Friday, August 18, 2017
The IT Spot: Rereading part 31
The movie's about to come out, I need to step this up.
When we last left off, Bev was almost molested by her father, and Mike was on death's door. We rejoin as Henry and his gang in childhood catch up to Bev, with the switchblade.
A woman in a car sees the violence and tries to stop things. She fails when Henry goes after her car with a knife. Another man sees what's happening, folds his paper and goes back inside. He seems to be under the same sort of trance the loggers were when the ax murderes happened.
Bev manages to get away after kicking Henry in the balls. Then the perspective flips to the adult Bill and Bev, who are about to have sex. Yes, Big Bill, the hero of the story, cheats on his wife.
Bill feels bad after the act, and knows that doesn't make it okay, and that he's hurt his marriage, even if Audra was never to know. Hmm, been a while since we saw Tom and Audra at that hotel together. Oh, well, I'm sure that'll end up being nothing.
The scene ends with Bev realizing she slept with all of them as kids, and Bill realizing them sleeping together now is at least in part due to the cyclical nature of the events around IT and their lives.
Bev is uncomfortable with the realization, as are the readers who have discussed this. Remember, they were all eleven and twelve at the time. Bill tries to justify it in brief, saying that Bev did it, willingly, to help them escape the sewers. There's a lot to be said on a metaphorical level: they transitioned from kids to adults with the act, leaving IT behind. They formed an inner circled, like with the blood sharing.
There are others, but what it boils down to is this: Stephen King was in the depths of his drug and alcohol addiction when writing this. Not at rock bottom, but very far along. And while the reader can understand why the act was written, nobody is really defending it. It exists, in greater detail during a later flashback. It's awful, but so is everything else in IT.
There's more flash forwards and back with Bowers, now after the others with Mike dead (he thinks). He remembers getting the switch blade in the mail, from Robert Gray, and killing his father. He then went out and chased Bev into the barrens, where she hid in the clubhouse with Ben. Pennywise calls to him, telling him to wait and watch.
I think IT may actually be lazy as well as scared. IT hasn't been hurt prior to the losers club. ITs life until now has consisted of coming to earth, waiting until people came, killing, eating, then napping and starting over again. Derry serves IT meals on a platter. IT is complacent. Or was until the Losers fought back and actually hurt IT badly. So IT decides to have some mortals do ITs work for IT.
Henry is crazy, and even being a sort-of tool of IT doesn't make him sympathetic. His father was crazy, and he was targeted by IT, but he's still a racist grudge holding bully. You can feel slightly for him as he thinks about his dead friends and how he just wants the voices to stop, but it's only the slightest of human emotion.
It's a hard section, and things will just keep getting harder from here.
You think that's real funny, don't you, me?
When we last left off, Bev was almost molested by her father, and Mike was on death's door. We rejoin as Henry and his gang in childhood catch up to Bev, with the switchblade.
A woman in a car sees the violence and tries to stop things. She fails when Henry goes after her car with a knife. Another man sees what's happening, folds his paper and goes back inside. He seems to be under the same sort of trance the loggers were when the ax murderes happened.
Pictured; a night on the town in old Derry.
Bev manages to get away after kicking Henry in the balls. Then the perspective flips to the adult Bill and Bev, who are about to have sex. Yes, Big Bill, the hero of the story, cheats on his wife.
Bill feels bad after the act, and knows that doesn't make it okay, and that he's hurt his marriage, even if Audra was never to know. Hmm, been a while since we saw Tom and Audra at that hotel together. Oh, well, I'm sure that'll end up being nothing.
The scene ends with Bev realizing she slept with all of them as kids, and Bill realizing them sleeping together now is at least in part due to the cyclical nature of the events around IT and their lives.
Bev is uncomfortable with the realization, as are the readers who have discussed this. Remember, they were all eleven and twelve at the time. Bill tries to justify it in brief, saying that Bev did it, willingly, to help them escape the sewers. There's a lot to be said on a metaphorical level: they transitioned from kids to adults with the act, leaving IT behind. They formed an inner circled, like with the blood sharing.
There are others, but what it boils down to is this: Stephen King was in the depths of his drug and alcohol addiction when writing this. Not at rock bottom, but very far along. And while the reader can understand why the act was written, nobody is really defending it. It exists, in greater detail during a later flashback. It's awful, but so is everything else in IT.
There's more flash forwards and back with Bowers, now after the others with Mike dead (he thinks). He remembers getting the switch blade in the mail, from Robert Gray, and killing his father. He then went out and chased Bev into the barrens, where she hid in the clubhouse with Ben. Pennywise calls to him, telling him to wait and watch.
I think IT may actually be lazy as well as scared. IT hasn't been hurt prior to the losers club. ITs life until now has consisted of coming to earth, waiting until people came, killing, eating, then napping and starting over again. Derry serves IT meals on a platter. IT is complacent. Or was until the Losers fought back and actually hurt IT badly. So IT decides to have some mortals do ITs work for IT.
Henry is crazy, and even being a sort-of tool of IT doesn't make him sympathetic. His father was crazy, and he was targeted by IT, but he's still a racist grudge holding bully. You can feel slightly for him as he thinks about his dead friends and how he just wants the voices to stop, but it's only the slightest of human emotion.
It's a hard section, and things will just keep getting harder from here.
Thursday, August 17, 2017
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
The IT Spot: Rereading part 30
Wow, thirty of these posts. And while I've come to see a few new things about my favorite book, I also want to thank all of you for sticking with me.
Anyway, on to the attempted parental molestation!
Yeah, this segment is where things really start going off the rails in terms of minimally IT related horror. By that I mean stuff where IT influenced the perpetrators, but they let IT in, as Bev observes.
The section starts with the adults wrapping up story time at the library. Their palm-wounds reopen, and they share a few moments where all their memories come back (or so they think).
After leaving, Bev remembers her father finally succumbing to IT, demanding she take her pants off so he can see if she's 'intact'. He was tipped off by IT that Bev was playing with boys and smoking. Bev isn't quite sure what he means by 'intact' but can see that her father is no longer her father: he has given in to IT. She runs away, barely escaping, as townsfolk look on, uncomprehending. Once she loses her father, she is stalked by Henry Bowers.
The timeline then shifts back to Mike, alone at the library, and cleaning up. He too is being stalked by Henry Bowers. Yeah, remember when Henry escaped from Juniper Hill? Well, he's back, and he's going to kill the Losers or die trying.
They talk about IT for a few moments. Henry is armed with the switch knife IT gifted him. Mike tries to talk sense into him, pointing out that IT killed his friends 27 years ago, and will surely kill Henry when Henry is done doing ITs work. Henry almost listens, but hey, he's crazy. He attacks Mike, severing a femoral artery in Mike's leg. Mike refrains from killing Henry with a letter opener, realizing that would be doing ITs work for IT as well. He does stab Henry in the stomach, and call 911 while Henry escapes.
While possibly dying, Mike hears ITs voice on the phone, mocking him. He reflects on a few things: how all his planning has come to naught, how the Losers will be chased into the sewers just as they were before, how the others only THINK they remember everything, but are sadly mistaken.
It's a hard section to read. The foreshadowing about Bev's father was clear (mother asking if her father ever 'touched' her, primarily) but it's still hard to deal with. What's harder is Mike's injuries. We've spent much of the novel inside his words with the aside segments, and to have him kept out of the finale is a great loss. But, with the circle already broken by Stan's death, that makes the ending even more remarkable.
But that's for later.
Normally I try to write a blog about a whole segment of IT, but so much will happen over these last pages that I need to write about as much as I can as often as I can. The movie comes out soon, so I've got to try and hurry up.
Next time, Henry stalks Bev, and the sewers draw closer.
Anyway, on to the attempted parental molestation!
Yeah, this segment is where things really start going off the rails in terms of minimally IT related horror. By that I mean stuff where IT influenced the perpetrators, but they let IT in, as Bev observes.
The section starts with the adults wrapping up story time at the library. Their palm-wounds reopen, and they share a few moments where all their memories come back (or so they think).
After leaving, Bev remembers her father finally succumbing to IT, demanding she take her pants off so he can see if she's 'intact'. He was tipped off by IT that Bev was playing with boys and smoking. Bev isn't quite sure what he means by 'intact' but can see that her father is no longer her father: he has given in to IT. She runs away, barely escaping, as townsfolk look on, uncomprehending. Once she loses her father, she is stalked by Henry Bowers.
The timeline then shifts back to Mike, alone at the library, and cleaning up. He too is being stalked by Henry Bowers. Yeah, remember when Henry escaped from Juniper Hill? Well, he's back, and he's going to kill the Losers or die trying.
They talk about IT for a few moments. Henry is armed with the switch knife IT gifted him. Mike tries to talk sense into him, pointing out that IT killed his friends 27 years ago, and will surely kill Henry when Henry is done doing ITs work. Henry almost listens, but hey, he's crazy. He attacks Mike, severing a femoral artery in Mike's leg. Mike refrains from killing Henry with a letter opener, realizing that would be doing ITs work for IT as well. He does stab Henry in the stomach, and call 911 while Henry escapes.
While possibly dying, Mike hears ITs voice on the phone, mocking him. He reflects on a few things: how all his planning has come to naught, how the Losers will be chased into the sewers just as they were before, how the others only THINK they remember everything, but are sadly mistaken.
It's a hard section to read. The foreshadowing about Bev's father was clear (mother asking if her father ever 'touched' her, primarily) but it's still hard to deal with. What's harder is Mike's injuries. We've spent much of the novel inside his words with the aside segments, and to have him kept out of the finale is a great loss. But, with the circle already broken by Stan's death, that makes the ending even more remarkable.
But that's for later.
Normally I try to write a blog about a whole segment of IT, but so much will happen over these last pages that I need to write about as much as I can as often as I can. The movie comes out soon, so I've got to try and hurry up.
Next time, Henry stalks Bev, and the sewers draw closer.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
The IT Spot: Rereading part 29
Here we've come to the last historical interlude post, where Mike Hanlon ruminates on Derry's dark past. This isn't a breather before the final finish: this is one bloody gasp before the screaming starts.
Mike interviews Egbert Thoroughgood, a logger who witnessed multiple slayings at The Silver Dollar saloon. Hmm, silver dollars again. Silver, monster killing, silver dollars. Nice, Stephen King.
In gory detail he recounts the events of the summer of 1905 where some unionizing loggers were horribly murdered (by humans, no doubt encouraged by IT). Claude Heroux, the one who escaped spent the summer burning the forest, and eventually walking into the saloon and slaying the (presumed) killers with his ax.
The strange part of this (strange even for Derry) is that the bar was FULL of other loggers drinking. Loggers who had been hunting Claudefor months ignored the screaming and the blood. They could see it, but as Thoroughgood said, it didn't seem to matter; it was like politics, and best left to people who understood political things.
This didn't stop those same loggers from lynching Claude a few hours later when IT allowed the fog to lift.
Mike's takeaway from this segment (set before the made the calls to the others) is that IT feeds on emotions, fear and faith, not physical bodies. IT may eat the bodies, but what gives IT power is raw emotion. He begins to question if, as adults, the Losers can muster the faith needed to kill IT.
What follows in the next chapters are the parallel stories of the past and present Losers being driven into the sewers for the penultimate and ultimate battles with IT. They are hard segments, and we lose some good (and terrible) characters along the way.
Buckle up.
Mike interviews Egbert Thoroughgood, a logger who witnessed multiple slayings at The Silver Dollar saloon. Hmm, silver dollars again. Silver, monster killing, silver dollars. Nice, Stephen King.
In gory detail he recounts the events of the summer of 1905 where some unionizing loggers were horribly murdered (by humans, no doubt encouraged by IT). Claude Heroux, the one who escaped spent the summer burning the forest, and eventually walking into the saloon and slaying the (presumed) killers with his ax.
The strange part of this (strange even for Derry) is that the bar was FULL of other loggers drinking. Loggers who had been hunting Claudefor months ignored the screaming and the blood. They could see it, but as Thoroughgood said, it didn't seem to matter; it was like politics, and best left to people who understood political things.
This didn't stop those same loggers from lynching Claude a few hours later when IT allowed the fog to lift.
Mike's takeaway from this segment (set before the made the calls to the others) is that IT feeds on emotions, fear and faith, not physical bodies. IT may eat the bodies, but what gives IT power is raw emotion. He begins to question if, as adults, the Losers can muster the faith needed to kill IT.
What follows in the next chapters are the parallel stories of the past and present Losers being driven into the sewers for the penultimate and ultimate battles with IT. They are hard segments, and we lose some good (and terrible) characters along the way.
Buckle up.
Monday, August 14, 2017
Stranger Times
So, normally I'd be posting about Rick and Morty. But this weekend we had rioting and death in the streets.
Literally Nazis marched in the streets of Charlottsville. One of these terrorists killed anti-protester Heather Hayer.
.
There is up-close, witness footage freely available online. I will not be linking it or looking for it, as it is horrific. The screaming and crashing is like nothing I've ever heard.
There is no upside here, but there is news; at least some of the people have been identified and fired as a result.
I won't get into the political side of things here, as that's not why I blog, but I will say fuck Nazis. And anyone unwilling to actually blame Nazis and White supremacists for this evil, who says all sides were to blame, is a middling coward.
I wish I knew this was over.
Literally Nazis marched in the streets of Charlottsville. One of these terrorists killed anti-protester Heather Hayer.
.There is no upside here, but there is news; at least some of the people have been identified and fired as a result.
I won't get into the political side of things here, as that's not why I blog, but I will say fuck Nazis. And anyone unwilling to actually blame Nazis and White supremacists for this evil, who says all sides were to blame, is a middling coward.
I wish I knew this was over.