The town itself looks much like the cros
shairs in a rifle sight. It is nearly round, with Brock Street and Jointner Avenue intersecting at the center of ’Salem’s Lot. The northwest corner of town, also called North Jerusalem, consisted mainly of heavily wooded hills. On the hill nearest the center of town stood the Marsten House before it burned.
On the west side, where the town borders Cumberland, one might arrive via the Burns Road and then, more than likely, turn onto Brooks Road, which passes right by Harmony Hill Cemetery. South of there, the poorest of the Lot’s residents lived in an area called the Bend, which consisted mainly of dilapidated trailers and shacks.
Much of the northeast section of town consisted of open fields, with the exception of the shimmering Royal River, which once provided a perfect destination for locals who enjoyed fishing now and again.
The southeast section of ’Salem’s Lot was dominated by the Griffen Dairy Farm, which stretched along both sides of Griffen Road, and by Schoolyard Hill. Electrical towers for Central Maine Power still carry power lines on a straight course from southeast to northwest, cutting through forest and field.
The town itself was governed by a town meeting, rather than a town council, and ’Salem’s Lot had three selectmen, a constable, a town clerk, a school commissioner, and a volunteer fire department.
Of course, by the time of the fire that destroyed the town in 1976 or 1977, the volunteer firefighters had either run away, been killed, or, worse still, been transformed into something terrifying that still hunts by night.
There were a great many landmarks once upon a time. Schools and businesses and churches and homes.
But they’re all gone now.
Subsequent to the slaughter of so many of the town’s residents and the abandonment of the town, ’Salem’s Lot developed a widespread reputation as a local ghost town, not unlike Roanoke Island in Virginia. Rumors about what had happened to cause so many people to disappear or simply up and leave raged like small wildfires. Some believed a group of young devilworshippers had caused the whole problem. Other stories varied widely in plausibility but were all equally mysterious and unpleasant.
Still, over the following months several enterprising people attempt to buy houses or businesses in “the Lot” only to disappear or to madly flee the town just as their predecessors had. Local legends are far more specific as to their probable fate. Continued whispers about the undead indicate that the vampire problem may not be over, and that those who have disappeared may have fallen prey to the creatures. Despite the efforts of Ben Mears and Mark Petrie, who burned the town to the ground, some vampires reportedly still stalk the surrounding communities. The stories about vampires keep those from the surrounding towns from going anywhere near Jerusalem’s Lot.
For the most part.
Since no one has yet to follow up on the saga of the accursed little township of Jerusalem’s Lot, it must be assumed that those few undead citizens are still there. It appears that Ben Mears and Mark Petrie left the job unfinished. Someday it may fall to others to complete that job.
Only time will tell.
Time and blood.
For whatever reason, the battle between good and evil, between the Purpose and the Random, is being fought on many fronts. Without question, the Maine of King’s Prime Reality is perhaps the most common battlefield of all in this war. Whether it be monumental, such as Mike Anderson’s struggle with Andre Linoge, or more mundane (but equally horrible), as in Dolores Claiborne’s struggle to prevent her husband from molesting their daughter, a great many of these individual battles are likely significant to that cosmic struggle.
24
CARRIE
(1974)
King’s dedication to his first published novel, Carrie, reads as follows:
This is for Tabby, who go me into it—and then bailed me out of it.
The story behind this dedication is one that King has told many times, but one that bears repeating, primarily because of the pivotal role the book played in making King into a household name. As King relates the tale in 2000’s On Writing, he was having problems with completing a story he had begun about a high school loser named Carrie White, so many that he threw the manuscript in the trash. King writes:
The next night, when I came home from school, Tabby had the pages. She’d spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. She wanted to know the rest of the story. I told her I didn’t know jackshit about high school girls. She said she’d help me with that part. She had her chin tilted down and was smiling in that cute way of hers. “You’ve got something here,” she said. “I really think you do.”
Constant readers know the rest. King sent the completed manuscript to his editor, Bill Thompson, who bought the book for Doubleday for the princely sum of $2,500. The real shock came when Thompson called King a few months later to tell him that Signet had bought the paperback rights for $400,000. Stunned, all King could think to do was to buy his wife a hair dryer to celebrate their sudden good fortune. To paraphrase Thompson’s telegram announcing Carrie’s initial sale, their future lay ahead.
Although Carrie was King’s first published novel, it was not by any means his first attempt at a novel-length work, as the author had been working with that form since high school, beginning his first Bachman offering, Rage, as a teenager, and going on to craft novels such as The Long Walk and The Running Man in the interim.
Written by King in his early twenties, Carrie reflects the interests and concerns of someone not far removed from a high school setting. It’s not surprising that King would feel an affinity for this subject matter, given his high school teaching experience and his admiration of John Farris’s Harrison High novels of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The themes presented in the novel often recur in King’s subsequent work, in novels as diverse as Firestarter and Christine, the first about another young woman with wild talents, the second about another high school outcast, who, through the intervention of the supernatural, is able to take revenge on his tormentors. The book is also significant in that it would be the first of many novels in which a much-put-upon protagonist would be a strong, willful female—rather than traditionally male—character.
To ground his fantastic tale in a more mundane reality, King intersperses his narrative with a series of reports, official documents, and eyewitness testimony. Apparently Carrie White’s telekinetic attack on her schoolmates spawned several books and scholarly articles, from which King “quotes” over the course of the novel. Among them are The Shadow Exploded: Documented Facts and Specific Conclusions from the Case of Carrieta White by David R. Congress (Tulane University Press, 1981), and My Name Is Susan Snell by Susan Snell (Simon & Schuster, 1986). Her rampage also led to the formation of a special commission to study the incident, similar to the Warren Commission, formed a little over a decade before to determine the facts behind the Kennedy assassination.
Even with his first published novel, King was already adding to the landscape of the Pine Tree State. In Carrie, he establishes that the fictional Chamberlain is near the real Lewiston, Maine’s second-largest city (Portland is the first). King refers to Lewiston in several subsequent works, most recently The Dark Tower VII and Kingdom Hospital. He also mentions, for the first time, the Blue Ribbon Laundry, as the place where Mrs. White is employed. Sharp-eyed readers will note that this is the same company that employed Bart Dawes, the tragic protagonist of Richard Bachman’s Roadwork.
Another, perhaps more tenuous connection to other aspects of the Stephen King Universe is the mention of the demonic figure that Mrs. White refers to as “the Black Man.” Featured in a portrait that hangs in the closet where Carrie is often sent as punishment, the Black Man appears to be the very embodiment of evil. One might assume he’s the devil, but it’s interesting to note he’s never referred to as Satan, or Beel
zebub, or Old Scratch, only as the Black Man, recalling an alias of the one and only Randall Flagg. This is not to say that he’s one and the same as Flagg, Roland’s Man in Black, but perhaps that the author was already unconsciously weaving this villain into his universe.
Rather than a simple tale of gruesome supernatural horror, Carrie more accurately involves readers on the subliminal level of the classic Grimms’ fairy tale “Cinderella,” featuring contemporary versions of the cruel stepmother (Margaret White), the fairy godmother (Susan Snell), the wicked stepsisters (the female students who taunt Carrie), and even Prince Charming (in this case Tommy Ross), who escorts Carrie to the ball. Unlike the whitewashed Disney versions of classic fairy tales, however, there is no happy ending for Carrie. As happens so often in the Stephen King Universe, the good perish as frequently and haphazardly as the bad. As in Cinderella, the bad are punished. But in Carrie, the good also suffer; those who don’t perish must deal with the aftermath of the tragedy for the rest of their lives.
In the real world, King reminds us, sometimes Cinderella herself doesn’t survive the ball.
CARRIE: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
CARRIE WHITE: The only child of Ralph and Margaret White, the teenage Carrie is a classic wallflower, destined to serve as a doormat for the other, more popular, students. Friendless, Carrie only has her demented mother to instruct her in the ways of the world.
Carrie, however, turns out to be a little bit different from the other misfits targeted for harassment by the in crowd, having inherited a rare genetic trait for telekinesis from her late father. The gene, which allows her to move objects with the power of her mind, fully manifests itself shortly after she has her first period, during her senior year in high school.
Unfortunately, Carrie first menstruates while in the shower at school. Unaware that this is totally natural for women, she panics, believing that she is bleeding to death, exposing herself to even more abuse from her cruel classmates.
Trying to make up for joining in with her classmates as they taunted Carrie, Susan Snell asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to ask Carrie to the prom. Tommy agrees to ask, and Carrie accepts.
At the prom, Carrie falls victim to an elaborate and cruel practical joke orchestrated by Chris Hargensen in which she is doused in pig’s blood shortly after being voted queen of the prom. This is the last straw for Carrie, who, enraged, uses the telekinetic powers she’s been secretly honing to slaughter the majority of her fellow promgoers.
Carrie eventually dies from a knife wound inflicted by her mother later that night, but not before laying waste to most of the town and killing many of those who had so callously wronged her along the way.
MARGARET WHITE:Carrie’s fanatical, ultrareligious mother, she has spent the majority of her adult life atoning for one night of passion, the result of which was the birth of her only child, Carrie.
Mrs. White has turned her small house into a sad sanctuary of religious icons and paintings. She believes that sex, even within marriage, is evil, and that God has punished her by giving her a child to serve as a daily reminder of her unspeakable sin of lust.
Her idea of “educating” Carrie about menstruation is to lock her in a closet filled with religious symbols and demand that she pray for forgiveness. When Margaret’s madness ultimately overwhelms her on the night of the prom, she wounds her daughter with a knife. Enraged, Carrie uses her telekinetic ability to stop Margaret’s heart.
SUSAN SNELL: A usually decent sort who uncharacteristically took part in ridiculing Carrie in the girls’ shower room, Susan later comes to regret her actions, and attempts to atone for them by convincing her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to ask Carrie to the prom. One of the few survivors of the ensuing night of destruction and death, she wrote a book about her role in the tragedy entitled My Name Is Susan Snell.
TOMMY ROSS: Susan Snell’s affable boyfriend. Although he agrees to take Carrie to the prom strictly out of respect for his girlfriend’s wishes, he gradually comes to like Carrie on her own merits. Attending the dance, he and Carrie are voted king and queen of the prom. When a falling bucket of pig’s blood apparently kills Tommy, Carrie unleashes her terrible power, turning the high school gym into a killing zone. Tommy ultimately dies in a fire triggered by Carrie’s attack on her classmates.
CHRIS HARGENSEN: The classic town slut, Chris is the chief instigator in the “hazing” Carrie receives in the girls’ shower room. Punished for their involvement, Chris and several other girls seek revenge against Carrie, creating an elaborate plan to humiliate her at the prom. Chris’s orchestrations ultimately result in Carrie being doused with pig’s blood seconds after being voted queen of the prom. Although her plan works like a charm, Chris doesn’t reckon on Carrie’s vengeful rampage—she dies later that night as Carrie, departing the gym, proceeds to lay waste to the town.
BILLY NOLAN: Chris Hargensen’s delinquent boyfriend, Billy is every father’s worst nightmare, at least when it comes to the young men their daughters date. Not very bright, Billy provides the brawn Chris requires to obtain the pig’s blood and rig the buckets over the stage. Billy dies alongside Chris when he tries to run Carrie down with his car. Carrie telekinetically deflects the oncoming vehicle, sending it careening into the side of a roadhouse. Billy and Chris are killed in the resulting explosion.
RITA DESJARDEN: Rita is the sympathetic gym teacher who stops her class from taunting Carrie in the girls’ shower. One of the few people ever to show kindness toward Carrie, Rita is unfortunately slain in the burning gymnasium when the gym is suddenly transformed into a slaughterhouse.
CARRIE: ADAPTATIONS
Carrie was made into a highly successful motion picture in 1976, directed by Brian De Palma from a screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen. Although the production had a paltry budget of $1.8 million, it was one of the topgrossing films of the year, earning more than $30 million dollars in domestic receipts.
The ninety-seven-minute thriller was notable as a showcase for many young actors who would later become major stars, including Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, and John Travolta. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, who played Carrie and Margaret White, respectively, were both nominated for Academy Awards as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.
Director De Palma and screenwriter Cohen had to restructure the story for the screen, but due to the quality of the young cast and the sincerity with which everyone played their parts, the R-rated movie remains a truly moving and frightening experience. Unlike so many adaptations of King’s works to come, the movie was faithful in spirit to the novel, if not always to the literal translation of the original story.
King loved the movie, reportedly attributing his ascension to the bestseller lists to the success of the picture and the subsequent success of the movie tie-in edition of Carrie.
In early 1999, The Rage: Carrie 2 was released as a motion picture. The story shamelessly repeated many of the plot elements of the original: a lonely teenage girl discovers she has telekinetic powers, which she uses against her tormenters in high school. The movie starred Emily Bergl in the role of Rachel, and also featured Amy Irving as the sole surviving character from the original film of two decades earlier. Directed by Katt Shea and written by Rafael Moreu, The Rage: Carrie 2 died a quick death at the box office. King had no involvement whatsoever with the production.
Following the tradition of The Shining, Carrie was subsequently remade for television. Appearing on NBC, the 2002 miniseries attracted little attention. Starring Angela Bettis as Carrie, it featured Patricia Clarkson as Margaret White, Rena Sofer as Rita Desjarden, and David Keith as a police investigator, a character unique to this version.
CARRIE: THE MUSICAL
In contrast to the original movie adaptation, Carrie: The Musical was not quite as successful. Later touted as “the biggest flop in Broadway history,” the musical, budgeted at nearly $8 million dollars, opened on Broadway on May 12, 1988, and closed after a run of only five performances. The bestknown actress in the production was Be
tty Buckley, who coincidentally had also portrayed the friendly gym teacher, Miss Collins, in the film version.
Here, however, she was cast as Mrs. Margaret White. An unknown named Linzi Hateley played Carrie.
The New York critics utterly loathed the stage production, and the bad publicity that followed quickly insured its almost overnight demise. That the theatrical production followed the story line of the blood-soaked and bodystrewn movie and book fairly faithfully indicates the perhaps insurmountable challenge the naive producers of a musical version were up against.
CARRIE: TRIVIA
• Carrie White’s seventh-grade English teacher was a Mr. Edwin King. King’s middle name is Edwin.
• As part of an unusual marketing ploy, the cover of the first paperback edition of the novel did not feature King’s name.
• Carrie White’s birthday is September 21, 1963. King’s birthday also falls on September 21.
• Per an excerpt of a letter at the novel’s end dated May 3, 1988, other people with telekinetic powers exist. The letter, from Amelia Jenks of Royal Knob, Tennessee, to her sister, Sandra Jenks of Macon, Georgia, describes an incident where Amelia’s young daughter, Annie, makes her brothers’ marbles move about without touching them. Yet another example of a young woman with similar powers is another girl named Annie, Annie Wheaton of Rose Red fame.
The Complete Stephen King Universe Page 22