Analysis of ‘It,’ Part VII (Final Part)

Here are links to Parts I, II, III, IV, V, and VI, if you haven’t read them yet.

XXIX: Out

This chapter begins with another description of the rainstorm outside, and how things have developed as of 9:00 to 10:00 AM (pages 1411-1415). As with the last such description, it’s all one continuous paragraph (this time, for about four and a half pages) except for the last sentence, in which Andrew Keene, grandson of Norbert, isn’t sure if he can believe what he’s seen: the destruction of the Standpipe, something that up until then “had stood for his whole life.” (page 1415)

As I said last time, this uninterrupted flow of words, in its mass of formlessness, represents the undifferentiated trauma of Lacan’s Real. We may be reading words here, but their presentation, without any breaks except for the last sentence, suggests a lack of order, a kind of word salad, symbolizing the inability to verbalize.

Wind-speeds are at an average of fifty-five miles an hour, with gusts of up to seventy (page 1411). Though the water department initially ruled out a flooding of downtown Derry, it’s now not only possible but imminent, and for the first time since the summer of 1958, when the kid Losers went into the sewers.

Howard Gardener has a brief image of Hitler and Judas Iscariot, two of the great villains of history, handing out ice-skates; the water is now almost at the top of the Canal’s cement walls. Adding to the apocalyptic theme, Harold will tell his wife later that he thinks the end of the world is coming (page 1412).

By page 1413, the Standpipe already has a pronounced lean, like the tower of Pisa. As I said above, Andrew Keene has watched its whole destruction in disbelief (pages 1412-1415), though he’s been smoking so much Colombia Red that at first he thinks he’s been hallucinating.

Meanwhile, down in the tunnels, adult Bill and Richie are still going after It (page 1416). It wants them to let It go, but they’re very close now.

The Spider offers Bill and Richie long lives of two, three, five hundred years if they’ll let It go (page 1417). It will make the two men gods of the Earth–one is reminded of Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:8-9).

Bill and Richie start hitting the Spider with their right fists and with not only all their might, but also with “the force of the Other,” this being Gan, as I’ve mentioned in earlier parts of this analysis, but that force is also that Lacanian Other of social togetherness as against the dyadic, one-on-one narcissism that uses only one other as an extension of oneself. This is the Other of solidarity: it’s “the force of memory and desire” [recall their lovemaking with Bev when they were kids, and how I said it symbolized their solidarity]… “the force of love and unforgotten childhood.” (page 1417)

The section is titled The Kill, for this is where Bill finally kills It by plunging his hand into the Spider and crushing Its heart (page 1418). To do Shadow work properly, you have to go down deep into the darkness, and get to the heart of the matter.

After the Spider dies, Bill hears the Voice of the Other, telling him he “did real good.”, even though the Turtle, it would seem, is dead (page 1419). Gan, the real God of Stephen King’s cosmology, is very much alive.

In the next section, Derry 10:00-10:15 AM, we confront the destruction of downtown Derry. The statue of Paul Bunyan has exploded (page 1420). Recall how it was associated with Pennywise when adult Richie was terrorized by It; fittingly, it’s destroyed around the time that Bill has killed the Spider.

And at 10:02 AM, again, when Bill has killed It, downtown Derry collapses (page 1421). When Bill regroups with Bev, Ben, and Richie, they get Audra, and they’re trying to find their way out (in the section fittingly titled Out, pages 1429-1435); they are aware of a growing light that shouldn’t be there in the Canal under the city (page 1431).

This is what happens when one does Shadow work: one goes deep into the darkness, into the heart of the matter, and one makes the darkness light. One integrates dark and light. What is unconscious is made conscious. This is what the collapsing of downtown Derry symbolizes.

The Losers realize that the street has caved in, for they recognize pieces of the Aladdin movie theatre down there with them (page 1432). This mixing of parts of upper, surface Derry with the underground symbolizes that integration of the conscious with the unconscious, a uniting of the dark with the light. Indeed, it seems to Bill that most of downtown Derry is in the Canal and being carried down the Kenduskeag River (page 1433).

The Losers climb up to the surface of the city, carrying catatonic Audra (page 1434). A small crowd applauds them when they’ve emerged (page 1435). The applause is fitting, even if the crowd doesn’t know what the Losers have just done, for they deserve it nonetheless–they’re the heroes of Derry. The Losers have become the Winners. The mark of that small door, they’ve noticed, is gone (page 1428). The cuts on their hands–from their childhood pledge to return to Derry if It returned (dealt with in the section titled Out/Dusk, August 10th 1958, pages 1440-1444)–are gone. The ordeal is finally over.

Bill, Ben, Bev, and Richie reach the corner of Upper Main and Point Street; there they see a kid in a red rainslicker sailing a paper boat along water running in the gutter (pages 1438-1439). Bill thinks it’s the boy with the skateboard he met before. He tells the boy that everything is all right now, and to be careful on his skateboard. Since the kid’s rainslicker is red instead of yellow, and since Pennywise is gone, perhaps all he needs to worry about now is the Big Bad Wolf.

Of course, not everything is all right. Bill still has to deal with what’s happened to Audra. I’ve discussed in Part II [see the chapter, “Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (I)”] how he does this. The point is that it will involve once again the novel’s theme of facing one’s fears.

XXX: Derry: The Last Interlude

Just as there is duality in so many other forms as I’ve described them in It–namely, the dialectical unity of opposites–there is also duality in the ending of the novel in the form of two epilogues, this last interlude and the actual epilogue after it.

Things are disappearing, as Mike notes in his journaling, starting June 4th, 1985. Bill’s stutter is disappearing (page 1447). The fading away of his speech impediment symbolizes how his resuming of the regular spoken use of language marks his leaving the trauma of the Real and his re-entry into the Symbolic, into society, a healing union with other people. He just has to achieve the same thing for catatonic Audra, who won’t say a thing.

Richie has disappeared: he’s flown back to California. Their memories of what happened are also slowly disappearing (page 1448). Just little details are being forgotten for now. Bill thinks the forgetting is going to spread, but Mike thinks that that may be for the best.

It’s a bad thing to repress trauma, so it’s there, bothering you without you being able to figure out what it is so you can do something about it. It’s also a bad thing, though, to ruminate endlessly over past pain. Since they have killed It once and for all, it’s probably best for them to let it go. In bad remembering and bad forgetting, we have another duality in It.

At the same time, though, there’s also good remembering and forgetting–in this case, their friends. Bill thinks that maybe he’ll stay in touch with Mike, for a while, but the forgetting will put that to an end. Ben later hugs Mike and asks if he’ll write to Ben and Bev…again, Mike will write for a while, for as with Bill, Mike knows he’s forgetting things, too (page 1451).

After a month or a year, his notebook will be all he has to remember what happened in Derry. Forgetting is filling Mike with panic, but it also offers him relief. This, again, is an example of the good/bad duality in the novel. Because It is finally and truly dead, no one needs to stand guard for Its reappearance twenty-seven years later.

Fifty percent of Derry is still underwater, the apocalyptic consequence of having destroyed It (page 1452). How does one rebuiild a city whose downtown has collapsed in a kind of Great Flood?

The forgetting is continuing. Mike has forgotten Stan’s last name (page 1454). Richie has forgotten it, too–was it Underwood? No, that isn’t a Jewish name…no, it was Uris, they finally remember.

Mike has almost forgotten Stan and Eddie. Did the latter have asthma, or a chronic migraine (page 1455)? He phones Bill and asks: Bill remembers the asthma and the aspirator, which Mike recalls only when Bill has mentioned it (page 1456). Mike has also forgotten Eddie’s surname; Bill thinks it was something like Kerkorian, but of course that’s wrong.

Yet another thing is disappearing: the names and addresses of Mike’s friends in his book (page 1457). He could rewrite and rewrite everything, but he suspects that the rewrites will all fade away, so why bother?

He has a nightmare that makes him wake up in a panic, and he can’t breathe. He also can’t remember the dream (page 1458). Such is the nature of repressed trauma. All this stuff is forgotten, but it’s still in one’s head. Still in his hospital bed, Mike has a vision of that male nurse with the needle…or of Henry and his switchblade.

Bill is the only one Mike remembers clearly now. Bill has an “idea” of what he can do about Audra, but it’s so crazy that he doesn’t want to tell Mike what it is (page 1457).

XXXI: Epilogue: Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (II)

His crazy idea, of course, is to take catatonic Audra on Silver, his old bike, and ride with her out into the danger of the traffic, to snap her out of it. This racing on his bike, risking a crash and serious injury, if not death, is him trying to beat the Devil, as he did as a kid when racing to the drugstore to get Eddie’s medicine.

It’s an insane, desperate act, but as with his friend, Eddie, it’s an act of selflessness, for if Audra dies with Bill in a crash, it probably won’t matter, for in her catatonia, she’s already in a state of living death…Lacan’s Real, with no differentiation between life and death, and no ability to verbalize her trauma, to leave the Real and enter the Symbolic.

To leave the Real, one must have a sense of differentiation. Bill is getting a sense of that for himself before he imposes differentiation on Audra. He goes from naked in Mike’s bedroom (Bill and Audra have been staying in Mike’s house until he is released from the hospital) to fully dressed (pages 1461-1462). He goes from inside to outside, taking Silver out of the garage and onto the driveway (page 1463); he’s been thinking about leaving Derry, too, from inside the city to outside (pages 1463-1464).

In his imagination, Bill sees Derry as it was when he was a kid, a differentiation between the past and the present, between his childhood and his adulthood, for those memories–including the intact Paul Bunyan statue–are in stark contrast with the destroyed Derry of the present (page 1464).

He needs Audra to experience differentiation, too, between life and death, specifically, and by putting both of them right on the brink between the two, he hopes she’ll sense that differentiation and snap out of it. The danger of this, of course, is augmented by the fact that he’s way too old to be doing stunts on his old bike.

Naturally, he’s also full of conflict over whether he should be doing this–surely, he can’t!–and yet if he doesn’t at least try it, she’ll stay in her catatonia for the rest of her life. It, as I’ve observed in the previous parts, is all about facing one’s fears, for doing so is how the beat the Devil.

As he’s riding, in imitation of the Lone Ranger, Bill shouts out “Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYYYYY!” (page 1468), as he used to do as a kid. Like the Lone Ranger, he is being a hero for Audra as he was for Eddie, yet paradoxically, he could also be about to kill her. We see the good/bad duality once again.

There’s also been his contemplation of leaving Derry, and whether or not he should look back (page 1469). It’s best not to look back: after all, Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at burning Sodom and Gomorrah. This must be why the Losers are forgetting everything–we mustn’t look back. Audra has to be snapped out of her catatonia, even to the point of risking death, because that catatonia is her, in a psychological sense, ceaselessly looking back on what traumatized her in the Spider’s lair. That trauma is turning her into a pillar of salt, so to speak.

As Bill is racing on his bike, people are shouting at him to be careful (page 1470). He comes extremely close to some crash barriers by a slipstream. Then he hears Audra’s voice: “Bill?” (page 1471). She’s asking him where they are, and what they’re doing. She’s using language; she’s re-entered the Symbolic and left the Real. She’s snapped out of it!

Now Bill can do his Lone Ranger routine with perfect confidence. His idea worked! He is a true hero! He’s beat the Devil!

In fact, he too has fully re-entered the Symbolic, for he realizes that his stutter is all gone (page 1472), and it seems that it’s gone for good.

As for his childhood memories, their beliefs and desires, and his dreams, Bill will write about them all one day (page 1473), for as I’ve said in the other parts of this analysis, writing is good therapy.

XXXII: Conclusion

So, the whole point of It is to face one’s fears, to confront the Shadow, and to make the dark light–that is, to integrate, reconcile, and unify such opposites as the dark and the light, good and evil (i.e., by confronting the evil, one finds the good), the self with the other, etc. In a fragmented world where we find ourselves not only cut off from each other, but also cut off from other parts of ourselves, integration and unification are necessary for us to be reacquainted with the intuitive idea that all is one, where inner peace is finally found, where one discovers one’s true self.

Discovering our true selves isn’t a simple matter of discarding our false selves, though; the Persona and the Self must be integrated, too, for the Persona is a part of the totality of the Self. This is why Bill had to speak in a voice other than his own to recite the couplet without stuttering and thus weaken It. Eddie had to let himself be duped by the ‘efficacy’ of his aspirator to help defeat It, too, since les non-dupes errent.

Integrating all of the opposites to reach that all-is-one unity in the Self is no form of sentimentality. It’s difficult, dangerous, and scary work, as the Losers learned inside those sewers. To reach heaven, the ouroboros‘ biting head (see Part VI, in XXVII: Under the City, for an elaboration of my interpretation of the symbolism of the ouroboros), one must first pass through the serpent’s bitten tail…hell. Such a crossing over of extremes, reconciling them, is what It is all about.

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