Our readalong of the Stephen King novel, Carrie, is now finished and we thought we would change it up this time around. Rather than updating daily how we feel about the book, we decided to do a “Lessons We Could Learn From…” post about the protagonist, Carrie White.
She is pretty different from all the other characters we have used in this series of posts so far but that’s quite exciting! A change can be good and you can learn things from all sorts of people and characters.
Carrie is a teenage girl who has telekinetic powers. She is bullied by many of her classmates and by her mother, who oppresses and abuses her believing her to be Satan. It’s safe to say, Carrie is not a happy character. She grows more and more powerful throughout the story and we see her grow and have moments where she feels calmer and slightly more accepted in the world.
However, after various events unfold, Carrie becomes angry and seeks revenge on those who have tormented her in the past. The interesting thing about how this book is written is that we do not only see the world from Carries point of view, but also from a few other choice characters in the novel. This gives us a look at how others see Carrie and how she feels inside, a fact which helped to write this post!
Many of these lessons are going to be a little understated considering the book but Carrie is a very extreme character in how she deals with problems!
Here are a few lessons we feel can be learned from Carrie:
- Don’t blame everybody for the actions of a few who have done wrong.
- Try not to measure your self worth by how other people treat you – you are not a bad person if people are mean to you!
- When people are trying to help you – especially someone of status – do not turn them away.
- Do not rely on your parents or elders to teach you about the world, go out and experience it.
We also think we learned the big lesson in this book, which is obviously “do not mass murder in your town.” It’s safe to say we’ve taken that one on board.
The Little Contemporary Corner 
I was in my teens when I read this and it had such a huge impact on me. I didn’t see the film until I was much older so wasn’t “tainted” by it (although it’s one of the few adaptation’s I really love). I love the lessons learned you have here, very apt for the themes through the book. I don’t know about you but even at the end I just felt sorry for her.
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