I’ve often heard it described as a cathartic revenge story, so when I read the book I was surprised at how dark her character actually is. She’s a tragic figure but it portrays her as bitter and misanthropic from the start, and she has frequent hate-filled thoughts about hurting her classmates and people in general, almost like a budding school shooter. She ends up burning her classmates alive over a prank only two of them pulled, then mass murders the whole town, even people who never met her, and it’s also much clearer in the book that she’s fully aware of what she’s doing and is enjoying it, so she actually seems quite evil by the end. The book portrays her revenge as horrifying and focuses on the trauma of the survivors, and it also makes a point of Sue Snell saying that everyone involved were just kids, even the bullies, so it doesn’t seem to think even they deserved to be murdered for what they did.
I think a lot of King’s books are about analyzing the nature of evil and how it’s created, so I think the book is trying to explain but not excuse her actions. The abuse she suffered is the reason she turned out the way she did, but it still doesn’t justify mass murder. I think she’s kind of like the mass killers that we see in real life- she had a hard life but she’s still responsible for her actions. I don’t think it’s meant to be cathartic, but a warning about the effects of abuse and how it can create a monster.
by FireFlareon