It By Stephen King Fear Essay

Fear In Stephen King’s acclaimed epic, IT, King brings the reader along with him as he examines the concept of fear and the carnage that lies in its wake. The story all surrounds a town in Maine named Derry, a place shrouded in a dark cloud of evil. Every 27 years the beast known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown awakens to wreak havoc on the residents of the small provenance, more specifically the young children who live there. King divides the novel into two halves, 1958 and 1985. The novel opens with the murder of George Denbrough in 1958 then jumps forward 27 years to tell of the re-awakening of It. Each chapter tells of a different member of the “Losers Club”, the band of misfits who fought of Pennywise the first time, as an adult, receiving

King perfects this age-old writing tactic and uses it to keep the reader in a constant state of unease, with little to no idea as to how the situation will play out. King will often lead the reader down a certain path only to pull a complete 180 on them and will turn the story on its head, all for the purpose of keeping the reader on their feet. He does this most profoundly with Beverly Marsh. Beverly had been abused by her dad so in her mind it made sense to her that she would eventually marry an abusive husband, and so she did with Tom Rogan. King goes out of his way to establish the history of abuse and mistreatment Beverly has suffered at the hands of the belligerent Tom and he makes it seem like we are about to bare witness to another vicious beating via belt after Tom sees Bev smoking a cigarette. Bev had been trained by Tom to not smoke cigarettes after he told her of his disdain for the nasty habit by punching her in the face. Ever since then he beat her out of practice and she hadn’t touched one in months. But after the call that caused all the old horrors she had repressed for so long to resurface, all she could do was reach for that little wrap of reassurance to find a little scrap of stability in her crumbling illusion of a life. Tom saw this as open defiance against him and it didn’t help that Bev immediately went to go back her bag to leave. Tom got his belt

Try as you may fear will still find you now matter how fast you run. King definitely accentuates this point and establishes the debilitating effect that it has wrought upon the lives of the Losers Club as they spiral back into the pit of despair they had all just finished crawling out of. In seeing this the reader is left there, just as helpless as the poor souls being tormented by the demonic Pennywise. This is a novel that has had a heightened effect on me. Not only has it enthralled me in the mythos of Stephen King, it has also scared me, something I had not thought possible in a