Yes, Carrie Is Banned!

Stephen King’s debut novel tells the story of Carrie White, a shy, bullied teenager raised by a fanatically religious mother who discovers she has telekinetic powers. When her classmates pull a vicious prank at the senior prom, Carrie unleashes destruction on the entire town. King wrote Carrie in 1974 while working as a high school English teacher, and his firsthand observation of teenage cruelty gives the novel its savage accuracy. The book isn’t really about telekinesis. It’s about what happens when every system meant to protect a child (home, school, community) fails completely. Carrie White is a monster, but every monster in this book was made by someone else.

Carrie has been challenged 10 times in Florida and Texas, flagged for violence, sexual content, and profanity. The violence complaint is fair: the prom scene is one of the most famous massacres in fiction. But King’s point is that the violence is a consequence, not a cause. The real horror is the relentless cruelty Carrie endures before she snaps. The novel launched King’s career, inspired two films, a Broadway musical, and remains one of the most culturally significant horror novels ever written. Banning it from schools removes a book that says, plainly, that bullying has consequences, a message that’s arguably more relevant now than in 1974.