The Exorcist

In the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C., an actress named Chris MacNeil rents a house with her 11-year-old daughter Regan. Their middle-aged Swiss housekeepers, a married couple named Willie and Karl, sleep in a room in the house. One evening, just after midnight, Chris hears tapping sounds while reading her script. She investigates and, as she approaches Regan’s bedroom, the sounds become louder and faster but stop when she enters her daughter’s room. Regan is asleep. Chris blames rats in the attic and wonders whether Regan is ill. Chris is in Georgetown to shoot the remaining scenes of a lackluster musical comedy; only a week of production remains. 

Chris wakes from a nightmare, and prepares to go to work. While Willie makes breakfast, Regan sneaks down and puts a rose on Chris’s plate, something she does every morning. Chris remembers her dead son Jamie, who died at age three back when Chris was “very young and an unknown chorus girl on Broadway” (15). Shaking off the memory, she tells Karl about the rats. He does not believe her, but agrees to buy traps nevertheless. Karl and Willie have worked for Chris for six years but she still finds Karl’s personality to be a mystery.

Chris arrives on the busy set and discusses the script with the British director, Burke Dennings. When Burke swears, Chris’s attention darts to a nearby Jesuit priest—she worries that he overheard. The priest is smiling after hearing the coarse language—but there is “something sad about his eyes” (17). Chris and Burke resume their argument about her character. They prepare for the scene. As she watches the director talking to the crew, Chris is aware that Burke’s alcoholism can sometimes cause him to erupt in anger. She believes that he drinks in order to live up to his own legend. Something about the Jesuit priest occupies her mind; while she is typically not a fan of priests, this man stays in her thoughts. They shoot the scene until the sky becomes overcast and then Chris walks home, noticing priests and churches all around the town. 

Regan greets Chris excitedly and Chris cannot contain her adoration for her daughter. Sharon Spencer, Regan’s tutor, and Chris’s social secretary explains that Chris has received an offer to direct a film. Later, Chris asks Willie about one of Regan’s dresses, which has seemingly gone missing. Karl reveals that he has put out traps, but caught nothing. 

After a bath, Chris discovers the missing dress in her own closet, crumpled up on the floor. When she returns the dress to Regan’s closet, she thinks of her ex-husband Howard, Regan’s distant and uncommunicative father. Sitting down to read a script, she stubs her toe on a heavy piece of furniture and notices that it has been moved. Burke shows up, drinking and swearing so much that Chris has to ask him to be quieter. They drink together, discussing death and priests, whom Burke calls “fucking plunderers” (28). Chris asks him for advice about directing. 

When Chris takes Regan to bed, she notices a Ouija board in the room. Regan has been playing with it a lot, talking to an invisible friend named Captain Howdy who answers any questions she asks. But Captain Howdy does not answer this time. Regan reveals that she worries that Chris is going to marry Burke one day. Chris dismisses the idea. 

That night, as Chris is reading, Regan complains of strange knocking noises in her room. Regan goes to sleep in Chris’s bed, while Chris checks the attic. She finds the traps still laden with bait. Karl appears behind her, scaring her. He apologizes and suggests that a cat might be a better solution. The next morning, Chris suggests that Karl check the traps. He finds that Chris has sprung one of the traps with a stuffed toy mouse from Regan’s collection. Karl is not amused. Chris spends the day filming and accepts an invitation to dine at the White House. She reminds Sharon to send a note to Howard, asking him to call Regan on her birthday next week. 

Chris spends the weekend with Regan, visiting tourist spots. Standing before the grave of John F. Kennedy, Regan asks about death. She is quiet for the rest of the day. On Regan’s birthday, Chris organizes a party but Howard does not call. The next morning, Regan complains that her bed “was shaking” (34).

Father Damien Karras is a Jesuit priest whose faith is being challenged by the recent sickness of his mother. He travels to Fordham University in New York and delivers a paid speech to the American Psychiatric Association titled “Psychological Aspects of Spiritual Development.” Karras and his family were incredibly poor growing up; he still remembers his mother searching through garbage cans for food. He visits his mother in her rundown apartment and regrets having ever left her. While there, he writes letters for her—a Greek immigrant, she never learned to read or write English. Before he leaves, he repairs her radio and promises to return as soon as he can. Over the years, he has unsuccessfully requested transfers from Georgetown to New York. Before bed, he writes another request. He wakes early, attends a service, and says a mass in his hotel room afterward. He takes the train back to Washington, “carrying pain in a black valise” (38).

In the days after Regan’s birthday, Chris notices “a sudden and dramatic change in her daughter’s behavior and disposition” (39). She becomes angry and restless, she screams and refuses to eat, and her schoolwork suffers. Meanwhile, the tapping sounds have continued and many other items have gone missing: On one occasion, a writing bureau has been dragged halfway across Regan’s bedroom. Chris suspects that Regan is behind this because Regan is desperate for attention. Even though Chris distrusts most doctors ever since Jamie died as a result of a new drug, she seeks out medical help for her daughter’s sudden change. 

Chris takes an angry Regan to see Dr. Samuel Klein. Klein examines Regan, checking for any physical issues that might cause a change in behavior. He diagnoses her with hyperkinetic behavior disorder—“a disorder of the nerves” (41)—and prescribes Ritalin. When he mentions depression, Chris wonders whether Regan could be reacting to her father’s estrangement. Klein also reveals that Regan used obscenities while he examined her; this shocks Chris but Klein suggests that it might be part of the condition. Later, Sharon tells Chris that Regan has been asking questions about religion. 

Chris ensures that Regan takes her medication but her condition seems to worsen. People complain of a foul smell emanating from Regan’s room, though Chris cannot detect it. Chris juggles many things. She is evaluating the script of the film she intends to direct. business manager has grave news: Chris’s investments have turned sour, so she needs to avoid large purchases and should find a new acting project in the current year. And in addition, she has planned a dinner party: She expects to host Burke, the second unit director, a senator, an astronaut, two Jesuits, and other friends.

Chris welcomes her dinner party guests. The convivial atmosphere and the drinks help to lift her mood. Mary Jo Perrin, a Washington seer whom Chris met at the White House, and Father Wagner, the Jesuit dean of Georgetown discuss a priest who was also a medium. Chris recounts seeing a monk in Bhutan who could levitate. She asks about a cottage she has seen on the campus and her guests joke about black masses “connected to witchcraft” (47) being held there. Wagner describes a spate of desecrations at the nearby church; he also mentions that Father Damien Karras, a counselor whose mother died the night before, lives in the cottage Chris asked about. Karras’s mother was dead for several days before anyone discovered her body. 

Burke shouts at Karl. The two are frequently at odds; tonight, Burke screams obscenities while Karl stoically ignores him; Chris breaks up the disagreement. Chris finds Regan is in her playroom, using the Ouija board, and being strangely well behaved. Chris introduces Regan to her guests. Regan is polite to everyone except Mary Jo, the seer. Chris takes Regan to bed, and Regan calls out to her mother, asking, “what’s wrong with me” (51) in a despairing, haunting tone. Chris assures Regan that she will be fine, noticing how cold the room has become. 

Chris returns to the party just as the senator and his wife make their excuses and leave. Burke made an impolite comment to the senator and is now in the study, sleeping off his alcohol-induced daze. Mary Jo appears edgy and disturbed, but asks Father Dyer about black masses. Dyer dismisses her question, saying that Father Karras is the real expert—he has mentioned black masses in a psychiatric paper. As their discussion peters out and the priests begin to make their excuses, Regan appears. Regan tells the astronaut that he is “going to die up there” (53) while urinating on the rug. Embarrassed, Chris takes Regan back upstairs. While she bathes Regan and changes her clothes, Regan only mumbles. 

At the party, Chris explains Regan’s recent medical issues. Mary Jo listens intently. Later, Chris asks Mary Jo about Regan’s use of the Ouija board. Perturbed, Mary Jo advises that Chris take the Ouija board away from her daughter. Mary Jo describes her gifts as a medium and seer: She tries to avoid the occult, but Ouija boards and similar devices “point to the opening of a door of some sort” (55). 

That night, Regan screaming’s awakens Chris. In her daughter’s bedroom, Chris sees Regan “taut on her back, face stained with tears and contorted with terror as she gripped at the sides of her narrow bed” (57). As the bed shakes violently, Regan begs her mother to make it stop. 

Prologue-Part 1 Analysis

The MacNeil family seems idyllic. Regan is the embodiment of pre-teen innocence, leaving roses by her mother’s breakfast plate and diligently completing her schoolwork. She is artistic, polite, and intellectually inquisitive. Likewise, Chris is a successful actress with many fans, a large house, staff on retainer, a sports car, and investments around the world. But this is just a veneer—a beatific point from which the family will collapse. The downward trend has already begun: Chris’s business ventures are in a bad way, her recent divorce has scarred her, and her dream of directing a film is only due to a male director’s influence. 

Regan’s worsening condition and the way in which the characters approach her plight embodies the novel’s juxtaposition of the rational and the supernatural. Initially, those around Regan seek rational explanations—guilt over her parents’ divorce, loneliness caused by her mother’s lifestyle, or concerns that Chris will marry the alcoholic Burke Dennings. Meanwhile, doctors try to prescribe medicine for a condition they do not understand. Even the traps laid in the attic are an attempt to offer a rational solution to a supernatural problem. No one is willing to countenance the idea that what is happening is supernatural—a denial that makes The Exorcist a salient allegory of the ways society tamps down the sexual maturation of teen girls.

Likewise, a number of recurrent motifs appear. One ongoing aspect is the relationship between parents and their children. Regan’s father Howard is perpetually distant, glimpsed only through missed messaged and remembered arguments. His envy of Chris’s success has destroyed the family unit and Chris worries about the effect that this will have on Regan. Besides Regan and Chris, we have other examples of struggling families. Karras feels guilt and shame over the condition in which his mother lives. Karl, we will eventually learn, is stoic and emotionally distant partly because of the fate of his daughter. Decimated relationships between parents and children will fuel much of the narrative. 

The Prologue gets at issues of colonialism. It suggest that an ancient and terrible evil emerges from Iraq, the location of some of the world’s most ancient civilizations, to terrorize the very American setting of Washington D.C., the seat of American power and the focus of much of the western world. There is more than a hint of orientalism and fear of the other in the idea that unspeakable demons must come from the distant strangeness of Iraq.