Carrie by Stephan king

The religious references in Carrie

The book Carrie by Stephan king is a horror novel exploring the possible effect of extreme bullying. The main character, Carrie White is a secret telekinetic who has grown up with an insane and religiously fanatical mother. At school she's bullied and altogether isolated. Carrie snaps and kills half of her hometown after a cruel and elaborate prank is pulled on her. But the main source of Carrie's humiliation and pain is the presence of religion in her life.

Carrie's mother often abuses her on the grounds of religious justification in addition to drilling into her daughter the idea of many common occurrences being caused by her "sins." Carrie's mother tells her that showering is sinful and that "your pimples are The Lord's way of chastising you." When the book says "momma leaned forward, and the knife came down in a shining arc," the reader can see how deranged Carrie's mother really is, that she would kill her own daughter to repent for her sins. Carrie grew up in a problematic home focused around religion, and religion is always associated with humiliation and pain for Carrie. Every time religion is brought up in the book, something bad happens.

It's not just her abusive mother that causes pain for Carrie that's associated with religion. The way religious presence is portrayed in Carrie, it's a bad thing. When Carrie is remembering all the times she's been humiliated or made fun of, the book says that when she was "on the church picnic and kneeling down clumsily to pray and the seam of her old madras skirt splitting along the zipper like the sound of a huge wind breakage." Carrie is publicly shamed in this scene and this is taking place at a religious event.  Her mother says "I almost killed myself," when she found out that she was pregnant with Carrie. This couldn't have been a good thing to hear for Carrie, and the first was humiliating and extremely public, religion is only mentioned in the book in association bad things like these.