It’s
now more than half a century since Stephen King shattered the literary world
with his first published novel Carrie. At this point I don’t think
there’s a person alive who doesn’t know the story of Carrie even if they’ve
never seen anything related to it or read the book. The story of a loner,
teenage girl, the victim of bullying by her fellow students when she
experiences her first period and has no idea what it is. This leads to her
learning of her telekinetic powers which are known to no one. A female student,
feeling guilty, arranges for her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom. One of
the students who bullied her decides to enact a personal humiliation on her by
having her named prom queen. Then when she gets on stage she is covered with
pig’s blood. In an act of sorrow and vengeance, the blood soaked Carrie decides
to inflict a massacre of her fellow students before going home, killing her
fundamentalist mother and eventually dying.
We’ve
seen DePalma’s groundbreaking original film. We’ve seen countless, lesser
remakes. There was a musical which failed and eventually made it to Broadway:
“Carrie after the prom” has become a pop culture point that everyone knows.
That’s why it may come as a shock to those if I were to tell you that not one
of these adaptations has ever accurately retold Carrie. And that’s
because King’s first published novel broke more rules then you know.
In
King’s novel, we see everything that happens in DePalma’s film and remakes –
but that’s only roughly half the novel’s length. Much of the rest of the story
is told through excerpts of various stories told perhaps years after the
massacre: there are Congressional hearings, various non-fiction stories written
afterwards, interviews with survivors, excerpts of officials writing guilty
letters and in the case of Susan Snell – the woman who convinces her boyfriend
to take Carrie to the prom, which leads to her being vilified by the masses as
a scapegoat – a self-titled book in which she tries to give her account of
events. As King himself acknowledged as
early as Danse Macabre he knew that his novel as was couldn’t be
faithfully adapted the screen and that DePalma’s decision to make the movie he
had was the only one possible. And considering that it was the box office
success of the movie even more than his original novel that helped him get his
initial success, he can afford to be magnanimous.
Still
in all the years since the original film came out, no one has ever tried to
retell Carrie the book on film or TV. Which is right, because in that
form it may be unfilmable. The only way to properly to pay tribute to it is to
retell in another book. And that is what Tiffany Jackson has done –
magnificently – in her YA novel The Weight of Blood.
Now
at no point in the book does she directly allude to King (though there are some
Easter eggs that King fans will locate and love) and that’s actually fine by me.
Writers have been retelling the stories of Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald
in YA settings perhaps in order not to scare their intended audiences off. And
people keep retelling King’s novels in updated films and TV shows to a modern
setting every few years: recent films have tried to put Carrie in
the 21st century. Why not do so
with the original novel?
The
story is retold in much the same format: we see the action in the present, police
interviews after the fact, a tell-all book has been written years later. And in
keeping with today’s setting the impetus for the book comes from a true crime
podcast called simply “Maddy Did It”, set eight years after the original events
which took place in 2014. (King’s original novel, for the record, was set in
the not too distant future: the events are listed as happening in the mid-1980s
and the books take place in 1987-88.)
The
more substantial changes – the ones that are more likely than most to draw
furor from purists – are how Jackson chooses to tell it. Her main character is
Madison Washington who like Carrie White is someone who has been easily bullied
at her high school her whole life. Carrie was raised by a fundamentalist mother
who had kept her so isolated from the world she had no idea what a tampon was;
Maddy is raised by a fundamentalist father who doesn’t allow his home to have
cell phones, internet or cable. Their only entertainment is through VHS
recordings of movies that are no later than the 1950s and TV shows no later
than the 1960s. Under normal circumstances I would approve of this upbringing –
but the fact that Maddie has no idea of how much the world has changed since
then is a big, red flag particularly because it is that model of a woman that
is the only kind her father approves of.
Now
we reach the bigger twist. As with Carrie, the town Maddie lives in is a
very small one with only 1100 people – but it’s not in liberal New England but
rather very rural Georgia. And not the kind near Atlanta, this is a town where
even the integrated parts are basically segregated.
That
leads us as to how Maddie’s powers become public knowledge. The first lines
everyone seems to say in the aftermath is “It all started with the rain.” And
Maddie seems to be terrified of even a chance of it when she goes outside on
May 1st 2014. Then she gets soaked and she has no chance to fix her
hair in gym. She goes to class – and the bullying begins when everyone thinks
she has an Afro.
You
see Maddie Washington’s secret is one that is the reason her father really
loathes her. She’s biracial and has been passing as white for her whole life.
The rain has revealed her deepest secrets and it makes the bullying she endures
even worse that be told to ‘plug it up’. This is when the first episode of
telekinesis takes place in King’s book. It is far more obvious to everyone
something has happened but it is written off because this is the 21st
century. Everyone in the classroom dismisses what happens next as an earthquake
and the bureaucracy’s more upset that the teacher can’t explain why her
classroom was wrecked. In the original novel the bureaucracy is more
sympathetic to what happens to Carrie. In The Weight Of Blood, the
school sends Maddie home and its only after the moment of bullying goes viral
that the school is forced to act.,
The
great thing about The Weight of Blood is because it is 1) a reimagining
of an iconic novel and 2) tells you in the first pages exactly what is going to
happen and how, is that it is basically immune to spoilers. Jackson is aware of
this fact and because of this she can develop the source material to the modern
era and be both faithful to it and add wrinkles. With that in mind, let me give
a refresher course as to who’s who.
Poppa
Washington is like Margaret White deeply fundamentalist who learned his
upbringing from his mother who was clearly as big a monster as Margret White
was to her daughter. (In a nod to the original novel, we know little about her
except she’s originally from New England and like Margaret White, there’s a
possibility the father has supernatural powers in his family.) Wendy Quinn, a
graduating senior, is the counterpart of Susan Snell, who spent much of middle
school bullying Maddie but now wants to smooth things over by arranging for her
to go to the prom. Her boyfriend Kendrick Scott is modeled on Susan’s boyfriend
Tommy Ross, in that he doesn’t want to do it originally but finds himself
charmed by Maddie. The biggest difference is Kendrick is African-American but
has gone out of his way to associate more with the white students then the
African-Americans. Jules Marshall, the school bully who goes out of her way to
make Maddie’s life miserable – and then doubles down on it – is the model of
Chris and she and Wendy are best friends like Chris and Susan are. The two of
them split when Wendy makes her plans to smooth things over but Jules is far
more toxic and narcissistic than Chris was.
Hanging
overall of this is the shadow of race, which in 2014 Georgia is very prominent.
It’s clear that Springville is a ‘sundown’ town and has never let it go with
the siren from the nuclear power plant the same one that used in the 1960s to
give permission for white supremacy. The racial issues are far deeper in the
school, and the town even has a segregated prom, a white one in the country
club and ‘an all-together’ prom that’s mostly for African-American students.
This has been going on for decades and it is Maddie’s exposure to it that
causes Wendy to try and paper things over by integrating the prom. This doesn’t
make either the white or the African-American students happy.
Blood also makes clear of the
pressures of parents across the board and while Maddie has the worst one, all
of them are struggle. The Scott family has focused in entire attention on
Kendrick, making sure his football regimen keeps him up and out and making his
own path. Mr. Scott has clearly focused everything on his son, to the point he
doesn’t feel he has any choices in life. He’s happy she’s dating a white girl
because in his mind it’ll get him further. The Marshall family is the richest
in town and they don’t seem bothered by Jules’ horrific actions and only object
when the punishment is that severe. Wendy’s position is the most heartbreaking
because her parents are struggling to get by and not long before the actions of
the novel take place, he’s lost his job in the town. There’s a sense that Wendy
has focused all of her attention on Kendrick because her family has basically
ignored her and doesn’t have money to help her future. The irony is that she is
framed in the book as being selfish even though she needs to survive.
Now
I’d like to move one of the themes that King has about his first novel. He
makes it clear that he never personally held Carrie responsible for her actions
that she was forced into by a series of events. This is clear for Maddy
Washington but Jackson is telling a more interesting – and likely satirical –
story about racial politics in America.
This
is perhaps most clearly illustrated in a character that doesn’t have a
counterpart in King’s novel: Kendrick’s sister, Kali. Kali is essentially a
militant African-American and makes it very clear she holds everybody white and
black to a ridiculous high standard. This is true even in her own family:
she goes out of her way to taunt her father with what she considers his
pacificism in racial aggression and her brother by his decision to keep quiet
and try to survive rather than be more militant. But tellingly she has no real
sympathy for Maddie either; Maddie has been bullied her entire life – as badly
or possibly worse than anyone else in Springville. The moment she learns the
horrible things happening to Maddie what she cares about is what this represents
to her not Maddie. Indeed when Kendrick starts dating her she says
Maddie ‘chose to be white’ not knowing a single thing about her life story. (To
be fair, neither does anyone else.) By
this point Kendrick, who has been making an effort to know Maddie, calls her out:
“Kali,
be honest: if you had known she was Black, would you have accepted her, tried
to be her friend, or even talked to her?”
Kail
raised an eyebrow. “I would’ve accepted her if she acknowledged her light-skin
privilege.”
“Privilege?
They threw pencils in her hair? How that’s a win?”
“You
don’t get it!” she snapped. “Maddy wasn’t born with the stacks up against her.
She’ll get things I never get, let into rooms, I couldn’t even dream of all
because of the way she looks.”
“So
she should be left defenseless? You’re the one always saying we need to support
each other…I’m not the one treating her different because she’s light-skinned.
You are!”
Kali,
it’s worth noting, manages to survive the entire experience but there’s no sign
at any point in the future she seems the least bit affected by it the same way
the rest of the survivors have. This is true even in the aftermath of the prom
– which she doesn’t attend and only learns about while the chaos is unfolding.
She is outside the event protesting with the local Black Student Union. (In a
great satiric joke, there are only ten students protesting the prom and while
its clearly there because of media attention, only two local affiliates show up
not even bothering with a live feed.) When the horrors begin to unfold, she
cares very little for the white or black students who end up being killed in
the aftermath: she only cares about her family – and tellingly, blaming Wendy
who she holds responsible for everything that happens.
Left
out of that is a telling reference that Kali goes out of her way to make sure
that the footage of Jules’s actions gets to the college of her choice, playing
a direct role in what happens. She understand that her father has pressured
them but she can only see that through her own lens:
“Their
fathers expectations were a weight he silently carried. A weight that made him
choose survival over culture. And still she loved him through all his blind,
ignorant transgressions. Could she make that same peace with a girl pretending
to be white?”
We
never learn what Kali thinks about what happens to Springville as a result of
the horrors that unfold – she’s never interviewed in the podcast, even though
she’s alive. But you do get a feeling she what she thinks near the end.
This
brings me to a darker, more interesting subtext of the novel. The events of
Springville have been blamed on looting and rioting, despite the results of the
commission and the witness testimony. The podcast is attempting to get to the
truth of what happened and is titled Maddy Did It. The irony is in a
direct sense of things Maddie is responsible for everything that happens
– but she gets away with it because of liberal guilt.
Now
I need to give something away. Maddie Washington’s fate is unknown and she’s
presumed dead, unlike in Carrie where she’s definitely dead. In the
novel we get a clearer picture but how and why I will leave unsaid. Instead I
need to point out that even in the immediate aftermath of the carnage that
happens a few people want Maddie to get away. In the case of Kali, she only
accepts Maddie as black once she sees her as a victim of racism – and you
wonder given her loathing of her home town she has a bit of the chickens coming
home roost mentality. When Wendy finds out just enough of Maddie’s life to feel
sympathy for her – though nothing near the whole picture – she does so because
of her own guilt, which is basically put on her by Kali. By the end of the
podcast one of the podcasters – an anthropologist from Sydney – choosing to
argue that Maddie is not responsible but society is:
“What
you unconsciously left out is how societal racism played a large role in the
incident. Which, as a white man, would be rather typical. Even if we took race
off the table, identity would still be in play. Because if she had been who she
was meant to be from the start…in fact if everyone involved was allowed to be
their true authentic selves without fear of recourse or ridicule, none of this
would have ever happened.”
This
is the kind of discussion that we expect from academic circles, particularly
progressive ones One of the podcasters
then asks the natural question:
“…did
Maddy’s punishment truly fit the crime? Was it fair that other victims, both
black and white, were caught in the crossfire?
“And
I would counter if racism is ever truly fair? There are always consequences
seen and unseen. I gather its one of the reasons the state worked so hard to
brush this under the rug. Because if people knew revenge of this magnitude
was even a remote possibility, there would be far less incidents of racial
injustice in the world.”
This
is very much the attitude of extremists on both sides: the ends justifying the
means. This would be cold considering the reader has seen the carnage Maddie
inflicts firsthand; that a person who’s actually talked to the survivors who
have shared their traumas in graphic, horrible detail and can still say that with a straight
face, shows the kind of coldness of so many academics. I can just hear so many
of these people who shared their trauma with this podcast hearing this final
episode and saying: “That bitch doesn’t get it.”
It's
possible that The Weight of Blood is referring to in a horror setting
what a later YA novel I analyzed in January Running Mates did in a more
satirical one. In this case everyone in the novel, in the present and the
future, only sees in Maddy through their own world view. The only person in
either timeline who truly cares for Maddy is a teacher named Mrs. Morgan, who
is horrified by what happens to her and is just as upset with the plans to
include her in the prom. She is the only person who cares about the students
rather than society and she’s also the only one who goes out of her way to help
Maddy. After everything that happens she still tries to help her and Maddy ends
up killing her without even noticing it.
The
novel also has so many subtexts open to interpretation. Maddy’s father reveals
in their final confrontation (again everyone who remembers Carrie knows
this is canon) that he spent his life trying to protect her from the horrors of
the world. We’ve already seen how utterly grotesque, abusive and backwards that
style of parenting is and how it’s made Maddie who she is. But it’s worth
noting that the moment she learns the true about the real world, it becomes
just as overwhelming and horrific to her – and is almost certainly a major
factor in what happens immediately after the prom.
Then
there’s the very stark argument made directly by one of the podcasters and
indirectly by Kali throughout the book. Again much of this looks at the world
in a purely binary lens that sadly exists in academia and so much of
contemporary protesting. The argument Jackson has some of her characters mak is
that the racial divide in our country is so great that there is no
reconciliation that is possibility and the only ‘rational’ response is to burn
it all down.
Perhaps
that why I do see Maddy as a victim, I can’t truly see her as an innocent
bystander either. Like Carrie White she may not have meant to create a massacre
but once she got started she was willing to leave a path of destruction in her
wake that killed hundreds of people, burned down much of the town and could
very well have led to a nuclear disaster. What happened to Carrie White was
terrible but it doesn’t make her innocent in the events that happened. Adding
the burdens of racism to the equation doesn’t do the same for Maddy Washington
– and I’m not entirely sure she shouldn’t be punished for it. At the very least
she deserves a day in court like anyone else and even if race were a factor in
her conviction, I’m not sure I would have minded if it meant the world being
safe from her wrath.
And
it’s worth noting when the action takes place: May of 2014. That is
while we’re still in the Obama Presidency and just a year before Donald Trump
arrives on the political scene. The podcast takes place eight years later,
during the Biden administration and after eight solid years of protests against
racial injustice at every level that have, by any real standard, accomplished
nothing except move much of the country – particularly in the regions of
America like Springville – further away from conciliation. No one has learned
anything but Springville except what they want to learn/ Perhaps that the real
reason the final episode is titled “There are No Winners Here.”
It's
a measure of any great book that you come away asking these kinds of questions
at the end. You may feel, like the podcaster and professor, that the town of
Springville suffered the consequences of American racism that still need to be
paid out. You might also come away, like so many of the survivors, with the
feeling that they even given their responsibility, the punishment far exceeded
the crime. I have my conclusion; readers may draw their own and that will
certainly differ upon their age, race, or gender.
Perhaps
I should let King himself have the last word. At the end of Thinner which
he wrote under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, one of the last lines is
“Everybody pays, even for the stuff they didn’t do.” Maybe that’s the clearest
way you know this novel hails the King: that’s a sentiment that, one way or
another, everyone who survives The Weight of Blood might end up
considering whether or not they agree with it.
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