Analysis of ‘It,’ Part II

Here’s a link to Part I, if you haven’t seen it yet.

VI: Derry: the First Interlude

As Mike has written in his notes about Derry, “Can an entire city be haunted?” (page 189, King‘s emphasis) The entire city of Derry can be seen to symbolize the mind, a kind of collective mind, peopled with a host of characters who could thus represent everything from Melanie Klein‘s internal objects, both good and bad, to Carl Jung‘s archetypes.

The surface world of the town, from the ground up, would represent consciousness, where all is sunny and sweet. The underground, the sewers, and the cellars of each house, as I mentioned in Part I, would represent the unconscious mind. It, that is, Pennywise, would thus personify the Collective Shadow, normally repressed and dormant for about 27 years at a time, then let loose for about a year. One tries one’s best to repress, hide, and forget about trauma, but it eventually will out all the same.

The whole adventure that the Losers go through, once as kids in the late 1950s, and again as adults in the mid-1980s, can be seen as allegorical of what Jungians call Shadow work. In order to heal from trauma in a lasting way, one must face one’s traumas, and this is what we see the Losers doing (in an allegorical sense), first only partially achieving it as kids, then thoroughly achieving it as adults in their final confrontation with Pennywise.

Though confronting one’s Shadow, where all the dark traumas of the unconscious reside, is necessary for the sake of healing, it’s also dangerous. Jung himself, in his explorations of his own unconscious through Active Imagination, Shadow work, and other methods of integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of his mind, brought himself dangerously close to a total psychotic breakdown.

In their final confrontation with It, Eddie dies; the surviving Losers aren’t even able to carry his body out from the underground. What’s more, this confrontation happens during a huge storm, the worst in Maine’s history, with rains reminding us of the Great Flood and that rainstorm at the beginning of the novel, an apocalyptic storm that causes the downtown area of Derry to collapse. This collapsing of downtown Derry, which is a merging together of the upper and lower worlds, is symbolic of that necessary but dangerous integration of the conscious and unconscious through Shadow work.

VII: Ben Hanscom Takes a Fall

As Ben sits on his airplane flight to Derry, “as drunk as a lord,” according to the stewardess observing him (page 211), he finds the old memories finally starting to come back to him. In his state of drunkenness, as well as his hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness, he finds “the wall between past and present disappear[ing]” (page 215). He is entering a world of non-differentiation, the traumatic Real, as Lacan would have called it.

It is fitting that Ben is drunk and falling asleep as he is starting to get these old memories back. As Nietzsche noted in The Birth of Tragedy, Dionysus, the god of wine, chaos, irrationality, emotion, and disorder (as opposed to Apollo as god of logic, clarity, the sun, and the principle of individuation), is also a god of unity, of non-differentiation. So drunk Ben, between wakefulness and sleep, is also experiencing a blur between the past and the present, the trauma of non-differentiation.

This is also rather like the non-differentiation of the Great Flood as paralleled in the rainstorms at the beginning and climax of the novel, when the waters above meet the waters below, recreating the primordial Chaos, tohu wa-bohu, in chapter one of Genesis.

Ben’s memories of being a kid at school, when he was fat and therefore an easy target of bullies like Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins, and Victor Criss, were also a disordered mix of good and bad, because it was also then that he had his crush on Beverly (pages 216-217). He demonstrated his poetic talent by writing his verse celebrating her beautiful, fiery red hair…”winter fire,/January embers” (page 246).

His trip down memory lane is compared to the adventures of the time-traveller in HG Wells‘s classic story; in particular, we’re reminded of “the land of the Morlocks, where machines pound on and on in the tunnels of the night” (page 215). This hellish, subterranean world is easily associated with the underground of Derry: its sewers, cellars, and representation of the unconscious and the Shadow, personified by that ultimate Morlock, Pennywise.

Henry is mad at Ben for not letting him copy his test answers in class. Henry likes to call overweight Ben “Tits” (page 252). We soon learn that Henry is much worse than your average bully: he’s a violent psychopath, a fact proven when he takes out a knife, has Belch and Victor hold Ben, then digs the blade into Ben’s gut.

That cutting into Ben’s flesh, apart from the obvious pain and terror it causes the boy, is a violation of the boundaries between self and other, that traumatic non-differentiation of the Real, of Dionysus.

It’s significant that Ben escapes Henry and his gang by falling through the fence separating the street they’re all on and the Barrens, which is a stretch of scrub land next to Derry, a swampy area where the sewers are. The Barrens, therefore, can also be symbolically linked with the unconscious…perhaps with the preconscious, since, though lower, it’s still outside. Ben’s breaking through the fence is also representative of a non-differentiation between consciousness and unconsciousness.

VIII: Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (1)

Just as Ben has been flying in a plane on the way back to Derry, going from utter oblivion to flashbacks of childhood memories, so has Bill. And just as Mike’s writing about Derry has been a form of therapy for him, so has Bill’s writing of horror novels been a form of writing therapy for him.

All the stories he’s written, all the novels–they came from Derry, Bill muses (page 283). They came from that summer, when George died. They came from his trauma. His interviewers would ask him where he got all of his ideas from, and he’s answered by speaking of the inspiration coming from his unconscious…yet he’s doubted, more and more as the years go by, if there ever was such a thing as an unconscious (page 284). This unbelief in the unconscious comes from his total forgetting of Derry.

Eventually, though, a memory starts coming back, one of “beating the devil.” (page 285) The unconscious, be it a Freudian or Jungian version of it, doesn’t come back to Bill as a subterranean world of Morlocks, as it has for Ben; it’s just Derry. Bill’s focus on the conscious world of Derry is his resistance against confronting the unconscious.

Bill remembers his old bicycle from his childhood, named Silver, after the Lone Ranger’s horse. Bill is indeed a hero on that bike, beating the devil on it as he rides dangerously fast on it to save a life, be it Eddie’s, when he has to race off on it to get the asthmatic’s medicine, or be it Audra‘s at the end of the novel, when he races on the bike with her, risking a crash for both of them, to get her to snap out of her catatonia.

Beating the devil is just like beating Pennywise. Fittingly, as Bill rides the bike, he imitates the Lone Ranger, calling out, “Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYY!” (page 288) His risk of death, on both occasions on that bike, brings him to the brink of hell, then past it, coming around to salvation in heaven, as it were, for Eddie’s and Audra’s sakes. Bill is thus like a Christ figure, harrowing hell, then causing a resurrection of sorts (Audra’s), and ascending to a metaphorical heaven. In this way, he’s beaten the devil.

Bill wants to help Eddie because he failed to help his little brother. First, he helps Eddie with a nosebleed he gets after an altercation with Henry’s gang; Bill helps Eddie the way Bill’s mom used to help Georgie when he had nosebleeds (page 292). And when Eddie’s aspirator is empty, Bill rides off to the drugstore for his medicines…which, as it turns out, is mere tap-water (page 302).

When Bill goes off to get the ‘medicine,’ Ben stays with Eddie in the Barrens, where he’s met the two just after escaping Henry’s gang and getting the knife cut in his gut. After Bill returns with the ‘medicine’ for Eddie and rides off, Eddie tells Ben about the murder of Georgie, that it happened “right after the big flood” (page 311).

Eddie, as a double of Georgie, dies when the second “big flood” happens, and not too long after that, adult Bill rides dangerously on his bike for Audra’s sake, beating the devil once again.

Bill may have saved Eddie in the Barrens, but the boy cannot get over having failed to protect his little brother, and the night of that very day in the Barrens, when Bill is back home, he has a terrible fright reminding him of his guilt over George.

He remembers when Georgie was alive, and the two boys were arguing in front of the TV over who got to eat the popcorn (page 313). This kind of sibling jealousy and rivalry would have been part of the basis for Bill’s unconscious wish to get rid of his little brother, an unconscious wish that, in turn, has become Bill’s guilt now that George is really dead.

Bill goes into George’s bedroom and takes out an old photo album with pictures of the little boy in it. A shocking thing happens, something that has now happened a second time, the first time being the previous December, after which Georgie was killed.

Bill has been looking at a picture of George “fixedly for some time” (page 319). He’s about to close the photo album when he sees Georgie roll his eyes in the picture, then turn them up to look in Bill’s eyes. Then, with “a horrid leer,” Georgie winks his right eye at Bill (page 320). Apart from the obvious supernatural aspect, Bill’s fear stems from his guilt regarding the original wish-fulfillment of a dead, still, smiling Georgie, changing into a living, moving, vengeful little brother.

IX: One of the Missing: A Tale from the Summer of ’58

We learn of a ten-year-old boy named Edward Corcoran, who went missing back in the summer of 1958. He and his four-year-old brother, Dorsey, were abused by their stepfather, Richard P. Macklin, who actually beat Dorsey to death with a hammer, though he lied about it, claiming the little boy died of a fall from the top of a ladder. (Chapter 6)

Edward’s teacher reported seeing bruises all over his body, and she was so concerned for him that when she heard that he’d gone missing, she prayed every night that he’d run away from home, sick and tired of his stepfather’s abuse, rather than killed from another of Macklin’s beatings.

Though Macklin was suspected in the disappearance of Edward, we learn that It really killed the boy, It in the form of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, though originally appearing in the form of Dorsey (pages 336-341). Still, it could be argued that Macklin indirectly killed Edward, since his repeated physical abuse of the boy drove him to run away from home, thus exposing him to the danger of It. Besides, It–as the personification of trauma throughout the novel–is the killer of the boy only insofar as trauma killed him, the trauma inflicted on him by his raging stepfather.

Family abuse, of course, isn’t limited to the Corcoran family. As we know, Beverly suffered it from her own father, who is incorrectly referred to as her stepfather on page 330–a fortuitous error in that it helps to link the Corcoran boys to her through the theme of family abuse.

Edward Corcoran’s death is further linked thematically with the Losers’ experiences on pages 330 and 331 by a kind of synchronicity. On June 19th–though Macklin had nothing at all to do with the boy’s death (in the literal, physical sense, of course)–he died when Ben was watching TV with his mom, Eddie Kaspbarak’s mom was neurotically worrying about her boy possibly catching “phantom fever,” Bev’s “stepfather” [sic] kicked her in the derrière and told her to dry the dishes, Mike “got yelled at by some high-school boys…not far from the farm owned by Henry Bowers’s crazy father,” Richie was looking at pictures of half-naked girls in a magazine, and Bill was throwing the photo album across the room because Georgie’s photo winked at him.

All of the Losers “looked up at the exact moment Eddie Corcoran died…as if hearing some distant cry” (page 331). It, the creature, was behind this synchronicity, a synchronicity of shared trauma and abuse.

Mike couldn’t sleep on the night of the beginning of summer vacation, so soon after Corcoran’s death. He went out, rode his bike for a while, then parked it and walked to the Canal (pages 341-342). On the way, he found a pocket knife with the initials EC on the side. He also saw grooves in the grass leading to the Canal. “And there was blood.” (page 343)

The horror of these sights, where Corcoran died, brought back memories in Mike’s mind of a giant bird attacking him. We see how all of these traumas are thus interlinked.

It would be interesting to look at, compare, and contrast three mythical creatures in It. We’ve already looked a bit at the Turtle. There’s also the actual form if It as a giant spider. And now, we have the giant bird Mike confronted.

The first two giant animals, as representations of good and evil, have in common the fact that they crawl. This comparison suggests that It, the Satan of this cosmology to the Turtle’s God, is trying to do an evil emulation of good, is being parasitical to good. Satan is sometimes described as being an imitator of good, of wanting to be like Him.

“The prince of darkness is a gentleman,” Edgar says in King Lear. ” ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” Antonio says in The Merchant of Venice. And in Paradise Lost, Book IV, Satan says, “Evil, be thou my good.” Pennywise similarly starts off with friendly charm before killing Georgie; his crawling on spiders’ legs can thus be seen as an imitation of the Turtle’s crawling on its legs.

Now, the giant bird that Mike has to fend off is, of course, evil, and contrary to the first two giants that crawl, this one is way up in the sky. On the other hand, when Stan has to fight off It as a child, he uses nothing other than a book of birds to help him. Crawling creatures can be good or evil; flying creatures can also be good or evil. Dualities of this sort pervade It.

X: The Dam in the Barrens

As Eddie Kaspbrak is driving a Cadillac in Boston, on his way to Derry, he’s thinking about such things as the subways, bad places to go, like tunnels (page 373). Such subterranean places would remind him of the Derry sewers, the Barrens, and the dirty cellar of the house at 29 Neibolt Street, in one of the windows of which he, as a child, saw a leper.

Such underground places–like the realm of Ben’s Morlocks–are crawling with germs, the sources of all of Eddie’s fears. Indeed his very sickness is his fear, the poison of his childhood memories (page 373).

Eddie remembers the day, when they were all kids, that Ben, whom they’d all recently met, decided to build a dam in the Barrens. On this same day, Bill talks about his experience seeing Georgie wink at him in that photo. It’s a brave confession on Bill’s part, him risking ridicule and disbelief; but since Eddie, Ben, and Stan have had–and Richie in the not-too-distant-future will have–comparable supernatural frights, they all hear Bill with sympathetic ears.

Interestingly, when Ben decides to build the dam, using his already remarkable talents as an architect, he says, “We could flood out the whole Barrens if we wanted to.” (page 376) The dam’s stoppage of the river water doesn’t, of course, flood out the whole Barrens, but this choice of words is still significant in how it can be linked with the rainy day when Georgie died, as well as with the flooding and destruction of downtown Derry during the climax of the novel.

These associations with the Great Flood suggest the washing away of all evil and the ultimate defeat of Pennywise. Building the dam, stopping and thus controlling the waters of the Barrens, which are associated with the turbulent world of the unconscious and the Shadow, thus represents a conquering and controlling of the boys’ fear.

This day is also a great bonding moment for these Losers. The building of the dam is actually a rebuilding of a dam destroyed by Henry and his gang. Rebuilding it, and bonding with each other, is doubly therapeutic for the boys, as is the beginning of a discussion about It.

Since It personifies trauma, talking about It is a kind of talk therapy for healing trauma. When Bill can talk about his photo album and George’s wink, Eddie can find it easier to talk about the leper in the cellar of the house on Neibolt Street, Ben can talk about his close encounter with It, and Stan can talk about his scary experience.

Eddie uses one word to describe the moment when he knows it’s finally safe to talk about his traumatic experience: “Recognition.” (page 395) The boys are sharing a mutual validation of their trauma, and building the dam on the same day, after their bullies destroyed the first one, is well juxtaposed with this talk therapy, for they are all beginning to rebuild their lives as well as the dam–as new friends.

I mentioned earlier how duality pervades It, in the form of mixtures of good and bad: good and bad birds, good and bad crawlers. There is also good and bad in, on the one hand, experiencing trauma, and on the other, talking about trauma, releasing the pain, and bonding with friends as a result of the discussion of trauma.

Similarly, there’s the horror of Eddie’s seeing a leper crawling out from under the porch of the house at 29 Neibolt Street, and hearing him offer the boy “a blowjob for a quarter” (page 400). A blowjob in and of itself is a pleasant thing, but not given to a child by a leper! My point is that we see dualities of good and bad mashed together on many occasions in It.

Remember also that the Shadow is not always evil; it’s just the ego-dystonic aspects of our minds, the things we want to reject. These things are often evil, but sometimes they’re hidden talents we’re afraid to acknowledge in ourselves because acknowledging them might force us to rise up to challenges we’re afraid of facing. Eddie has to learn to accept the reality of germs and sickness, that using his immune system will strengthen him against sickness. Facing and defeating It will turn the Losers Club into the Winners Club…even if a few of them die trying.

Now that Bill has told his photo album story about George, Eddie can tell them all about the leper, Ben can tell them about seeing the clown in the form of the mummy, and Stan is about to tell them about his experience of It, but all of them are interrupted by Mr. Nell (page 412), a police officer who reprimands them for building the dam and making a mess of the river in the Barrens. The water that’s being dammed up is waste from the toilets and dirty, used sink water; it’s all a great congregation of germs that would make Eddie retch if he knew.

Part III is coming soon.

Stephen King, It, New York, Pocket Books, 1986