Sue and Tommy. Both Sue and Chris ponder their first sexual experience with their partner, with each remaining unsatisfied, yet Chris’s recollection carries considerably more menace; Chris is sure that if she hadn’t “given in,” Billy would have raped her. In place of the growing intimacy that Sue feels after revealing her guilt to Tommy, a growing complicity in violence accentuates the scene between Chris and Billy. King’s inversion of the scene intertwines Billy and Chris’s motivations with lust, equating violence and cruelty with sexual arousal. At the end of the scene, Chris experiences “a large excitement blooming, like a rapacious and night-flowering vine, in her belly” (164). The choice of the word “blooming” carries connotations of pregnancy, and suggests the “monster” that will result from the coupling of Chris and Billy’s violence. They have conceived of the evening and are the parents of the resulting tragedy.

Tommy’s comparison of Carrie to Galatea questions Carrie’s agency. Tommy means to suggest that Carrie has gone “from a drudge into a beautiful woman” (166). Galatea, however, was a statue made by the sculptor Pygmalion, who viewed real-world women with contempt and therefore created an effigy of female perfection; he fell in love with his creation, and the gods took pity on him and gave the statue life. Carrie is likewise a constructed object, molded by her mother’s misogynistic zealotry and made into a prom attendee by Sue’s atonement and Tommy’s persistent kindness. Carrie also becomes prom queen through Chris’s machinations before devolving into rage through the laughter of her classmates. In all of this, Carrie lacks real agency.

These sections build on motifs of blood, childbirth, and pregnancy. Chris’s foreboding in The Cavalier carries the implication of fear of an unwanted pregnancy, and Sue Snell feels anxiety over her missed period, which suggests that she is pregnant. Margaret White recalls Carrie’s birth while examining the knife she used to sever Carrie’s umbilical cord—the same knife she will use to kill Carrie. These images carry with them suggestions of cycles interrupted—of beginnings and endings—and contribute to the atmosphere of fear that is gathering around the prom. These are balanced against the sweetly innocent experience Carrie is having at the prom, where her connection to Tommy is growing stronger.

Tommy’s actual feelings toward Carrie are hard to determine, as the narrative focuses on Carrie’s perceptions, whose social inexperience may color her interpretation. Nevertheless, Tommy’s kindness is evident. He supports her through her initial nervousness, offers to take her out after the dance, encourages her to feel confident enough to vote for herself as prom queen, and takes her hand in a particularly tender moment. In the midst of this kindness, a new aspect of Carrie’s telekinesis emerges: She projects her thoughts into the minds of others. Tommy is the initial recipient of this, first when he asks her to the prom and then at prom itself, where the power receives its fullest articulation yet as “(carrie carrie carrie)” (196). This reflects perhaps the most fundamental aspect of Carrie’s humanity: her deeply human need to be recognized by another person.