buck

Sanding down her unlikeability also diminishes one of my favorite things about the story, which is the push and pull between her mother and her peers. Each party hurts her, pushing her towards the other, while exerting influence on her that makes her all the more intolerable to the other. Like, her mother's abuse makes her want to run away from Margaret and towards her classmates even though they torture her, but her mother's judgmental fundamentalist influence makes her peers hate her more. Her peers' abuse makes her want to retreat to her mother, but their secular, sexual, worldly influence makes Margaret hate her more. It's such a compelling dynamic where she's pulled in opposite directions, then hit for coming closer.

I swear he’s human he’s just going through something

CARRIE