Carrie Part 2, Section 10 Summary & Analysis

Summary: Part 2, Section 10

“It was 11:20 p.m. when Christine Hargensen and Billy Nolan got back to The Cavalier.”

Billy rips Chris’ shirt and slaps her when she protests. She tells him it’s over, and they fight and trade insults. Billy reveals his base nature and violent feelings toward Chris, and they descend “into a red, thrashing unconsciousness.” Chris wakes up at 1:20 a.m. as Jackie Talbot pounds on the door. The town is burning and Jackie realizes that their errand to Henty’s farm was about Carrie. He panics about his fingerprints on the buckets, and Billy tells him to go home. Chris wonders aloud what to do about Carrie, and Billy slaps her again. He tells her that they will go to town and watch the fires, then go home and tell their parents they were out drinking.

Chris and Billy get into Billy’s car and turn on the headlights. Chris screams as she sees Carrie standing in the light beams, tottering toward them. Billy floors it in Carrie’s direction and the car spins and slams into the wall of The Cavalier. Gas spills from the busted tank and ignites. Carrie drags herself across the parking lot, thinking how wrong it all went, and how much she hurts, and asking her mother what she should do.

After Sue leaves Sheriff Doyle, she stares at the burning sky and knows that Tommy is dead and that Carrie had something to do with it. With a flash, she realizes that Carrie has gone home to kill her mother, and when Sue gets to their house she sees the trail of Carrie’s blood. In a daze, she follows Carrie’s trail three miles to The Cavalier, and along the way seems to hear Carrie’s thoughts. Carrie is exhausted but keeps going because her mother wanted her to be the angel’s fiery sword.

An excerpt from The Shadow Exploded ponders the moral implications of isolating the TK gene. Even if it were possible to test for the gene in children, there is no way to remove it. The only way to erase the potential for mass destruction is to kill the person with the power to wreak it.

Sue sees Carrie in the parking lot of The Cavalier and thinks she is dead. When she observes that Carrie’s presence still waxes and wanes in her mind, she realizes Carrie is unconscious. It looks as if Carrie had been trying to turn over onto her back when she passed out, and Sue notes the irony that she can start fires but cannot complete this simple movement. Carrie moans and speaks to Sue with her mind, and, surprisingly, Sue is able to respond the same way. Carrie thinks of all the dirty tricks played on her and wonders if Sue was part of them. Sue tells Carrie to look inside Sue’s mind. Carrie sees Sue’s emotions, including her love for Tommy, her hatred for Miss Desjardin, and her self-hatred, but Carrie sees no hatred for her personally.

Sue hears Carrie wince in pain and cry for her mother. She tries to pull back so Carrie can die in private. With her mind, she yells at Carrie to let her go, and for a moment she sees a flame disappear down a long, black tunnel and realizes she is feeling Carrie die. Carrie’s last thought is an apology to her mother. Sue runs away from the horror of it all, but when she becomes aware that something is happening to her, she stops in the middle of a field. She lets loose a howling scream as she feels blood flow down her thighs.

Analysis: Part 2, Section 10

This section begins with the final, and most violent, fight between Chris and Billy, setting the stage for escalating violence. While it is not clear if The Cavalier is the same roadhouse that Margaret’s parents ran or the one where Ralph got drunk, it certainly fits in with Margaret’s description of a place tied to whiskey and sex, and in this case, destruction. It is also not clear whether the “red, thrashing unconsciousness” that they descend into involves intercourse, but Chris and Billy appear to have reached a level of détente. Such a scene would certainly validate Margaret’s thoughts about the evil nature of roadhouses. Chris and Billy are just far enough from town and so out of it that they have no clue about the repercussions of their actions. Even in the wake of the shocking news from Jackie, Billy is able to maintain enough focus to craft a plan for a cover story, but Chris remains focused on retribution for Carrie. Billy and Chris’ fiery death in his car is apropos as it is the same vehicle that was used to bring the pig’s blood that covered Carrie during prom.

Margaret spends her life judging herself and others harshly, and her desire for Carrie to do likewise has had an immeasurable impact on her daughter’s character. Margaret’s circle is small, so the only havoc that she can wreak is upon herself and her daughter. She wishes for Carrie to be an avenging angel, like the biblical archangel Michael, who yields a fiery sword and holds the scales of justice on Judgment Day. In the end, Carrie wreaks more destruction than her mother could ever have imagined, but she is not as harsh of a judge as her mother after all. In her final moments, Carrie is weak and in pain, and her thoughts do not dwell on her anger but on her mother, the most powerful force in her life. As she dies, Carrie does not merely cry out for her mother, she apologizes to her. Though it is not clear if Carrie is apologizing for killing her mother or for disappointing her, the gesture reveals Carrie to be a child who craves her mother’s comfort and acceptance. Perhaps this was the only thing Carrie needed all along.

When Carrie and Sue communicate telepathically, they are at the peak of their abilities to empathize with one another, and the mode of communication enhances those abilities. Whatever Sue’s perceptions of death are up to this point, she has a concrete idea of it when she feels the life leave Carrie’s body, and she does not welcome this insight. When Sue urges Carrie to let her go, she is less motivated by deference to Carrie’s privacy than by her own desire to avoid the horror of experiencing death with her. It is unclear whether Carrie cannot let go of Sue in her final moments or if she simply needs someone to be with her, but in witnessing Carrie’s death, Sue is able to see that even though their lives were so different, they both craved acceptance from their peers. When Sue realizes later that a potential life is leaving her own body through either her menstrual cycle or a miscarriage, she finally lets her emotions flow in one howling scream.

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