Carrie plays dual roles in the novel. In the main narrative (much of which unfolds through Carrie’s perspective), Carrie is the battered and lonely girl who suffers abuse and isolation in all facets of her life: “At sixteen, the elusive stamp of hurt was already marked clearly in her eyes” (8). Her second role in the novel is as an object of study—the cause of a calamity and more of a symbol than a person. The reader’s foreknowledge of Carrie’s destructive rampage lends tension to Carrie’s lived experiences, weighting her every scene with a sense of inevitability. Her second role, however, is strictly in service of her first: The horror of Carrie’s eventual mass murder is secondary to the depiction of Carrie’s tormented humanity.

There is no love in Carrie’s life. She is the result of marital rape and born to a mother who immediately wants to kill her. Her mother’s fundamentalist religious practices frighten her and cut her off from outside knowledge to the point that at 16 she doesn’t know what menstruation is. She doesn’t know how to interact with her peers, either. Chris Hargensen mentions that she “runs around saying everyone but her and her gilt-edged momma are going to hell” (92).