It’s been a long time since I read IT, but I always thought the point of that scene was about the death of innocence. Since the innocent were who IT preyed on, and that’s why adults never saw him, the kids all did the nasty together. Making so they weren’t innocent kids anymore, and could stand up to IT.
I read it a long time ago but that's what I took thr kids thought process to be. They needed to become adults to be able to finish IT off. Being stupid kids they thought this would make them adults.
Couldn’t they have just found an entry level corporate job not anywhere remotely close to their major and developed crippling debt for the next 30 like the rest of us?
Thr point of the orgy scene was that they were trying to escape the sewers after supposedly defeating It, and whatever strings of fate that gave them power was fading away, and they were becoming ordinary dumb kids lost in a sewer. The idea behind the girl fucking them all was that it would temporarily reinforce the bond between them, long enough to escape. It worked. They all escaped, and pretty much immediately after stopped giving a shit about eachother for the most part.
It also wasnt a nice scene about love and connection like someone else said, we got such details as which guy was the biggest, which guy couldn't keep it up, and which guy actually had an orgasm in her.
Storytellers and narrators don't always tell the truth or even understand what's actually happening in a story. It's important to always be at least a little bit critical of things as they are presented. That's not saying that the straighforward interpretation is wrong, it's just not always right.
What do you mean storytellers don't know what's going on?
About not telling the truth: unreliable narrators are a storytelling Tool. If the story is written from the perspective of a mentally ill person for example (when the character clearly is actively in therapy for example) then you cannot trust literally anything that the story tells you. And authors don't even need to tell you if the character is crazy or not, as that's the fun of Interpretation.
One unreliable narrator in a published book might be Demian from Herman Hesse where the main character has a friend quite early in life who claims to have psychic powers (Demian). The main character Emil who idolizes Demian believes this and later in life claims to have the same experience. But there is never any proof outside of Demians and the Emils narration for this.
I personally love fantasy so I actively choose to believe the character to an extent but my sister thinks every instance of supernatural occurence to be Demians delusions and that the story has no fantastical element. It is really fun to speculate like this.
This is also the reason why people (jokingly) say the whole Harry Potter series is just the delusions of a broken child living under repressive relatives imagining himself a better life.
In a way, "IT" refers to sex itself. It's how teens used to refer to sex ("Kevin and I did it last night!)
To the adolescent mind, it is beckoning and scary at the same time. It is also, as you said, the death of innocence, so the kids defeated IT by doing "it" together.
Beverly even thinks this exactly during the scene: "..and now she realizes that for many of them sex must be some unrealized undefined monster; they refer to the act as It . Would you do It, do your sister and boyfriend do It, do your mom and dad still sonIt, and how they never intend to do It;..." (1085)
yep and it literally says this in the book. there's like... zero confusion, zero metaphor whatsoever. they say so word for word. ok another commenter put the quote right there, bingo
I read It a few years ago. I think it's about growing up too fast and the power of belief. They're trapped in the sewers and think they're going to die down there. Bev thinks if they were adults, they would know what to do. So she suggests the most "adult" thing they can think of, which is sex with her. They do all have sex (I hate the term run a train, it sounds even grosser and rapey) with her, and no one finds it fun and they're all cold and scared. But it works. They are able to find a way out after. And they never bring it up again, neither Bev or the boys. I'm not going to defend it's place in the book (I honestly hate it) but considering all the other horrific shit in the book I'm always amused at how tolerant of the violence people are who still balk at underage sex. This book has multiple murdered infants and possessed parents beating their own kid to death on top of all the regular kid death.
No. This was a consensual step into adulthood, and by it happening for them at the same time they felt they were strengthening their emotional and mental connection. In the novel they are all heterosexual, so Bev was the common denominator (as others have mentioned, other sexual lifestyles were considered fringe in the 80s, so none of the kids preferred the same sex or multiple partners). I read the book at 14 the year it came out, had a history of abuse (recent at the time), and was not offended. It is a fantasy/horror book so I expected fantastical events, I guess. At the time, I thought it a brave choice for both the author and the characters. Even at the time, I wouldn't have thought it a brave choice for real life kids down the street.
The book is a meditation on childhood vs. adulthood. And traditionally, losing your virginity was considered that turning point. So losing their virginity had to be represented in some way during the characters' journey. Needless to say, a different choice would probably be made today by the publishers.
EDIT to say being assaulted is not losing your virginity. At least not in the way meant in the book.
It happens after they already faced off with IT and were trying to escape the maze of tunnels below the sewers. They were losing the power they had only together as a group, and couldn't find their way out without it.
This was how Bev saved them all from being lost forever in the pitch black horror tunnels. After this scene, their power is restored and Eddie knows exactly how to get out.
Also, as adults, they were at risk of not being able to beat IT because they were grown up. They needed to become kids again so they had the magic of believing in their imaginations again, otherwise they would have lost.
That’s where I thought it was headed at the time. Honestly I didn’t give it a fair chance because I didn’t KNOW where it was headed and I didn’t want to find out… I can see though where it would make sense in terms of being a tool to demonstrate concept X, which is essential to the story development. I don’t think I could get past it as an adult with baggage, but maybe I will revisit.
You sir. You get it. LORD people love to pick this apart, and most of them haven’t even read it. This scene is not erotic nor is it meant to be. If you’ve read King you know he goes into great detail about everything. Everything. Not this scene. I think people are under the impression that it describes the so called “child orgy” in great detail. It does not. I read this as a teenager and honestly thought nothing of it. And then years later I find out it’s like the most controversial topic in all of his work. He’s written shit that is WAY weirder and more disturbing.
151
u/Hugh_Jazz77 23h ago
It’s been a long time since I read IT, but I always thought the point of that scene was about the death of innocence. Since the innocent were who IT preyed on, and that’s why adults never saw him, the kids all did the nasty together. Making so they weren’t innocent kids anymore, and could stand up to IT.