'carrie' - the ending

[leviathan]

hi all,

i just finished reading carrie and throughly enjoyed it. i am familiar with the movie version which of course is vastly different...

could anyone shed some light on the vast last paragraph or 'segment' as it were? the letter from amelia jenks (name?) ???

i could see no correlation between the characters that had been in the book throughout... unless its a subtle reference that i missed.

any thoughts?

[HoopyFrood]

It seems to me (just looking at the passage at the moment, as it's been quite some time since I read Carrie!) that really it's just giving a 'cliffhanger' type ending. Although the incident with Carrie has come to a close, there are still others with the same powers, as shown by the small child moving the marbles around in the letter. Also, it creates a nice contradiction to the final lines before it: "We find no reason to believe that a recurrence is possible, or even likely..."
Not likely to recur, you say? Oh, re-he-he-eally...well, how about this small child who seems to be displaying similar powers?

So, in all, I think it's just one of those types of ending that say "You think everything is back to normal, and it's all over now...but maybe it's not..."

[j. d. worthington]

That's pretty much it, Hoops... though I might take it a tiny bit farther, and say that it may indicate an evolutionary "jump" taking place... in which case, this is the new human being we're looking at... and what happened in Carrie's little town is only a microcosm of what the world in general is about to face....

[steve12553]

Reminds ya of the last page or so of The Stand. Lays the ground work for a sequel that's best not written.

[Moraven]

King's just trying to make us think about the world after the book. Which is cool, i think. Makes the world of Carrie feel a bit bigger.

In other news: loved that book.