I had seen Carrie (2013) a long time ago. Few weeks back when I picked up the Stephen King’s novel, Carrie, almost all the details of the movie was forgotten from my mind. I only knew she was a telekinetic and she used that power to take revenge. In the beginning of the book I thought Carrie got her powers the same way how Matilda got her powers in the Roald Dahl’s book.
Contents
Carrie vs Matilda
Matilda Wormwood was the titular character of the Roald Dahl’s book, Matilda. She was a child prodigy. But her parents did not recognized her extraordinary intelligence and neglected her. She developed her reading and language skills by self-studying. This negligence caused a buildup of mental pressure inside Matilda’s mind which ultimately generated telekinetic powers. One of her teachers recognized her intellect and placed her in an advanced learning program. That advanced program helped to relieve Matilda’s mental burden. Without the mental pressure her telekinesis faded away.
Carrie’s mother Margaret White abused Carrie through her entire childhood. Margaret White had delusional believes about the God and the Devil and lived with constant paranoia that her daughter was going to fall for the Devil. She did not let Carrie enjoy her life as an ordinary girl. She denied Carrie’s freedom and made her pray for every little trivial thing. This behavior made Carrie grew apart from her community and peers. Without friends she was a lonely kid in the school. She was regularly get bullied by her classmates. I thought this constant domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying sparked her supernatural powers. But I was wrong.
What was the origin of Carrie’s powers?
Carrie got her powers the same way mutants in the Marvel Universe get theirs. In the X-Men, mutants get their powers from the X-Gene. Carrie also inherited her powers genetically. In the book there were few parties who were investigating Carrie White case after she destroyed her home town. One of them were a group of scientists who were studying the telekinesis phenomena. They had narrowed down the source of telekinesis to a rare gene. Any male or female can be a carrier of this special gene. But the powers only manifest in females. Carrie got her mutated gene from her mother’s side. Even though Carrie’s mother, Margaret White did not possess any supernatural powers, she passed the gene to her daughter.
Carrie’s powers and abilities
Telekinesis.
Her prominent supernatural ability was moving objects without physically interacting with them by using only her thoughts.
Extrasensory perception – ESP (Clairvoyance).
She had the ability to feel objects without actually seeing them. She only had to imaging about them, then she could sense them.
Telepathy.
She could read minds of other people.
Thought projection.
Other people could sense Carrie’s feelings.
Pyrokinesis.
It is the ability to start a fire with a mere thought. Carrie did not have this ability. But other mutants in the story had this power.
Carrie’s power levels
She was the most powerful mutant in the book. Other people with supernatural abilities in the book did party tricks compared to Carrie. All other accounts of supernatural incidents were recalled by family members of other mutants and they certainly did not make into national news. But the carnage laid out by Carrie not only made news but sparked several investigations from various fronts. She single handedly destroyed a town beyond repair and killed nearly 500 townsfolk. It took days to dig out and recover all the bodies of victims. Most survivors could no longer stay in a place where they have lost their loved ones to a horrible tragedy, because of that many people abandoned the town and moved out.
In order to cause such damage Carrie had possessed telekinetic powers with long reach and great strength. As an example when Carrie was just a little girl, her mother in one of her crazy episodes tried to harm Carrie. That’s the very first time Carrie displayed how strong her powers were. Scared little Carrie moved and thrashed heavy furniture of the house with her mind and caused a hailstorm of rocks to fall onto her house. But the memory about that incident had been buried in her mind and had been forgotten when she grew up, so she had to rediscover her telekinetic abilities and train herself to use them.
Carrie was always a troubled child. Her mother had made her distrust the society. Despite her mother’s warnings Carrie was slowly beginning to warm up to other people. But the incident on the prom night changed everything. In that fateful night, when the buckets of pig blood fell on her, she thought she became the victim of an elaborate prank. When she saw everyone in the prom started to laugh at her, she decided to let loose her vengeance on everyone who wronged her. That included entire town folks up to her mother. This sudden rage made her powers to outburst. At that moment blood lusted Carrie tapped into the true potential of her powers.
She was multitasking.
Her powers no longer limited to move few object in her field of view. Instead she discovered that she could control many things at once whether she could see them or not. She closed main doors in the burning school hall and held them shut while heading towards the town. At the same time she ripped off fire hydrants on her way to sabotage any firefighting attempts.
She could see without actually seeing.
After she trapped fellow students and school staff in the building she opened valves of the sprinkler system to make the hall wet so she could electrocute people inside the building. Doing so she discovered that she did not actually need to see sprinkler valves to activate them, as long as she imaging them in her head she could sense and manipulate them. She then used this ability to feel the underground gas lines to rip them apart so she could start fires. Near the end she used this ability to sense her mother’s heart and stop it from beating.
Her powers created a force field or a power bubble.
When she was walking down the streets, laying waste in her path, her powers created an affected area or a field. People inside that area could sense it. Her presence could be feel from miles away. At the end Carrie’s classmate Sue Snell sensed her location from at least 3 miles away and was able to find dying Carrie.
Her telepathy, thought projection and mind reading powers were very strong.
People who witnessed Carrie walking down the streets suddenly got the idea that her name was Carrie and what were her motives. Some of these people never even met Carrie before that day and did not know her name. When White committee questioned these people and asked them how they knew her name and motivations, they replied, they just knew. When Carrie finally approached the perpetrators of the pig blood prank, Chris and Billy, their minds overwhelmed with her presence. When she was dying she telepathically communicated with Sue Snell. Carrie thought Sue Snell was part of the prank because Sue asked her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the prom instead of her. Sue Snell assured Carrie she did not set her up and invited her to read her mind. Then Carrie invaded Sue’s mind and browsed through her memories to see that she was telling the truth. At that point they were telepathically connected so Sue could feel Carrie’s last dying thoughts.
Relationship between Carrie’s powers and her mother’s abuse
There was no relationship. Her mother was just crazy. Carrie was doomed from the conception. In her twisted religious mind she was convinced that Carrie was born out of a sin. She even tried to kill Carrie several times. Actually Carrie’s powers saved her life. But at the end her mother delivered the fatal knife stab that eventually killed Carrie.
Carrie’s mother was the reason Carrie ended up going mad at the end. She never wanted a child. When Carrie was in her womb she thought it was a cancer growing inside her. When she found out about Carries abilities she thought the Devil granted those abilities to Carrie. Instead of helping her daughter to understand her powers she tried to force her crazy religious believes on her daughter. Only if her mother was sane and competent Carrie’s story could have ended up as a superhero story instead of a horror story.
There are other supernaturally powerful mutants in the story
Sadie Cochran
Carrie’s great grandmother. She had telekinesis and pyrokinesis powers. She could move a sugar bowl on the table without touching it and light the fireplace using only her thoughts. Margaret White witnessed her grandmother’s abilities and thought she was a witch. Sadie died from a heart attack when she was 66 years old.
Annie
2 year old daughter of Amelia Jenks. Investigations in to Carrie’s incident concluded that similar incident was not possible to happen in the future. But in 1988 a letter from Amelia Jenks to Sandra Jenks described that Amelia found her daughter was telekinetically moving marble balls. She found it was funny and it reminded her of her grandmother who was also a telekinetic. Judging from her mother’s attitude about her daughter’s abilities Annie would not end up like Carrie. Amelia was not afraid of her daughter’s powers and had high hopes for Annie’s future. Her only concern was that Annie would get heartspels like her grandmother.
Annie’s great grandmother
Amelia and Sandra Jenks grandmother. Amelia recalled her grandmother once made guns fly out of policemen’s hands. She also could make her rocking chair rock even when she was not sitting on it. According to Amelia she got heartspels which could have meant that she had a heart attack.
What if Carrie was born in the X-Men Universe?
As I read the book I realized that Carrie White’s powers are similar to the Marvel superhero Jean Grey. So I wonder what would have happened if she was in the Marvel universe. I think If she was in The Marvel universe professor Charles Xavier would have sensed her powers. Then professor Xavier would have stepped in to rescue Carrie from her abusive mother and provide a safe space in Xavier Institute where Carrie could train to control her powers without any prejudice from her peers. Professor was no stranger to similar situations with other troubled young mutants. In that way Carrie could have been a superhero or a properly trained supervillain.
But unfortunately for Carrie and her townsfolk there was not someone like Charles Xavier in Carries life to rescue her from her tragic fate.
Leave a Reply