You can only push someone so far. You can only withhold so much information. Eventually, the dam bursts open, destroying everything around it. The same is true for people, not just dams. This is something Stephen King acknowledged over half a century ago, in the famed Carrie.
Carrie has been adapted numerous times: 1976, 2002, 2013, and now in 2026 as a contemporary miniseries by Mike Flanagan. I’ve seen all but the 2002 version. The 1976 adaptation triumphs, and to me, it’s no competition.
Stellar acting. A cast that even I, born many years later, mostly recognized. P.J. Soles (Halloween, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School), John Travolta (Grease, Pulp Fiction), and Nancy Allen (RoboCop), among others. But the story itself is timeless. While I have not read the book, I’ve seen enough adaptations to have a general idea.
The story follows Carrietta “Carrie” White, a shy, awkward teenager with telekinetic abilities. She is tormented by her deeply religious mother and bullies at school. Eventually, it becomes too much to bear. It becomes a prom that, while you may not have attended, you will never forget.
You push someone so far, and the school is suddenly on fire. The town is burning down. People are begging for grace (not mercy), but hellfire swallows them whole. Sounds as religious as Carrie’s mother, doesn’t it?
Fundamentalism. That is our concern today, with Carrie.
My youth pastor, in middle school, used to quote Marilyn Manson. Yes, really. Manson once said something along the lines of, “If you don’t teach your children, I will.” That terrified me. It terrified me because I never wanted to be anything like Manson.
15 years later, I wear all black, eyeliner occasionally, listen to heavy metal and love horror. I should love Manson. I’ve never cared for him, and he’s an awful person. Just Google “Marilyn Manson and MeToo.” Go ahead.
But for what it’s worth, that quote is etched in my brain. And, perhaps, because it became true in a few ways.
Homeschooling and Hidden Truth
My thesis, in earlier drafts, talked a good bit about “hidden truth.” I ultimately felt that was a little too much for my thesis to handle. I did not realize I’d use it much later for a blog post, but here we are.
My program director seemed very interested in it, though. She left multiple comments on my thesis about this “withheld/hidden truth.” By the time I read those comments, I was so deep in my research I didn’t even remember what I was getting at.
Last week, I watched Flanagan’s adaptation of Carrie. I thought it was good, but not as groundbreaking as critics desperately want it to be. It’s set in 2026, with smartphones, social media, and lots of contemporary politics. It’s everything a politically motivated film critic could wish for. It isn’t scary, and it isn’t spectacular. But it is decent. I’d recommend it, though the 1976 version still holds up.
My favorite change in the newer miniseries is that Carrie was homeschooled before her father died. That isn’t in the novel or any previous adaptations. As far as we know, in all the others, Carrie has always attended the same school.
But in the new version, I felt a much stronger relation to Carrie. I grew up in a similar environment. I was homeschooled in a deeply fundamentalist, right-wing household. My first time attending in-person school was in obtaining my Master’s. Seriously.
In this series, Carrie has had one teacher for her entire life. Then she attends public school. Then the actual unthinkable happens. Her first period.
There is blood. She has no clue why. She thinks she is dying. This part is in all the adaptations. This shy, awkward student experiences her first cycle, and because knowledge was withheld, she believes there is something deeply wrong with her.
There isn’t. We, the audience, know that. But she does not. She does not because she cannot. That knowledge was withheld.
A Personal Note
I do not want to pretend I relate 100% to Carrie White. There are many themes in this story that I will never truly understand. But neither will the guy who wrote it. Because it is such a sensitive topic, I want to be fully transparent about that.
I relate to Carrie in terms of religious upbringing/fanaticism. When I was in high school, I would only listen to Christian music. Metal, still, but only Christian. I grew up in a home where the Bible was always true. Church 2–3 times per week. Homeschooled, with Abeka Book.
And never once had the talk. The birds and the bees… what? Neither of my parents ever had that talk with me. I was given a James Dobson book and told to read it.
One of my siblings had that talk with me. And by that point, a teenage boy with raging hormones, I discovered pornography. I learned from pornography. That was my first addiction.
Carrie never learned what a period was. I never—technically—learned what sex was. Both times, that withheld knowledge resulted in suffering. While those things are not one and the same… they are significant. And deserving of scrutiny.
Although my mother never had that talk with me, I assume she figured somewhere along the way that I knew. She had ten kids before me; she probably forgot. But this knowledge, I don’t think, was ever intentionally withheld.
The Humiliation
Returning to the fictional story at hand, Carrie has her first period in gym class. In the showers. The absolute worst place, I imagine. And the other girls taunt her. They chant “plug it up!” They throw tampons at her.
She has no clue what is happening. Homeschooled or not, her mother never had that talk with her. As a result, she suffered. Then, later, others suffer. Talk about the value of knowledge.
My research centers on the problem of suffering. When one suffers, they do not shrug it off, say, “Damn! It’s just another manic Monday,” or continue as if nothing ever happened. They analyze it. They question things. Everyone wants to make sense of their suffering. They ask, “Why, God?” Or, “why, humans?”
Many will analyze every nook and cranny. Why did this happen? Where was the help I needed? Why me? And often, the answer is nothing, nowhere, and no one.
My upbringing shaped more than what I knew about sex. It also shaped what I was allowed to ask about suffering.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I pretended to understand. I did not. Then the unthinkable happened. I reached out for help from the others, from the church, family friends, etc.
“You shouldn’t question God.” “Everything happens for a reason” (Nowhere-in-the-Bible 3:16). “You’ll see her again, and that’s what matters.” Because the Bible TOTALLY supports all of these. It doesn’t. Sometimes, as the work I focus on answers, there is no reason. It’s the way it is and there is nothing we can do to change it.
“He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” Ecc. 3:11.
We have the ability to think and reason. We do not have the ability to know all things. Some things, God has kept us from understanding. Which may seem cute and hopeful.
But in the reality, it turns everything into hebel. Everything is inscrutable. Everything is uncertain. It is dust, smoke, wind. Ephemeral. Temporal.
That doesn’t alleviate suffering. That makes it worse. It may be within that uncertainty that we suffer the most. We cannot know, but we desire to know. We have the right to know. Yet, we do not.
Which starts to look a lot less like ignorance, and much more like suffering. Just ask Qoheleth.
The Discovery
This trauma does something for Carrie. It unlocks her hidden telekinetic ability to move objects with her mind. She can do these things; she cannot understand what or why. These powers exist to help her.
They help her by hurting the ones who caused such deep wounds. A remorseful friend has her boyfriend, the hottest guy in school, ask her to the senior prom. But while this is going on, Carrie’s primary bully, Chris Hargenson, has her own plans.
She will rig up the prom vote, having Carrie become prom queen, only to dump a bucket of pig’s blood on her. In each adaptation, much to her surprise, Carrie becomes prom queen. But while she is on the stage accepting the award, the blood comes pouring down.
The audience erupts with laughter.
Then the lights go out. The doors slam shut. Nobody can escape.
The Massacre
Facing the ultimate public humiliation, Carrie has been pushed past her limit. She kills everyone in sight.
That hidden knowledge became a weapon. Now that she knows what she is capable of, nobody is safe. Not even her mother, whom she kills upon returning home. As the cries for help ring out in that gymnasium, I imagine several people are thinking, “what if I wasn’t such an asshole?”
But it’s too late. This Carrie, possessed by some supernatural power, will not offer any forgiveness. Instead, she sets fire to everything in her path. Principals, school property, even family. They all face fire. They all face her fury.
Many deserve it. The bully and her partner, the bully’s righthand people, the mother who withheld the knowledge in the first place… they all get what’s comin’ to ‘em.
The Aftermath
While Carrie successfully torments everyone who caused her pain, she does not escape into the sunlight. People caused her to suffer; she made them suffer; now, she too must suffer some more.
After killing her mother, their burning house caves in. In most adaptations, Carrie does not escape.
She dies in the fallout. The house comes tumblin’ down with her in it. And she does not just walk it off.
Her death does not begin with her own actions. It begins with what others have done to her. She dies because the actions of others have had such an overpowering effect that they destroy her too. Her actions. Her inadvertent inability to know what was going on. And it was ALL avoidable.
Bullying only goes so far. Withholding information only goes so far.
There is something in the human that makes them chase after this knowledge, time and time again. Even if it means getting hurt, or others getting hurt, they continue to learn. It is a survival mechanism. It is how they cope.
Everybody wants to stand up to a bully. Carrie did that, in the most catastrophic way one can imagine. She did not hold back. And, at least in the newest rendition, 200 people died.
All because a period was never explained. All because something that should be, and often is, accessible to all, was not accessible to one person. When the truth is withheld, the human psyche develops an even stronger desire to attain it.
Someone must answer for this.
Conclusion: It Should Be, but It is Not
Perhaps that’s my translation of hebel: it should be, but it is not. If so, Carrie White knows all about hebel, without knowing that she knows it. Her mother should have had that talk with her. Her mother did no such thing.
And so, we get one of the most chaotic, bloody examples of revenge as we could ask. That is what happens when the truth is hidden.
When the truth is hidden, we only desire to know it more. The same could be said of God.
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Carrie found the truth. It set her free, but at the expense of numerous lives. And eventually, her own.
At what point does one’s narrative stop being the only thing that matters? When does political or religious affiliation become not important? And when is it too late? Is it when someone finds what you never wanted them to find? Or when an entire school burns down with everyone in it?
Some things do not need a Democratic or Republican answer.
Withholding sensitive information, about periods, sex, or anything else, will result in suffering. It will result in suffering for that person. And it may result in suffering for others, too.
Even an entire high school.