Rage

Rage by Stephen King as Richard Bachman
Signet Books - September 13, 1977
211 pages

Charlie Decker is called to meet with his principal after attacking his chemistry teacher with a wrench. His anger with the principal causes him to let out a string of insulting remarks, resulting in his expulsion. Once he's expelled, he goes to his locker, burns all of the things he no longer needs, destroys his health book, and takes a pistol from his locker, as well as a few bullets. He walks back into class, and a single gunshot kills his algebra teacher and turns his senior class into hostages.

This novel is extremely hard to come by today in bookstores; it fell out of print in the United States and was taken out of recent editions of The Bachman Books after it was attributed to multiple high school shootings. I got a copy from the library as part of an old copy of The Bachman Books. Rage was an incredibly fast read, and not just becaus it was short. I read the whole book in an hour and a half. I didn't sympathize with Charlie, so I wasn't inspired to shoot up my school, but instead I feel like he was falling into the dark chasm of psychological disorder. The characters, while they had extremely similar names that I often confused, developed personalities on their own in the four-hour standoff that Charlie keeps them. Rage is not your average story of a kid who's pushed too far and opens fire; instead it's the story of all twenty-five high school seniors who had algebra second period that day.

Grade: A-