What Makes IT Stephen Kings Scariest Story (Not Pennywise)

What Makes IT Stephen King’s Scariest Story (Not Pennywise)

Why is Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT considered his scariest work? The real reason goes beyond the infamous clown Pennywise. Let’s take a look.

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What Makes IT Stephen Kings Scariest Story (Not Pennywise)

Although Stephen King has written a long list of horror stories, the one widely regarded as his scariest is IT, and not exactly because of Pennywise. Stephen King’s career in the realm of horror literature began in 1967 when he sold his first short story, “The Glass Floor”, to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967, but it wasn’t until 1973 that his first novel was published: Carrie, which was actually his fourth novel but the first one to be published. Then came Salem’s Lot in 1975 followed by The Shining in 1977, which helped establish King as a preeminent author in the horror genre.

Since then, Stephen King has explored different fears, characters, scenarios, and even supernatural abilities in his stories, but there’s one that readers haven’t been able to forget, and one that even those who are not familiar with his work know what it is about: IT. Published in 1986, IT tells the story of seven children self-named “The Losers Club” and living in Derry, Maine, who come across an evil, shape-shifting entity living in the sewers. This creature, who the Losers refer to as “IT”, has the ability to take on the shape of the fears of its victims in order to hunt them, and its preferred shape is that of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who has become the main image of the story.

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The novel also covers part of the adult years of the Losers as they return to Derry when IT awakens 27 years later and starts to feed, and while children are IT’s favorite victims as their fears are less complex than those of adults, it still managed to terrorize them as adults. Although IT wasn’t well-received upon its release, with many criticizing its length and drawing controversy for its sexual content, the novel is now regarded as one of King’s masterpieces and his scariest story, and while Pennywise is one character hard to forget and ignore (more so after having Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård playing the role in the 1990 two-part miniseries and Andy Muschietti’s IT movies, respectively), he isn’t the main reason why IT is so scary.

Aside from the evil, shape-shifting creature who can take any shape to torture its victims, IT deals with themes like the loss of childhood innocence, grief, hate, abuse, trauma, neglect, and of course, fear. All the Losers go through neglect and some sort of abuse in their respective homes – for example, Eddie’s mother is incredibly overprotective, Bev is sexually abused by her father, and Bill’s parents have pretty much forgotten about him after Georgie’s death, and not one adult in Derry seems to care that kids suddenly go missing and that their children are scared and bruised. The novel also sees some examples of hate crimes, most notably the death of Adrian Mellon, a gay young man who is first attacked by three teenagers for being gay and thrown off a bridge, where IT, in the shape of Pennywise, finds him and kills him.

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Another thing that makes IT Stephen King’s scariest story is the many interpretations that readers have given over the years, offering different perspectives of the same story. These are mostly about the themes of trauma and abuse, and among the most disturbing interpretations is one that says IT is all about sexual abuse, with the creature representing abusers and its lifecycle representing that of child abuse, as it disappears from some time only to come back, and abused children often repress those memories, as seen in the novel when the adult Losers can’t remember anything from that part of their childhood, including their friends.

Of course, an evil clown also adds a lot to the scare factor of IT, especially as clowns are already somewhat scary on their own, and the idea of being chased by an evil clown who wants to kill you and who can take any other shape in a second is definitely enough to scare any reader. While IT might not be that scary to some, truth is that it is one of Stephen King’s best and scariest works, and you have to take a closer look at the story to find that the real source of horror isn’t the clown at all.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/stephen-king-it-scariest-horror-story-pennywise-themes/

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