For Monday: King, Carrie, pp.75-175

Group “A” should answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Part One of the book (there are three parts) is entitled “Blood Sport,” and seems to obviously allude to the events that open the book. But how else does King use the metaphor of blood throughout the first part of the book? Also consider the meaning of “blood sport”: what is a blood sport, and how could it symbolize the events and characters of this book?

Q2: In the book My Name is Susan Snell that is quoted throughout the novel, Sue says “Whenever anything important happens in America they have to gold-plate it, like baby shoes. That way you forget it” (117). What does she mean by this? Why would commemorating something in gold make us forget it? Have we seen this reaction in other stories as well?

Q3: In Part Two, Carrie reflects, “[she] did not think anyone could understand the brute courage it had taken to reconcile herself to this, to leave herself open to whatever fearsome possibilities the night might realize” (147). What does give her the courage to defy both her mother and the brutal teenagers who reject her from their society? Also, why is she willing to go through with it, knowing that Tommy doesn’t really like her and that she is transgressing a social boundary?

Q4: The fictional book, The Shadow Exploded¸ which is supposed to give the ‘true story’ of the Carrie White incident, claims that “the two most stunning events of the twentieth century have been the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the destruction that came to Chamberlain, Maine in May of 1979” (103). Why do you think some kind of prom disaster (even if many teenagers were killed) could rank with the death of a president? Is there a modern-day example of “Chamberlain, Maine” that can help us understand why it would be such a momentous (and pivotal) event in American culture?