Rage (1977)

Rage is one of my favorite stories of all time. It is one that I’ve read quite a few times and have sitting on my bookshelf. It is truly scary how it became a reality. When I read this as a high school student, it actually hit close to home for me when I’m sure that wasn’t the original intention. I remember that some people even blamed this story for Columbine. I really don’t find that to be fair. I will re-read Rage and come back to add more details when it’s fresh in my mind. I will say that it is a story that I have always found to be both terrifying and sad and those emotions were what always sucked me into this story. As you’ll notice, all the Stephen King stories that I have read pre-blog were not what would be considered as horror. Yet, each of the stories that I have read seemed so terrifying to me in real ways. Rage definitely falls under that umbrella of scary in a non-horror way. That is what attracted me to reading other Stephen King stories. I’m excited to come back and re-read Rage, but this story does become a little scarier to read each year.

Before re-read: I'll keep this short since I've already given a mini introduction. It has been several years since I've read Rage so I'm excited to read it again. I'm not excited to be lugging around my physical copy of it, though, but I'm not going to buy digital copies of any of the books that I already own. I read Rage many years ago with the perspective of being a high school student (King began writing this when he, himself, was in high school) but this will be my first time reading it with the perspective of someone who works at a high school. I'm looking forward to having a new perspective to the book as well as refreshing my memory. Here we go!

After re-read: This was probably the third or fourth time reading this one and it is good every time. It isn't technically the best writing-wise, but it's a great story with fun characters. You can definitely tell that King wrote this book early on (even though it wasn't published until years later) because of the writing style. When reading Carrie and Salem's Lot you can see in the writing that they were his earlier stories and that he hadn't quite developed into a ~great~ writer (but still obviously a great writer haha) and then with The Shining his work seems to take a turn for the best (is that a saying?). Then when reading Rage after reading The Shining, there is a digression in quality, however, it is still a great story. Also, if you didn't know, this is one of his stories that is written under a pseudonym: Richard Bachman. I was able to read Rage so quickly because, luckily for me, it is a short story and not a full novel. Four of King's short stories under Bachman are all put together in something called The Bachman Books. The Bachman Books were my introduction to Stephen King, as I've mentioned before. If you are wanting to start reading King I would suggest maybe starting here, as I did. The short stories are so fun and are quick and easy reads. 

I didn't take too many notes while reading Rage since it is so short but let's discuss them, anyway. A lot of my notes are about how Rage and Carrie have a lot of similarities. Later on in the book I had read a line in Rage that is also in Carrie (I am still reading Carrie at work and had literally just read that part in Carrie and then read it again in Rage). The first similarity, besides that they are both about high schoolers, is that King capitalizes clique groups or characteristics such as "Popular." Another similarity between the two is that in both books there is graffiti that says "eat shit." I feel like wherever King went to high school everyone was writing that on the desks or something where that is just his go-to graffiti. There was a mention in the book about an author named Donald Westlake who wrote under the pseudonym named Richard Stark which is obviously a nod to himself which was sneaky when no one knew that Stephen King was the true author of this book. I also noticed that the smartest girl in school was named Carol Granger which, of course, reminded me of Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. My final note is that this book was originally called "Getting it On" which I thought was a much better name than "Rage" (you'd know why if you read it). However, after reading it I think that Rage fits it better because Getting it On is more directly related to the main character, Charlie. But I think Rage fits all of the characters and shows everyone's rage because in the end it wasn't only Charlie that was "getting it on." 

Also.....do I think Ted is the only sane one because I'm an adult now? Let me know if you've read this and what your thoughts on Ted are cause I'm feeling a bit perplexed. 

Obviously I love this one. It's been a favorite of mine for many years. It was nice to revisit it, as I do often. Next up is "Night Shift" so let's go!