LITERATURE

WHAT IS IT?

Stephen King's brutal attack on inhumanity

By Mae Ware

The Original It

You wouldn’t think that Stephen King, master of horror, would also be the master of dealing with difficult topics like racism, child abuse, etc., but the truth is he’s a master at giving shape to what we barely can say. His 1986 novel, It, is a perfect example, as he shoves raw image after raw image into the reader’s mind with all the subtlety of a jackhammer attacking a flea. King’s books take an unfiltered look at difficult topics, showing his audience that a fictional monster is nothing compared to the horrors humans inflict on one another. There are severe forms of violence that are impossible to forget and these scenes force us to ask, what really is the source of the novel’s terror: monsters or people. Every scene seems to stick in your head no matter how important to the story it is, and that’s because of the way King approaches fear and horror. He takes mythical monsters and gives them power over real world terrors. As terrifying as it is, it’s only as terrifying as what people do to other people.

1: Abuse (sexual/physical/psychological)

I’ve read IT a number of times and I’m always struck by how Elfrida Marsch knows that her husband is abusing her daughter, Beverly, one of the six members of the Loser’s Club, the heroes of the novel. Six of the kids in the Losers Club are able to go home and put a door between themselves and the horrors they are facing. Beverly is the only one out of the group that is forced to face a monster in her own home.

The Losers Club

Elfrida Marsh is a working mother who is so caught up in her work that she has little or no time to be a mother. She does not do anything to actively stop the abuse her husband inflicts on their daughter, until Beverly goes through puberty and she asks her if Al has ever touched her. Beverly is confused by the question, which is a masterful move by King. Instead of clarifying the plot, King gives it horrifying symbolic force. We want her to say, yes, he is, help me, but instead she misunderstands the possibility for salvation and ends up in a situation where the horror can’t stop. It’s King’s ability to define what is horrific rather than resolve the terror in the plot that makes It so effective.

And so, this might be the first rule to King’s special talent for the horrific: we might be able to escape from a monster, but we can’t escape our daily lives.

2.

An interesting note to add is that the novel is the only version where Elfrida Marsh is alive. In the 1990 mini-series she is not mentioned once. There is no hint of Beverly’s mother being in her life at all, and it is even more obvious when the series hints at the possibility of Al Marsh’s crimes. In the 2017 and 2019 film adaptations of IT they specifically state that Mrs.Marsh is dead and Mr. Marsh appears to blame Beverly for her death. Especially in the film version, there are clear hints of sexual abuse. So, why? Why is Mrs.Marsh taken out of the films entirely? Why is the sexual abuse amplified while the physical abuse stays the same?

Al Marsh

The screenwriters seem to believe that the absence of Elfrida Marsh is a logical explanation for Al Marsh’s behavior. This is crazy and horribly poor thinking, and yet in both adaptations that’s what we get. Abuse and sex are huge taboos in American culture, so I believe that by getting rid of Elfrida Marsh it was a way to make the abuse seem “okay”. If Elfrida were there the audience would be screaming about how she needed to help her daughter rather than stand idly by. The book’s more terrifying, because the hope for change is absolutely and totally ineffective. It’s one thing to have no hope; it’s another thing to have hope and have it cruelly dashed for no reason but sheer neglect.

3

We all know the infamous child orgy at the end of the book. Whether you have read it or not, it’s a well-known and much-discussed scene. But did you know that Beverly is the one to initiate it? So the question is, as a plot point: does she start the orgy as a way of working through her own abuse? The answer is tricky. Because one way of looking at it is yes, she resolves one form of anxiety with another, except that she’s in control. But in another way, no, she isn’t abusive, only highly suggestive in a sexual way, and the other kids go along. And so again, King is brilliant at moving us along difficult issues in almost purely symbolic ways. Was it due to the sexual trauma? In the book King describes how Beverly heard her parents having sex every night, but does it become a motivation for everything that she does?

All the Beverly Marshes

People also seem to think that Beverly’s character is all about reclaiming sexuality. She is looked down on in Derry due to rumors about her being, for lack of better word, a whore. Having this scene where Beverly is reclaiming this title for herself is disturbing, but powerful. At the end of the day, is King playing games with childhood sexual abuse? Doubtful. Was it a fucked up way of showing love between friends? Absolutely.

4

While he is pondering how to beat her, Tom Rogan (Beverly’s abusive husband), reveals how he was abused as a child by his mother. He seems to revert into being an outraged child while Beverly packs her bag, repeating to himself that it is, “better to be the whupper than the whupped”. While in this regressed state, Tom reveals “I’ve got to give you a whuppin” is a phrase he took from his mother and repeated it to Beverly any time he felt she needed to be “taught a lesson”. Tom seems to be King’s way of showing how abuse as a child can lead to becoming the abuser as an adult. Again, with all of King, the answer is never simple; or put another way, the answer is obvious and then doubtful, problematic, or not entirely right. But not entirely wrong either.

5

Eddie and Dorsey Corcoran were two brothers that went to the same school as the Losers club and were abused by their stepfather, Richard Macklin, maliciously and without warning. After accidentally letting the screen door slam shut behind him, Eddie’s stepfather throws him into a coat rack and for the next two weeks he pees blood. Dorsey is the younger of the two and is soon after killed by Macklin after having his head caved in with a hammer. After running away, Eddie encounters IT in the form of Dorsey. When he tries to run away, IT turns into The Gillman (The Creature from the Lake). IT strangles the young boy and tears off his head. What I loved about this particular part of the book, no matter how gruesome the abuse and murders are, is that Macklin is arrested for the murder of Dorsey and is under suspicion for the disappearance of Eddie.

Missing Eddie Cochran

Chapter 6 starts out with this fact, bringing in excerpts from the Derry News. The excerpts go on for seven pages, showing the investigation, trial, sentence, and eventual suicide of Macklin. Before we read about Eddie’s first and last run in with IT, Macklin tells the court, “I beat them both…I loved them but I beat them. I don’t know why, any more than I know why Monica (the boys’ mother) let me '' (pg 243). Was Macklin suffering from the “sickness” IT brought the town? Was he and many other adults more violent due to IT? Or is this another scapegoat readers use to give meaning to the horrors these children were forced to endure from those that were meant to protect them?

From my perspective, Macklin was a savage man that beat on two helpless children at the drop of a pin. His rambling to the court on how much he loved Eddie and Dorsey was a tactic to gain sympathy from the town. In the end Macklin claims he sees Eddie and I believe his suicide is the result of fear rather than guilt.

6

King shows all forms of abuse. Physical, sexual, and psychological as well as familial and spousal abuse. What I feel is commendable is the range at which he does this. For the Corcoran kids, it is abuse from a step parent. What is interesting about this family is how Mrs.Corcoran was never abused nor did she fully take part in the abuse. After Dorsey’s death, King states how, “Eddie had never seen the old man use his fists on her, though. Eddie didn’t think he quite dared. He had saved his fists for Eddie and Dorsey in the old days, and now that Dorsey was dead, Eddie got his little brother’s share as well as his own '' (p 246). This is different from Beverly’s situation where her father beat both her and her mother.

Why is this different? I believe it shows the real world of abuse and how we too often see it as symbolic, horrific, and not quite of our world.

7: Why the Clown Matters

And he does matter?

I can understand bringing in the concept of how clowns are historically scary, which leads to Pennywise being the main form IT takes. But each kid that encounters IT alone (or even with another person as we see with two young boys that die together) they each see something completely different. Why do they see different things? Why is it that if they encounter IT more than once they see the clown? Is the clown a loss of childhood “purity”? Where something as terrifying as a person covered in white and bright red makeup seems fun?

The clown comes out in a multitude of the monsters that we see. The colors and buttons on the giant bird for Mike, balloons on a bird’s wings by Mike’s father years before, and a clown dressed as a farmer that was in a crowd that killed the Bradley Gang. Ben also sees Pennywise transform into a mummy during his first encounter with IT.

What is truly terrifying about the clown is that he becomes the scapegoat and a figure the audience can focus on. The number one thing people remember about the book or the film adaptations is Pennywise who dances, tortures and kills kids. Why do we forget the real life horrors that are depicted? Because we are too afraid to look reality in the eye. The true villain of the story isn’t a shapeshifting entity from space, the true villain is people and the atrocities we commit against one another.

©Mae Ware and the CCA Arts Review