It
Author: Stephen King
Rating: â 5/5
Date Read: 2025/03/20
Pages: 1156
âWe all float down here.â - Pennywise
âAlright, already, weâll all float on, alright
Donât worry even if things end up a bit too heavy
Weâll all float on, alright.â - Modest Mouse
The threshold between childhood and adulthood feels murky while youâre crossing it. As an adult, itâs hard to remember the last time you turned off the lights downstairs, then ran up the stairs as fast as you could to keep the darkness from chasing you. But there was a last time, wasnât there?
IT is not a story about an evil clown. While it is a masterwork of eldritch horror, the genre is simply a means to an end. No, IT is at once a Bildungsroman that captures the transition away from childhood, and an examination of the effect of childhood trauma. IT is an ouroboros of a story, which is why itâs going to take me awhile to wrap my head around it.
One idea from IT that fascinates me is how adults forget the things that seemed important to them as children. Iâve experienced the existential crisis of looking through old yearbooks and not recognizing the people I posed with in candid shots. Classmates signed the pages with references to inside jokes that I donât remember. Facing the fallibility of remembrance is terrifying. Thatâs part of what makes IT universally scary.