We are All It: Stephen King, Pennywise, and the Horrors of Hegemony

[TW: This post contains discussions of domestic violence, racism, and homophobia.]

[SPOILER WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Stephen King’s IT, and as such may reference upcoming plot points in HBO’s IT: Welcome to Derry.]

In light of the recent IT: Welcome to Derry TV show, I have decided to go back and re-read the iconic doorstop novel that started it all. Stephen King’s IT is quite possibly the prototypical Stephen King text: A writer protagonist, a small town in Maine that hides a dark secret, a cosmic horror beyond comprehension, a group of ramshackle pre-teens thrust into situations they cannot understand. The book is filled with references to Lovecraft and Poe, classic rock like the Grateful Dead, and obscure 50s TV shows from King’s own childhood. The book gives us our introduction to Derry, Maine, which goes on to become a staple of King’s later works and acts as a lynchpin in his legendary Dark Tower series. Aside from some incredibly questionable choices towards the end of the story, it might be the perfect book to introduce a newcomer to King’s oeuvre. 

What has stood out to me this time, however, is the town of Derry itself. Throughout the book we hear adults repeatedly say that something “ain’t right” with Derry. There seems to be a pall over the town, some kind of cursedness that has seeped into the lives of everyone who lives there. 

These people are correct, of course. There is something wrong with Derry. 

It’s in America. 

The Problem with Derry 

This is perhaps an inflammatory statement, and is actually much more broad than it initially appears. I am a native of the UK, and I can assure you there are many towns here that have a whiff of Derry, Maine about them. I do not refer to the subterranean spider clown that infests the sewers¹, but to the general “ain’t right”edness of the town. 

In the interstitial periods between the monstrous It’s resurgence, Derry enters a sort of holding pattern. During these 26-year periods, life in Derry continues as normal, which is to say it is replete with violence, tragedy, and misery. An ironworks suffers a fatal cataclysm that kills 102 people, most of whom are children. A black-owned bar and restaurant is torched by members of a white supremacist group. Children are abused by their parents. Gay men are beaten and left for dead. Bullies enact acts of sadism that would make the cast of Salò blush. 

Life as normal. 

The Hegemony

Hegemony - Noun. Defined as influence or predominance, especially by one state or social group over others. 

The acts of violence that haunt Derry are all hinted to be the work of It, a sort of psychic corruption triggered by its presence. However, these acts are not that remarkable when viewed with hindsight. Yes, Derry has an unusually high murder rate, but when compared to similarly developed and populous nations, so does the US. With the exception of the Kitchener Ironworks tragedy, all of the major tragedies that have befallen Derry can be linked back to the institutional violence of that era. The Black Spot - a restaurant owned by and catering to black men - is set alight in 1930, at the height of white supremacy in the United States. Adrian Mellon, a gay man who was living in Derry with his partner Don Hagarty, is violently attacked and subsequently killed during the heyday of the AIDs crisis, a period of staggering and institutional homophobia in the US. Little Eddie Kaspbrak's mother is driven half-mad by hypochondria, by the thought of losing her son to the horrors of disease and disability². Several children are abused by their fathers, victims of a patriarchal system that prioritises the security and satisfaction of adult men over the children they care for³.

Through the course of the novel we learn that It, the creature, is an entity from beyond time and space, whose arrival resulted in a mass extermination of the region’s native wildlife several millennia ago. It, the creature, feeds on the fear and terror of its victims. In Derry - in America - it could not have found a better hunting ground. 

The truly terrifying thing about these violent acts is how they go unnoticed by the population of Derry. The people of Derry will see bullies terrorising their fellow kids, fathers beating their daughters, mothers domineering over their sons, whole families wiped out from within, and simply shrug and conclude that “something ain’t right”. This is, again, implied to be It’s influence on the town, but is also reminiscent of the general culture of apathy we in western society possess when it comes to hegemonic injustice. King taps into an uncomfortable truth here: We all know what’s going on, don’t we? We all know that something ain’t right. It’s just easier if we don’t care. 

Conclusion

As I have stated earlier in this post, this institutional violence isn’t unique to America. I am English, and my country has a long and proud tradition of being unmitigatedly evil to everyone it encounters. This is not even to say that this is a problem of western society: It is a problem of power, of institutions, of hegemony. 

The hegemonic horror of mid-century American society acts as a fertile jungle for It to stalk through. It shrouds itself in horror and, like a warship covered in dazzle camouflage, it becomes hard to tell what horrors belong to It and what horrors belong to the society it hides within. If It had landed in the United Kingdom, it would have resurfaced during acts of skinhead violence against immigrants during the 1980s. If it had been present in 2001, It would have feasted on a rising tide of Islamophobia in the wake of 9/11. And I believe that, if It awoke today, it would most certainly have had its fill of terror. 

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¹ Though, having visited Milton Keynes, I cannot say that for certain.

² I've touched upon this in a previous blog post, but as a disabled person it is very clear that the one thing the hegemony fears more than anything else, it's becoming disabled.

³ We also see throughout the book that these acts of violence are not limited to Derry. After all, Beverly Marsh is placed in a repeated cycle of abuse when she marries Tom Rogan, a violent and domineering man all too reminiscent of her father.