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Rage First Edition Front Cover
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Rage by Richard Bachman (Stephen King) - First
edition points of issue.
Year Published:
1977
ISBN:
0451076451
Publisher: Signet
Pages: 211
Price:
$1.50
Copyright
page: Stated "First Printing, September 1997" and has
a number line 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
First Edition Total
Publication: Unknown
First Edition
Points of Issue: True first edition was published in
paperback only.
Dedication: For Susan
Artz and WGT
Size: 4.2"
x 7"
Bound:
Paperback
Description: Stephen
King's first published novel under the pseudonym Richard
Bachman. King had this book pulled from circulation after
the Columbine High School shootings. Originally this story was called Getting It
On
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 proceeded to get worse, and, as the actual story
begins, during a meeting with the school principal, he snaps
again when the principal's disrespectful attitude has Charlie
being transferred to a different school. This time, he storms
out of the meeting, goes to his locker and gets a gun he had
previously 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, comes into 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 has chosen to do these things and claims that if he did
know, he probably wouldn't be doing them. While toying with the
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" attack and is shot three times. He survives
and is committed to an insane asylum; finished telling his tale
to whomever he is telling it to as evident by the aftermath of
his classmates' lives, he concludes by saying it is time to
turn out the light.
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