Comparing Cinderella And Stephen King's Cinderella

Cinderella is best known as the children’s Disney movie. It is the one with the glass slipper, the charming prince, the evil stepmother, and the magic. It is a fairy tale where they all lived “happily ever after,” like most fairy tales do end. However, not all fairy tales end the way most children’s books and movies seem to. This fairy tale ends with a dead Prince Charming, a dead murderous stepmother, the ball ablaze in the background of a disaster, and the main character found dead in the street. This fairy tale is Carrie by the novelist Stephen King. Carrie, in certain aspects, is similar to Cinderella in the sense that she struggles with many of the same things, such as her abusive and neglectful mother, very much like Cinderella’s abusive

Tommy was Carrie’s “Prince Charming”, even taking her to the prom in a homemade dress, yet another similarity to Cinderella, though Cinderella’s dress was made with a bit of magic, unlike Carrie’s. When she saw Tommy, the sorrow and troubles she had seemed to disappear into nothing and the reader, for only a moment, might have forgotten who Carrie truly was. On the night of prom, Carrie was dumbfounded at him, at the idea that he actually showed up to her house, rather than standing her up like she expected he would“...it was him, Tommy… and even under the street light he was handsome and alive and almost… crackling,”

Though the magic in Carrie was dark and, in truth, was not real magic at all, but, rather, it was simply her telekinetic abilities. However, in a sense, it can be viewed as the “magic” of the book, because it was Carrie’s telekinesis that allowed her to get the revenge she desired on those who had caused her so much pain and it was the thing that allowed her and everyone else to truly see who she was. Cinderella used magic to enact revenge on Drizella, Anastasia, and Lady Tremaine in a way as well. She allowed herself to prove to the Grand Duke that she was, in fact, the maiden that the Prince was so desperate to find. Magic was the key to Cinderella’s story, much as it was the key to Carrie’s.

Though there are still major differences in the two stories, Carrie and Cinderella, the premise was the similar and there was plenty of connections that could be found throughout the novel, Carrie, and the movie, Cinderella. They shared a mother figure who was abusive, peers who unabatingly bullied them, a “Prince Charming”, and just a touch of magic. Though Carrie herself did not exactly get a “happily ever after” herself, she still succeeded in enacting revenge and taking away everyone else’s “happily ever after”, and in Carrie’s mind, perhaps that was