Reading Response 2: Remembering Her Past

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Page 16 starts out with very heavy imagery when she is describing in detail what the concrete looks like, "Quartz glittering in the cement."; and a simile "Slowing down and speeding up like a car with carberator trouble.". For some reason which I do not know she keeps on talking about things that are on the sidewalk like gum stamped flat , pieces of tin-foil and penny candy wrappers. I think the reason why King put so much detail into the sidewalk was he wanted to create an image of suburban life or maybe even the area in which Carrie lives. We see more of Carrie's character when she imagines that Chris Hargensen is all bloodied and beat up. Despite her major differences from say the average teenager she still defies her mother just like any other teenager does, but just by doing small things that she knows would annoy her mom. Her mother is also revealed to have a very puritain like way of thinking when she talks to Carrie about "sin" and "backsliding" and the imagery of an angry Christ killing the people that made Carrie's life difficult proves that the way of thinking (atleast when it comes to the way she thinks about Jesus)  carried on to her. It reminded me alot of "sinners in the hands of an angry God". Carrie remembers about how she took up sowing when she was a kid so that she could pay to go to Christian Camp even though her mother thought it was sinful, and unfortuantly her mother was proved right because Carrie had to go home because of the severe bullying she received there. It is most unfortunate because her mother, instead of comforting her like she should have, told her that she deserved it because going to that camp was a sin in the first place. She even forbade her to take showers at school because she thought they were sinful but she did it anyway. When she's walking down the street to her house, remembering and all a little boy named Tommy Erbtrer started taunting her and calling her names. By a mere glare Carrie knocks the kid off of his bike. She describes her telekinetic actions as her mind "flexing" like a baby muscle. He serves as a foreshadowing for what may happen in her future regarding her abilities. What I find most lovable about Carrie is that she still loves her mother after all she has done to her, she proves this when she is thinking about breaking Mrs.Yorraty's picture window because she is a neighbor hates her mother, or it could just be that she doesn't know that her mother is seriously mistreating her but I hightly doubt that because earlier Carrie talks about how her mother has left her at a disadvantage ever since she was little and the hate-love relationship that she has with her home/homelife. Her house is described as a small white house, blue shudders, with ive creeping up the side. Carrie sees stones outside of her house and is reminded of the day that the storm of stones came down on her house and remembers details about it that she forgot. It suddenly cuts to another article interviewing the girl who basically triggered all of it, the girl in the white bikini that Carrie talks about before the cut to the article. Her name is Estelle Horan, chain smoker and has a husband and two kids. It all started when Carrie's mother complained to Estelle's mother about Estelle laying out in her bathing suit, which she of course found sinful. Estelle's mother took great offence and bought her daughter a white bikini to sun bathe in too offend Margaret more. Little Carrie was described by Estelle to be very pretty and having dirty blonde hair, she also talks about Maragret ruining her which could be clues that Margaret really is a bad character/ one of the main antagonists in the story. She also talks about how strange her father was, who always carried around his bible and .38 revolver. Everybody was scared of him and wouldn't even make faces at him to his back because of how ominous he seemed to be. After young Carrie goes over to Estelle's house (which is apparently next door) she asks her about her breasts which are revealed when one fell out when she was taking a nap, and she says what they are and Carrie says she'll never have any, because if you have breasts you have sinned, hence why her mother calls them "dirty pillows" which I actually find quite hilarious. Even at such a young age Carrie in a way mimicks her mother in the "holier than thou" complex that she has. Estelle wanted so badly to save little Carrie from that life although she was too dumbstruck to do that, and just as she's ruminating about this Margaret comes out and starts "whooping" and making all sorts of ungodly noises whilst shaking all over. She started yelling things about "sluts" and "strumpets"and starts clawing at her neck and cheeks which evoked Carrie to run to her and Margaret squatted and took Carrie in her arms as if she was going to crush her. She was now to the point were she was drooling and took Carrie back in to the house, Estelle said she heard praying, screeching,and sobbing and Carrie being forced into her closet to pray. By that time her mother was eaten up with guilt, but in my opinion if she really was she would have at least called child services but of course she was a coward and was too scared. And this actually makes me think, how different would Carrie be if she was put in a foster home? I personally think it would have done her a world of good and maybe would have avoided the end result of her upbringing. So first it started raining ice, which leads me to think Carrie had to be an extremely strong TK because she could even control the weather when she was but a child, then came the rain of stones which strangely landed on her house and only on her house. Whatever Margaret was doing to Carrie it apparently put her under enough stress to make her do all of that. Estelle also describes what all is going on in her house and how her and her mother were clinging to each other scared for their lives. Of course, none of that got into the local paper for the reason that the townspeople were scared, and I think that's another reason why Carrie isn't socially accepted because of her and her mother being so feared. Then we see a little foreshadowing with Estelle saying "Now there's this other thing..." which was also put in there to entice the reader to keep reading I'm sure. She also said that what happened to the White house was an act of god, which is ironic because of the attitude her mother has about God. We even see a little assonance and consonance when they find lyrics from a Bob Dylan song (Just Like a Woman was the name of it) written over and over again in one of Carrie's notebooks "Everybody guessed/ that baby can't be blessed/ 'til she finally sees that she's like all the rest..." I think this really represents Carrie's longing for acceptance and social redemption. The Carrie enters her house and we get alot of imagery about what her house is like and what's in it. There is a strong smell of talcum powder in the living room which contains various pictures of a wrathful or gory Jesus and some of which gave Carrie nightmares as a child. The most striking piece that is in the living room is a 4 foot cross which had a bloody Jesus crucified there. Carrie accepts what is happening to her logically and calmly because she actually knew what was going on with her but the knowledge was somehow suppressed in her mind, probably because of her mother. Her mother also is a clean freak because to her "cleanliness is close to godliness", but in my opinion whatever mental disease she has, because it is now clear how unsound she is, has now manifested itself into severe OCD. Carrie found that her mother did posses pads. As any other puritain-like Christian her mother makes her wear many layers of clothing. Carrie also demonizes her piers because of what they have done to her, and I believe she is justified in thinking they are all bad but it makes me wonder, did she ever look for good in them? Did she even want to look? At the end of the next 15 pages we find out why Carrie is thick in her weight, and it is because she eats and eats to fill the gap that is inside her.

Note on the picture: This is actually from another Stephen King novel "Firestarter"but it fitted my image of what Carrie looked like whilst she was making it rain ice and stones.

MLA:
"Firestarter ." Online Image. ScreenRant . No date. July 19,2011  <http://screenrant.com/stephen-king-firestarter-universal-reboot-robf-92238/>.