Carrie at 50

Fifty years after its publication as a novel, Carrie still manages to remind us of not only Stephen King’s importance as a novelist but also the value of reading the text and the film it inspired two years later as a commentary on midcentury American culture. Carrie has certainly inspired critics on the connection it shares with incidents of school bullying. But this article is more interested in its particular place in cultural contexts, as a book and film that echo the anxieties of its specific era. Vietnam, the nuclear age, its reaction (or nonreaction) to second-wave feminist challenges—these issues have been less discussed, or not at all.