This quote from the Carrie book is actually terrifying.
It explains how a high school bully transforms into an adult who wears the veneer of respectability while continuing to be hateful and take their rage out on others.
In Stephen King’s Carrie, Sue Snell tries to persuade Tommy Ross to take Carrie White to the senior prom. Carrie is 16, bullied at school and abused at home by a mother whose religious obsession leaves her with little refuge.
During that conversation, King’s novel offers a bleak account of what growing older can do to cruelty: “People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”
The passage suggests that intelligence can give someone more convincing excuses for hurting others. An adult can learn to defend the same behavior that made them a bully as a teenager. The harm continues beneath an explanation that sounds reasonable.
Published in 1974, Carrie was King’s first novel. Its teenage protagonist has telekinetic powers, and the abuse she endures at school and at home builds toward a violent outburst.
