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Rage

First edition cover
Author	Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror
Publisher	Signet
Publication date	1977
Media type	Print (Paperback & Hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-451-07645-1 (first edition, paperback)
Followed by	The Long Walk

For the film sequel to Carrie, see The Rage: Carrie 2.

Rage (originally titled Getting It On) is the first novel by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Though he began writing it in 1966, before his first published novel, Carrie (1974), it wasn't published until 1977.

The narrator, Charlie Decker, a high school senior, details how he had long been fighting his growing rage against the authority figures which populate his world. He finally snapped and hit one of his teachers with a heavy wrench he had taken to carrying in his pocket; after much wrangling and discussion, the incident was dropped and he was allowed to return to school. His mental problems only worsened, and, as the story begins, during a meeting with the school principal, he snaps again. This time, he storms out of the meeting, goes to his locker and gets a gun he had taken from his father's desk. He sets the locker contents on fire, then proceeds to his classroom where he kills his math teacher Mrs. Underwood. The locker-fire sets off an alarm, and the school begins to be evacuated. Another teacher, Mr. Vance, enters the classroom to tell the kids to leave, and Charlie shoots him as well. The school is evacuated even more quickly and the police and media arrive on the scene.

This begins a long afternoon's discussion with his hostages/fellow students. Among many other things, Charlie says that he honestly does not know why he chose to do these things and claims that if he did know, he probably wouldn't do them. While toying with various authority figures who attempt to negotiate with him, he turns the class into a sort of therapy group, causing his schoolmates to semi-voluntarily tell embarrassing secrets about themselves and each other. Interspersed throughout are narrative flashbacks to Charlie's own unpleasant childhood and adolescence, particularly his horrid relationship with his father, an abusive alcoholic. Towards the end of the stand-off, Charlie is shot in the chest by a police marksman, but escapes death thanks to the locker padlock that he put in his breast pocket after starting the fire.

He finally comes to the realization that only one of the other students is really being held there by him and his gun: a seeming "big man on campus" named Ted Jones, who is harboring his own unpleasant secrets. The other students attack Jones, leaving him battered and catatonic, and file out of the school. When the police enter the classroom, the now-unarmed Charlie deliberately makes a wild "threatening" gesture and is shot three times. He survives and is committed to an insane asylum, where he finishes telling his tale to whomever he is telling it, saying it is time to turn out the light.

The novel's plot vaguely resembles actual events, to a degree that the author is no longer comfortable with the book in print for fear that it may inspire similar events ("[Rage is] now out of print, and a good thing.")^[1], as it had already been associated with two previous high school shootings:

• Michael Carneal, who shot three students on December 1, 1997 in West Paducah, Kentucky had a copy of Rage in his locker, and
• Barry Loukaitis, who killed two fellow students and his algebra teacher on February 2, 1996, in Moses Lake, Washington, even quoted directly from the book ("This sure beats algebra, doesn't it?") after shooting his teacher. [1]

Another high school shooting mirrored the book in a very similar fashion. Although he has stated that he did not read Rage until later,[2] in 1993, Scott Pennington held his classroom hostage after shooting his English teacher in the head and then shot a janitor who had come after hearing the gunshots. He held the classroom hostage asking similar questions as in the book. He finally surrendered to police and is sentenced to life in prison at Kentucky State Reformatory. Pennington had a meeting with the English teacher before the shooting due to her concern over his essays. It was said that his essays were very dark which prompted her to discuss his writings with the school board. Pennington later said that he did not dislike his English teacher but he only wanted to shoot two people, any two people in order to make him eligible for the death penalty.

When King decided to let Rage fall out of print in the United States, it was part of a compilation of Richard Bachman books called The Bachman Books. The other novels that appeared in that compilation (The Long Walk, Road Work, and The Running Man) are now published as separate books in the USA. The Bachman Books is still in print in the United Kingdom and other countries.

In a discursive keynote address King delivered to the Vermont Library Conference, he explored the complex sociological and cultural issues surrounding this novel-and its apparent link to school shootings-which he placed within the broader context of America's fixation on violence.

"The Carneal incident was enough for me. I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred."^[2] King went on to describe his complicated, nuanced view on this subject, which acknowledged the culpability that cultural or artistic products such as "Rage" play in influencing individuals, particularly troubled youths, while also declaring that artists and writers can not be denied the aesthetic opportunity to draw upon their own culture -- which is suffused with violence, according to King -- in their work.^[2]

He went on to describe his inspiration for stories such as "Rage," which drew heavily upon his own frustrations and pains as a high school student.^[2]

In an article on the ominous writings of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho for Entertainment Weekly, King said "Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing — including a short story called Cain Rose Up and the novel RAGE — would have raised red flags, and I'm certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them...." [3]

1. ^ King, Stephen: Blaze, Foreword, June 2007.
2. ^ ^{a b c} King, Stephen: "Stephen King's Keynote Address, Vermont Library Conference", VEMA Annual Meeting, May 26, 1999. Available On-Line at http://www.horrorking.com/interview7.html

• Cain Rose Up

• Stephen King's Keynote Address
• Character list and description of Rage