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Carrie White is the eponymous character of the novel and the protagonist. Carrie’s whole world is in the small town where she was born, and she shuffles between a lonely home with her abusive mother and a school teeming with people who dislike her. Her peers at Ewen High School frequently mock Carrie for both her perceived physical ugliness and her lack of knowledge on topics like menstruation. These bouts of bullying affect Carrie so much that she becomes suspicious of anyone who tries to give her advice. Carrie spends her time at home in prayer, either alone or with her mother, or with her sewing machine. School offers her the occasional glimpse of a different life via the pages of a magazine, but Carrie has such limited communication with other people that she is both a prisoner in her own home and a prisoner of her mother’s limited world view.

The onset of Carrie’s menstrual cycle is the first event to free Carrie from the prison of her own mind, unlocking the telekinesis (TK) powers that she will come to rely on throughout the story. Once Carrie realizes that her mother has been keeping vital information from her, even about her own menstruation, she is able to see her mother as fallible. Carrie thinks she knows her peers, and initially labels all of them as tormentors just as they label her, but eventually she is able to see some of them as fellow humans and not her enemies.

As the story progresses, Carrie gains more powers and insights. She is able to understand the nuances of people like Tommy, Miss Desjardin, and Sue. Unfortunately, she progresses rapidly from lifting household objects to engineering a plan to start a fire that no one can extinguish, and her powers overtake the rational outlook that she has worked so hard to gain, ultimately resulting in her own destruction. Although Carrie thirsted for power over her restrictive circumstances throughout the book, at her death, she is portrayed as a teenaged girl who still craves love and attention from her mother.

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