Old Criticism Rough Draft

Jordyn Thomure

3rd hour AP English III

April 3, 2014

Old Criticism Rough Draft

Carrie: The Disney Movie

“They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.” (144 Carrie Stephen King).

Stephen King’s “Carrie”, is about a young girl with the gift of telekinesis, who destroys her entire town, kills over 400 people, and is nonetheless a warped version of the classic Cinderella story. Throughout the novel, King introduces characters that are archetypes from the famousCinderella story. Carrie, her mother, Tommy, Sue Snell, Chris Hargenson, and her posy, all perfect depictions of the classic princess story archetypes. This well established psychotic novel is ironically similar to one of Disney’s classics. Ironic, isn’t it?

Carrie White is in and of herself, the archetype of the classic Cinderella character. She is an outcast, innocent, and socially awkward young lady who is in the lowest rungs of the caste system in her highschool. Just like Cinderella, Carrie did not deserve the treatment she acquired from people in her school and at home. In the beginning of the novel during shower time in gym class, Carrie receives her first menstrual cycle and is extremely confused, and scared, about what is happening to her.

““You’re bleeding!” Sue yelled suddenly, furiously. “You’re bleeding, you big dumb pudding!” Carrie looked down at herself and shrieked.” (6)

““I’m bleeding to death!” Carrie screamed.” (9)

Situations like this always happened to Carrie. Everybody at school treated her horribly.

“She caught poison ivy from urinating in the bushes and everyone found out (hey scratch-ass, your bum itch?); Billy Preston putting peanut butter in her hair that time she fell asleep in study hall; the pinches; the legs outstretched in school aisles to trip her up, the books knocked from her desk, the obscene postcard tucked into her purse; Carrie on the church picnic and kneeling down clumsily to pray and the seam of her old madras skirt splitting along the zipper…” (7)

Although Carrie was treated viciously by her peers, there were ones that stood out remarkably by giving Carrie an opportunity to be beautiful and apart of something bigger, Tommy Ross and Sue Snell.

Tommy Ross is the most prominent boy in the school with the most popular girl in the school, Sue Snell. After the gruesome incident in which Carrie had her first menstrual period, Sue Snell felt crummy about what she had done to Carrie. So she suggests that Tommy take Carrie to the spring ball. This is where Tommy became Carrie “Prince”, giving him the archetype of a Prince Charming. Tommy swept Carrie off her feet, called her beautiful, introduced her to his friends, danced with her, and made her feel comfortable. Along with this, Tommy and Carrie were named king and queen of the ball much like Cinderella and her Prince charming took the same title.

“She opened the door and he was there, nearly blinding in white dinner jacket and dark dress pants. They looked at each other and didn’t say a word. She felt that her heart would break if he uttered so much as the wrong sound, and if he laughed she would die. She felt- her whole miserable life narrow down to a point that might be an end or the beginning of a widening beam.

Finally helpless she said, “Do you like me?”

He said, “You’re beautiful.”

She was.”

Tommy represents the ideal man, the perfect guy. He is truly Carries “Prince charming”, and he fits the archetype of Prince charming perfectly.

“While he held out her chair, she saw the candle and asked Tommy if he would light it. He did, and their eyes met over the flame. He reached out and took her hand…” (107 Carrie).

The beautiful Sue Snell, Tommy Ross’ girlfriend, allowed Carrie to be escorted by her boyfriend to the Spring Ball. Sue looked at Carrie from a different perspective, more as a person rather than a creature. She gave Carrie the opportunity for people to look at her in a new light. This gives Sue Snell all the characteristics of the “Fairy Godmother” archetype. Sue takes a rotten, beat down, outcast of a girl and changes her into something beautiful.

“A lot more than that. Maybe if that was all I could let it go, but 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 like… 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. Id just find a big rock and hide under it.” (60 Sue Snell in Carrie)

Sue plays an impeccable Fairy Godmother archetype due to her understanding of Carrie from a personal level. Sue seems like the only person to give her a chance, just like the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella did. Even after Carrie destroyed the entire town she still felt sorry for Carrie.

“But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions…True sorrow is a rare as true love. I’m not sorry that Tommy is dead anymore. He seems too much like a daydream I once had. You probably think that’s cruel… But I do feel sorry for Carrie. They’ve forgotten her you know? They’ve made her into some kind of symbol and forgotten that she was a human being.” (Sue Snell 45)

Margret White plays the “evil-stepmother” archetype, although she is Carries biological mother. Margret White is an ultra-religious horror of a woman. Carrie endures abuse, both physical and verbal, from Margret. Much like the Disney Cinderella story, Carrie gets locked inside a closet, just like Cinderella got sealed in the attic by her step-mother.

“Momma hissed like a burned cat. “Sin!” she cried. “O, Sin!” She began to beat Carrie’s back, her neck, her head. Carrie was driven, reeling, into the close blue glare of the closet.

“YOU FUCK!” Carrie screamed… she was whirled into the closet headfirst and she struck the far wall and fell on the floor in a semi-daze. The door slammed and the key turned” (42).

There are many instances in which Margaret White and the evil-stepmother are alike. Much like when Carrie asked to go to the Spring Ball.

“-and he’s a very nice boy. He’s promised to stop in and meet you before and-“

“No.”

“-to have me in by eleven. I’ve-“

“NO, NO NO!” (69)

Which is much like the Cinderella story:

“Then she asked, "May I come, too?"

"You are not to go to the ball!” answered her stepmother.

Chris Hargenson and her posy of girls are who makes Carries life outside of home, hell. This gives Chris and the other girls the characteristics of being a “evil-stepsister” archetype. Chris had always gave Carrie trouble, along with many of her friends, but what Chris and her boyfriend did on Prom night changed their town of Chamberlain forever. Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan killed a pig at night, and collect the blood from a slice of its neck in buckets. They later tied the buckets of blood above the king and queen’s thrown at prom and rigged the voting so that Carrie and Tommy would win. Once Tommy and Carrie were called, the buckets fell and the horror of the night began.

“Pig blood for a pig.” (83 Carrie).

In the Cinderella story, the evil stepsisters tore up Cinderella’s dress and left her in rags after she had sewed her own.

“The cruel stepsisters were angry because Cinderella looked so lovely. They tore at her dress until it hung in rags”

Which was much like Carrie’s experience because after the pig blood had been down-poured on her, she was left in rags after she spent all that time making it,

“She started downtown…she looked awful. She was wearing some kind of party dress, what was left of it anyway, and she was all wet from that hydrant and covered with blood. She looked like she just crawled out of a car accident” (132).

Carrie is ironically similar to the story of Cinderella. Although Carrie doesn’t run off with her prince charming and “live happily ever after”, the archetypes shown in the novel show distinct similarities as those in Cinderella. Tommy Ross her Prince charming, Sue Snell her fairy godmother, Margaret White her evil stepmother, and Chris Hargenson as the Evil stepsister create what I feel is a beautiful disaster. Most people consider Carrie to be one of the most psychotic horror stories of the 1900’s, but to me it is rather enchanting. The similarity of Carrie and Cinderella are similar in which they are foils. They both represent two extremes that are unrealistic in attainability. Cinderella represents an outcast of a girl who runs away and lives happily ever after with her prince Charming, while Carrie represents an outcast of a girl who kills nearly everybody in her town including her prince Charming. The black and white, sane and insane, life and death.