Carrie Summary

Carrie White is a 16-year-old girl who attends Ewen High School in Chamberlain, Maine. She is raised by her single mother, the religious fundamentalist Margaret White, and is ostracized at school due to her extreme Christian beliefs. However, unbeknownst to her peers, Carrie has telekinetic powers.

One day, Carrie is showering in the locker room after gym class when she begins to menstruate for the first time. Her classmates—including Chris Hargensen, Sue Snell, and Norma Watson, among others—notice the blood and begin to tease her about it, telling her to clean herself up. When Carrie realizes she’s bleeding, she panics and collapses in the shower stall in tears. Her classmates throw tampons and pads at her, taunting her to “plug it up.” Eventually, Sue realizes that this is likely Carrie’s first period, at which point the girls’ gym teacher, Miss Desjardin, bursts into the locker room. Miss Desjardin sends the other girls out. At first, she’s angry at Carrie and demands that she clean herself up and use a menstrual pad. However, when she realizes that Carrie doesn’t know what a period is, she helps Carrie use a pad. She then takes Carrie to vice principal Mr. Morton’s office to get her a dismissal slip so that she can go home early.

Later, Sue and her boyfriend Tommy finish having sex in Tommy’s car. Tommy, like Sue, is popular—he’s known for his athletic abilities and charming personality. Sue confides in him about the locker room incident and admits that she feels guilty about it. Tommy encourages her to apologize. That same day, Carrie walks home from school. Margaret returns home from work early after receiving a call from the school and drags Carrie into the closet as punishment for menstruating. For once, Carrie resists, screaming at her mother and threatening to “bring the stones again.” Margaret still locks her away, but she lets her out sooner than normal, and Carrie realizes that Margaret is scared of her.

The next day, Miss Desjardin punishes the girls who harassed Carrie by giving them a week’s detention, telling them that if they don’t attend, they’ll lose their tickets to prom. Chris Hargensen attempts to storm out, prompting Miss Desjardin to slam her against a locker. Later, Sue and Chris meet up at a local soda bar, where Chris says she’s refusing to go to detention and therefore will miss out on prom. Sue says they all deserved the punishment, angering Chris.

Carrie spends a few days out of school. In the meantime, Sue asks Tommy to ask Carrie to prom as an apology. When he asks Carrie, she’s worried he’s playing a prank on her, but she reluctantly agrees. When Carrie asks Margaret for permission to go to the prom, Margaret reacts violently, but Carrie telekinetically subdues her and tells her that she’s going to prom no matter what. Later in the week, Chris and her boyfriend, the delinquent Billy Nolan, orchestrate a plan to humiliate Carrie at prom. Billy takes his friends out to a local farm, where they kill two pigs and gather their blood in buckets. Later, he rigs the buckets on a pulley above the stage for the Prom King and Queen.

The day of the prom, Carrie gets ready despite Margaret praying hysterically below. That evening, she anxiously watches the cuckoo clock in her house until Tommy arrives to pick her up. Sue, having no date, spends the night in. Meanwhile, Chris and Billy go to the school. Billy waits in the parking lot while Chris waits behind the stage for the Prom King and Queen to be announced. At first, Carrie is nervous, but she starts to greatly enjoy her time at the dance, even mingling with some of her other classmates. Back at the White residence, Margaret ponders how she should have killed Carrie as an infant. She begins to sharpen a knife. At the dance, Carrie is shocked when she and Tommy are announced as that year’s Prom King and Queen. However, when they reach the stage, Chris pulls the pulley Billy set up, dumping the buckets of pig blood all over Carrie and Tommy. One of the buckets strikes Tommy on the head, knocking him unconscious. For a moment, everyone stares in shock, then they begin to laugh out of bewilderment and discomfort.

Humiliated, Carrie stumbles out of the gym and resolves to go home—but then she decides to use her powers to get revenge. She seals the gym door shut and turns on the sprinklers. Then she electrocutes people using live wires. An electrical fire breaks out, engulfing the school and killing most of the students inside, including the unconscious Tommy. Carrie leaves and begins to wreak havoc around town, exploding multiple gas stations and, eventually, a gas main. As her death toll increases, the law enforcement and news infrastructures of the town collapse. Sue, horrified, takes her car into town to try to intervene. Eventually, Carrie goes into a church to pray, and when she emerges, she litters the neighboring street with live wires and electrocutes most of the townspeople walking on it.

Carrie then goes home, where Margaret is waiting with her knife. She attempts to kill Carrie, plunging the knife deep into Carrie’s shoulders. Carrie then telekinetically stops Margaret’s heart, killing her. Bleeding out, she stumbles out of the house and makes her way toward The Cavalier, the tavern where Billy and Chris are staying. When the two attempt to leave in Billy’s car, Carrie takes telekinetic control of the car and slams it into The Cavalier, killing them both. She then collapses in the parking lot, where Sue manages to find her via a telepathic connection. Carrie accuses Sue of setting her up, but when Sue denies it, Carrie probes into her mind and discovers she’s telling the truth. Sue tries to pull away from the telepathic connection, but she’s forced to listen to Carrie’s thoughts as she dies. Sue runs away and finds herself in a field, where she begins to bleed from between her legs.

After prom night, hundreds of people are dead. Chamberlain is decimated and unlikely to ever recover. In response to the reports of Carrie’s telekinetic abilities, the U.S. government opens an investigation called the White Commission and many scholars begin to research the phenomenon of telekinesis, which they conclude is caused by a gene dubbed the “TK gene,” which could easily recur in another person. Despite this, the White Commission concludes that an incident similar to that in Chamberlain is unlikely to happen again. The novel concludes with a letter from a woman named Amelia, who tells her sister about her two-year-old daughter’s unusual abilities to move things with her mind.