With an author that produces as much material of a consistently high quality as Stephen King, there are very few ironclad literary absolutes to his career. He might conceivably write another novel as widely loved as The Stand, or as iconic as IT. With the right director at the helm, we might even get a more recognizable adaptation than Kubrick's The Shining. But no matter how many novels an author writes, their first is always going to be their first. And for King, the one that started it all was Carrie.
There's a lot you can tell about an author by studying their first novel, and Carrie has plenty of themes that will crop up throughout many of King's later novels. The small Maine town, the greaser, the paranormal child, etc. But what stands out to me more than anything else in Carrie is the raw humanity that it expresses. From the very beginning King's empathy for the human condition takes center stage, from Sue Snell's desperate need for redemption, to Chris Hargensen's childish pettiness, to the angry vulnerability of Carrie White, we see some of the best and the worst aspects of human nature on display here.
As far as the writing goes . . . well Carrie is a first novel, and it has its share of first novel problems. In particular I found the constant breakaways from the main narrative to tell parts of the story as articles or fictional novel excerpts to be incredibly irritating, and I'm glad it's a tool that King used less in future novels. That being said Carrie was an enjoyable read the first time around, and it's still a fun re-read now. The first two thirds of the story are a slow-burn, and the third act is suitably horrifying in a way that none of the many adaptations have been able to capture or recreate.
What the book understands that none of the movies or stage depictions ever have, is that we're not supposed to root for Carrie White in the end. Pity her, yes, but not cheer. Carrie isn't supposed to be some spatterfest revenge fantasy where the evil bullies get what they deserve. It's a tragedy, where adolescent cruelty based in thoughtlessness shapes a person into a time-bomb, that goes off in the saddest and most horrific way imaginable. I think that Susan Snell sums the events that lead up to the prom night massacre best. "We were kids." Chris Hargensen was cruel as kids are cruel, with no real sense of what their actions mean to the victim.
And of course I should mention that reading Carrie in 2016 with the anti-bulling movement at its height is, I imagine, a very different experience than it was in 1974, a quarter of a century before Columbine happened. This goes even more, I think, to King's credit in his almost prophetic ability to see to the heart of human nature, especially regarding young people.
Continuity:
Even as far back as Carrie you can find places where King is laying the groundwork for later novels. One here that particularly surprised me was what appeared to be a number of allusions to our old friend, Randall Flagg.
Throughout the book there are a number of references to a Satanic being that Carrie refers to as the "Black Man." Sound familiar? It should, because it calls to mind two of Flagg's many monograms, "The Dark Man" and the "Man in Black." The Black Man is also described as having a "many lobed eye." This could be a reference to the Crimson King's sigil, or to the red eye that Flagg gives to his servants in The Stand.
At one point Margaret mentions that her hair went from completely black to completely white in an extremely short amount of time. This reminded me of what happened to Nadine in The Stand. Margaret also seemed extremely traumatized by the sexual encounter that led to Carrie's conception. Could Flagg have sent her visions and eventually conceived a child on her the same way that he did with Nadine? The timeline is certainly very different than it would have been with Nadine, but whose to say that it's the same every time.
I like the idea that Carrie may have been Flagg's tool all along. Part of his MO is toppling kingdoms of various sizes, and King really seems to hit the Arthurian theme with the prom and the thrones for the king and queen of the night. Maybe the prom night massacre was just another in the long line of kingdom's that have fallen before Randall Flagg. Of course, that's all just speculation. It may well have just been that King drew on the poem The Dark Man that he wrote in college, well before Flagg really took shape as a character in his mind.
*Trigger Warning* The following post contains references to rape and sexual assault.
For over a decade now FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has, in equal parts, delighted, disgusted, and utterly horrified fans with its outrageous and deliciously depraved cast of characters. Perhaps one of the show's most interesting characters is the janitor and partial owner of Paddy's Pup, Charlie Kelly.
One of the longest running ongoing jokes of the series is a character called The Nightman that Charlie invented in the season three episode Sweet Dee's Dating a Retarded Person. The Nightman, as depicted in song, is a shadowy figure that sneaks into Charlie's room at night and seemingly rapes him. This is often described through innuendo and Charlie himself seems unaware of the implications of what he's singing.
As the series goes on we learn more about the Nightman, and are introduced to a number of other characters of Charlie's creation, such as a Dayman that fights and defeats the Nightman, and a Troll that sells a small boy (Charlie) to the Nightman. This is most expanded upon in the season four finale, The Nightman Cometh, in which Charlie writes a musical about the Nightman that seems to parallel his own life.
Based upon the cast of the musical and subsequent clues in the show, I believe that the following characters represent real people in Charlie's life:
Uncle Jack is the Nightman and he molested Charlie as a child.
Charlie's mom is the troll.
Mac is the Dayman.
Uncle Jack and The Nightman:
It's fairly obvious to anyone that's familiar with the show, that Charlie's Uncle Jack is a pedophile. There are numerous references made to this effect, from him having sneaked into Charlie's room as a child to teach him "wrestling" to him having possessed "art photos" of children that were taken away by the FBI.
"We're lawyers!"
What first altered me to the possible parallel between Uncle Jack and the Nightman (other than the obvious) was Jack's infatuation with his small hands. He constantly makes references to his hands, revealing a deep insecurity with the way that they look, even going so far as to ask other people to cover his hands with their own (as seen to the right) for pictures. This is significant because one of the constant themes with the Nightman is the character's hands. Charlie sings about them on two separate occasions, referencing the Nightman first as pinning him down with "strong hands" and then later as being locked in a world of darkness without the Nightman's "sexy hands."
There are also a number of references made throughout the series of something untoward happening between Charlie and Uncle Jack when Charlie was a child. In the season five episode The Great Recession Charlie is reluctant to share a room with Uncle Jack because of something disturbing that happened when they shared a room during his childhood involving "wrestling." Furthermore, in the season one episode Charlie Got Molested, Charlie's family stages an intervention when Dennis and Dee falsely tell them that Charlie was molested by his middle school gym teacher. During this intervention Uncle Jack is seen sweaty and anxious, likely because he really did molest Charlie as a child, and he suspected that Charlie was about to reveal it. He's also shown becoming sexually excited when Charlie shows where on a naked doll the gym teacher allegedly touched him.
The Troll:
During The Nightman Cometh, we are introduced to a Troll that sings a song about selling a young boy to the Nightman. During the musical the Troll sings that the Nightman must pay a toll if he wants to get into the "boy's soul." Unfortunately Frank's singing makes it sound like he's saying "boy's hole" rather than "boy's soul."
The narrative here is pretty clear. If Uncle Jack is the Nightman, then the Troll would be somebody that collected money from the Nightman in exchange for Charlie. As we know from the previously referenced episode, The Great Recession, Charlie's mother collected rent money from Uncle Jack in exchange for allowing him to bunk with Charlie when he was a child, which is likely when the aforementioned molestation took place.
While it's unlikely that she knew what was happening between Charlie and Uncle Jack (in fact, she flew into a rage at the idea of Charlie being molested in previous episodes), a young Charlie probably didn't understand all the nuances and implications of what was happening. Rather, he only saw his mother collecting money from a man that was abusing him. Since even as an adult he doesn't seem entirely aware of what happened to him, it's likely that writing his mother into the play as the Troll was done subconsciously.
Speaking of the subconscious, we learn in the season six holiday special that Charlie repressed another tidbit from his childhood that likely contributed to the Troll narrative. In A Very Sunny Christmas it's revealed that every Christmas when Charlie was a boy a bunch of men would come over his house dressed as Santas and, as Mac so eloquently puts it, "run a train" on his mother. The revelation eventually leads to a violent outburst in which Charlie brutally assaults a mall Santa, biting a large chunk out of his throat and savagely beating him in front of a group of small children.
As you can see, Charlie's reaction is completely over the top, even for someone that just learned his mother took part in a Christmas-themed gang bang when he was a child. I think it's more likely that Charlie was having a flashback of his own abuse. After hearing the story, Mac infers that Charlie's mom must have been a prostitute. This is something that's also hinted at in the season three episode, Dennis Looks Like a Registered Sex Offender, where she becomes Frank's paid "bang maid." Charlie's mom having exchanged sex for money may have been similar, in Charlie's mind, to Uncle Jack supposedly having paid the "Troll Toll" to abuse him, and was likely what caused his violent outburst.
In fact, as far back as season one, when the Gang first speculated on the possibility of Charlie having been molested, Mac made a reference to Charlie being "a bit of a psychopath" when he was young, and that nobody would come near him because when he got upset he would turn purple and start biting things. Charlie also first started abusing drugs during the Santas incident, when he began sniffing glue to cope with his troubled home life. Similarly, he's shown huffing paint while writing his songs about the Nightman.
The Dayman:
The most common theme in Charlie's songs, after the Nightman itself, is the Dayman. The Dayman is depicted as an inherently good figure of light and friendship that opposes the Nightman. In some versions Charlie himself is the Dayman and defeats the Nightman, in other versions Charlie becomes the Nightman and is rescued from a "world of darkness" by the Dayman. Upon first glance there seems to be no single person that represents the Dayman, but when examining the series as a whole there are a number of clues as to the Dayman's true identity . . . Mac.
The Gang in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia have all known each other as far back as High School, but Charlie and Mac have been friends since childhood. Since Charlie was known as "Dirt Grub" in school and was constantly picked on, it's likely that Mac was his only friend. The two of them both came from dysfunctional families with absentee fathers, neither of them fit in at school, and they spent their Christmases together throwing rocks at trains. Being his first friend, I think that Mac pulled Charlie out of the "world of darkness" that he lived in when he was alone being molested by his Uncle Jack and neglected by his prostitute mother. There are a number of clues peppered throughout the series that link Mac to the themes that Charlie associates with the Dayman in his songs. Perhaps most significant, however, is the fact that Charlie originally casts Mac as the Dayman in his Musical.
The first and most obvious clues are found in the lyrics that directly describe the Dayman. The song refers to him as "a master of karate and friendship for everyone." The karate connection is obvious. Mac constantly styles himself as a karate master throughout most of the series, displaying bastardized karate moves whenever he's given the opportunity. At one point even doing karate across the stage when he's cast as the Nightman in Charlie's musical. He also spontaneously does karate when he's excited and he even incorporates it into his dancing.
The friendship link is less obvious, but it's there as well. In addition to being Charlie's first friend, Mac is also the character that links the four original members of the Gang together. He and Charlie were childhood friends, he's Dennis's roommate, and he's married to Kaitlin Olsen (the actress who plays Dee) in real life. Charlie and Mac are also on the same Chardee Macdennis team (the Thundermen) against Dennis and Dee, and Charlie refers to Mac as his best friend over Dennis.
There are also a number of even more subtle hints throughout the series linking Mac to the Dayman. Usually they are very easy to miss, as it happens through hidden imagery and double entendres. In the episode Mac's Banging the Waitress, for example, where the question of who Charlie's best friend really is is actually directly addressed, Mac dresses as Charlie while trying to bang the Waitress, who is in turn dressed as Dennis, a reverse parallel of Charlie becoming the Dayman in his songs..
This is seen again in the season nine episode Mac Day. Before the opening credits Mac is reading from the book of Genesis about the passage where God creates the sun. He ends his monologue by replacing the word "light" with his own name; "Let there be Mac." The Dayman is referred to as the "master of light" and the "champion of the sun." In this scene Mac likens himself to both the sun and light, and even the name of the episode Mac Day links him with the Dayman.
Conclusions:
Charlie is most often depicted as simple, and comparatively the least intelligent member of the Gang. However there have been a number of episodes (Mac Bangs Dennis's Mom, Charlie and Dee Find Love, and Charlie Work) where he shows himself to be hyper-competent and much smarter than anyone is aware of. Often times he seems almost willfully ignorant of the world around him. This likely started when he was very young, when he started abusing drugs and hiding himself from his own reality in order to deal with his molestation, but as an adult these memories resurface through his music and through the occasional violent outburst.
Imagine taking a long and meandering road trip from the Northeastern tip of America to the Southernmost point on the West Coast. You start in Maine and travel through all of New England, heading south along the coast, past the Mason-Dixon line, through Virginia and Washington D.C. all the way until you hit Florida. Then you travel North and West, through Texas and into Middle America. See the great plains of Nebraska and the Rocky Mountains on your way through Colorado. You end your trip with the Southwest, passing by the Grand Canyon through the Mojave Desert to finally wind up in Sunny California. Along the way you and any companions you've taken with you have all kinds of adventures. You laugh and cry, you meet all kinds of strangers and gain new experiences, you break down on the road a few times but you always move on all the richer for the experience.
Now imagine on the very last leg of this grand journey, you pick up a hitchhiker, say around Arizona or so. And imagine that this hitchhiker spends the trip complaining about how slow the driver is and asking every five minutes "are we there yet?"
Well that is how I feel when I hear fans of HBO's Game of Thrones complaining about George R.R. Martin's writing pace.
George R.R. Martin has contributed more to the creative field in the past five years than some artists do in their entire lifetime. He's writing a story with more layers and characters than almost any other fantasy series being published at the moment, all while simultaneously editing award winning anthologies and the Wild Cards series, publishing Ice and Fire related material, running a movie theater and an art studio, and fulfilling his duty to HBO and the fans.
Creativity isn't something that can be rushed. Yes artists get deadlines, but that's an issue for Martin's publishers to take up with him, not the fans. The only thing he owes us is a certain degree of artistic integrity, and it's to that regard that I would rather have The Winds of Winter late but good than early and mediocre.
The only mistake that Martin has made is that he told the Dumb and Dumber at HBO how the series is going to end. And yes, I hate the fact that the show is going to spoil the books. Aside from being a sub par adaptation that cannot stand on its own two legs, the show is now actually going to spoil some plot points from the books. Game of Thrones is popular enough that even if we don't watch it (which I wont) some major plot points are still going to be spoiled via social media.
But what's done is done and there's no use crying over spilled Arbor Gold. And one good aspect of the situation is that the show is now so far divorced from the source material that we really cannot be sure what's a spoiler and what's the invention of the writers at HBO.
