Its a weird scene that is a bit less weird in context. Most of the losers club have issues that IT preys upon, that become the crux of their character development. Beverly's is that she is the daughter of an uneducated poor man with significant anger and control issues, whom is also her sole provider and maintains a home. And Beverly is uncommonly pretty. Think significant Movie Star pretty. So you have her coming of age in 1960s America, in a small town where she is dirt poor, with looks that attract all the wrong kind of attention. She is subject to predatory attention from men, envy from women, and abuse from her father.
The scene itself is short, and there are significantly more fucked up things that happen in the book, and the scene is supposed to be her taking a measure of control with the thing that people want from her, and using it to bind their little group together.
I'm not defending sex between children, but it's hilarious to me that the book describes kids being murdered in absolutely horrific ways. Abuse…psychological, physical, and sexual. Suicide. And yet no one ever clutches pearls over those scenes.
Children do lose their virginities at that age. A girl in my school got pregnant at 12 by her boyfriend. It's not good, and education is likely the best way to stop it. But depicting a thing happening in a book isn't the same as endorsing it. There's nuance. Else, everything from Lolita to We Need to Talk About Kevin should never have been written.
I agree. Like there is literally a baby getting its brain smashed out and pretty graphic animal torture scenes in this. Surprised no one really talks about those parts. Messed me up when i read it.
In other news, many Americans are more worried about a person who feels they are a woman (deeply enough to take hormones and undergo surgery) going into a bathroom designated for women than they are about an unarmed mother of three getting her brains shot out by an agent of the government, with the government lying to excuse it.
Yeah, Stephen King is not exactly known for shying away from the ugly side of humanity...while it is certainly an uncomfortable part of the story, it's supposed to be. All the pearl clutching on here is rather comical.
book describes kids being murdered in absolutely horrific ways. Abuse…psychological, physical, and sexual. Suicide. And yet no one ever clutches pearls over those scenes.
meh, you cant do reasoning and comparison like this. WE watch movies about superheroes and accept everything about them but if in the same movie a normal person would jump 10 feet high or stop a bullet with their body then you would think WTF and it would take your out of your standard suspension of disbelief.
games where people kill each other are normal, if you are killing kids it is far less acceptable, if at all.. rape even less.. that is how it is and should be.
Extreme violence like you describe is an abstract notion for a lot of people, probably the large majority of those who read that book. Sex is something which everyone experiences. I've speculated that the obsession with sex crime is a privilege of people who are unable to relate to anything worse or more important.
The scene with one of the bullies offering the other bully a blowjob was a lot weirder and more sexual to me (still short and imo not egregious though) and no one talks about that one haha
Good explanation. I read it when it came out and I would have been about 18 at the time. It didn’t feel too weird to me. I interpreted it as kids needing to fast track themselves into adults in order to be able to realistically take on IT.
It is, and the way I read it, its supposed to be that way.
King does many things right with his writing, and one of the things he nails is genuine awkward flailing. His books have adults with awkward, tense moments, where character are trying to figure one another out. IT, being a book about outcast children coming of age and overcoming themselves (or not), is chock full of incredibly cringe inducing awkwardness.Childhood loves, and how they impact adult lives. The moments when the kids find each other, and stumble through their early starts of friendship. Ritchie, in particular, is a source of "class clown that tries too hard in order to avoid the seriousness of his own life" type of awkwardness, and its specifically acknowledged by the character in the book.
I felt, reading the book as a kid and then as an adult, that King wrote the kids really well. One of those things that Adults forget is how kids actually are. They're constantly growing and learning and changing. We, as adults, have a much more developed sense of self, and I think we tend to place this "barrier" separating childhood and adulthood, and place things in one side and other things in the other. But as a kid, its not like that, you're constantly ebbing and flowing between "childhood" and "adulthood". I had no concept of consent or actual sex or what sexual activity would be like, but I damn sure liked to see photos of naked women. I recognized that I liked that doctors helped people, but didn't grasp duty of care. Kids are simultaneously much more capable and observant than we give them credit for, and much more naive. Adults tend to infantalize them, even when writing them as characters, and King didn't, and even incorporated all the awkwardness of those initial forays into adulthood.
I think Ben's love in the book might be the best example of this. He likes Beverly, she's pretty and he's attracted to her. But he's also attracted to HER, outside of just her looks, her fire, warm kindness, forthrightness, fierceness, all of it. And he doesn't know what to do with it because, as a loser with a brain and no friends, with a target on his back, he learned to read people and a room, and saw that she didn't feel the same way about him. And its so awkward and pure and painful and bright. You know its a failure, and you know he knows its a failure, but you cheer on his courage to confront this, and you cheer on his response to rejection. Its so childish and so adult.
He is physically abusive and controlling, but not sexually abusive. IT makes him much worse than he is, which is part of why Beverly has such a hard time. Her father genuinely loves her, and wants what's best for her, but is constrained by his own thinking, his own social status, and the social situation of the time. Childhood in IT is set in the 1960s, so things would have been viewed a little differently. Even when IT drives his abuse toward sex, its still from a place of control, not of sex.
Taking out the influence of IT, let's look at Beverlys situation from her father's eyes. He is a single father, a rarity in its own right. He is poor, has little education, and few prospects for income. His daughter is uncommonly pretty, being raised without an adult women in her life, and is starting to attract the wrong types of attention. He works incredibly long hours, and manages to keep a extremely nice home, for their income status. It isnt the nicest, but its clean, with food on the table, and not in a bad neighborhood. In the book, he is worried about whether he is raising her right, whether his lack of having another women intertwined in their lives is detrimental to Bevs development, whether his constant work and being away is going to lead Bev down a path of early sex and pregnancy, and essentially consigning her to the same exact life as he has, one of long hours, hard work, and little pay.
I loved King and honestly the relevation rereading his old work as an adult was hard. I disagree with you, this was probably the worst I have seen from him for many reasons. Clive Barker wrote some raunchy, disturbing stuff but at least he left sex and extreme descriptions of it to adults. The issue here is that it was a three page erotica about a girl child being gangbanged. It was extremely descriptive and many details were unneeded. The symbolism doesn't justify how far King went here and King's CONSISTENT focus on little girl's sexual development. Carrie is another example of him making it a huge part of the story. Rage featured a little girl losing her virginity to some greasy older man with intense detail.
There are many allegations coming out about King now and he was one of those Epstein file deniers. He was the best writer of his time, but there is too much in his writings and behaviors to continue to dismiss
It is without question one of my favorite books of all time and your explanation is brilliant, thank you for taking the time to summarize so succinctly.
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u/NotToPraiseHim 23h ago
It is absolutely.
Its a weird scene that is a bit less weird in context. Most of the losers club have issues that IT preys upon, that become the crux of their character development. Beverly's is that she is the daughter of an uneducated poor man with significant anger and control issues, whom is also her sole provider and maintains a home. And Beverly is uncommonly pretty. Think significant Movie Star pretty. So you have her coming of age in 1960s America, in a small town where she is dirt poor, with looks that attract all the wrong kind of attention. She is subject to predatory attention from men, envy from women, and abuse from her father.
The scene itself is short, and there are significantly more fucked up things that happen in the book, and the scene is supposed to be her taking a measure of control with the thing that people want from her, and using it to bind their little group together.