Writing Assingment 2 (Late)

Stephen King is a very polarizing author. Many love his work while others diminish it. Bt he was written many high quality
works including The Shining and especially It. It is quality piece of literature because it’s not pulp, but a full-fledged novel, the events in it remind us of our lives, and it psychologically delves into our deepest fears.

When most people think of horror stories, they think of cheap thrills, boogieman kind of thing. But when compared to It, it’s like comparing a columnist to Charles Dickens. It may still have a few cheap jump moments but the horror in It is much more personal. Horror stories are very short and don’t flesh out their characters a whole lot. In It, you have seven main characters with complicated back-stories, emotions, and thoughts. Even the minor characters are fleshed out and we get a full picture of the town of Derry (the novel’s setting). Finally most horror stories are brief, usually not going past the 100-page mark. But It takes its time, it clocks in at 1,090 pages (the longest thing King has ever written). In these many pages, we also see a bit of ourselves.

King is a very personal writer and It is no exception. Since the story deals with seven friends returning to their hometown after twenty-eight years away, there are moments in It that can bring back memories. Memories of summer days, carefree hours, spending all day with your best friends, very innocent times. But there’s also the hard times from childhood in It; bullying, neglect, abuse, fear: memories and moments one tries to bury into the recesses of the mind, but it’s still there no matter what one does. That’s what the Losers’ Club (the main protagonists) suffers from. They tried for twenty-eight years to bury the memories until the phone call that brings them back. Theirs lives are full of familiar moments, both as kids and adults. But what really kept them away was the fear they felt from It.


With It the monster, King has created a being that can both frighten everyone and intrigue someone like Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung. The idea of ‘It’ is it can be anything that one fears and ‘It’ is different for every person. For the Losers’ Club, It is many things; a werewolf, a mummy, a leper, a giant bird, an abusive father, and an undead brother. But it’s main form is as Pennywise the Clown, a evil and monstrous clown. What we also learn about ‘It’ is that it’s always been here since the dawn of the Earth. Two of the Loser’s see when ‘It’ first came in a smoke induced vision. ‘It’ comes in the form of a flaming meteor and crash lands into Earth at the dawn of time. So ‘It’ is perhaps the greatest evil of all because it’s a part of ourselves we see.

Finally It is a great piece of literature because though it is written fairly simply, it has so much behind it in subtext and thought that it makes it an enjoyable and rewarding work of genius and horror.