My Reservation about It

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guido tkp

Well-Known Member
Oct 1, 2009
2,632
480
outside the dome
i have no more wish for you to be silent as i would i...or any other, mjs...i would find it a poor palaver, indeed, if the most amount of voices could not be evenly heard 'cross the campfire: a good discussion requires, it seems, a vast sea of ideas to float a better boat...

or..at least...if only to keep the wolves at bay...

either way...no worries, mate

i actually do like what he was going for...but for me...it got lost in all the same sort of gobbledegoop he, imho, too often mires his endings in...and i'd add that i felt similarily towards BOB, the stand, UTD, Duma, LS...and a few others

for some of us...quite a few books, as GP mentions (but for probably different reasons: i loved everything about the book Cujo), might have had 3-4-500 pages of sheer storytelling brilliance...only to be let down by some odd renderings at the ending
 
M

mjs9153

Guest
Understood..beauty is in the eye of the beholder,yes? This book,and the Stand,Insomnia,The Shining,and so many of his short stories are favorites,while many did not measure up for me,in particular,I didn't care for Lisey's Story,Desperation,Gerald's Game,From a Buick 8,etc..you can't please everybody every time,that is for sure..
 

Kurben

The Fool on the Hill
Apr 12, 2014
9,682
65,192
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sweden
Wow, intense thread here... Lol. Nothing wrong with that!:) While I agree that the films adaptation of the spider was cheesy (I'm chalking it up to the special effects limitations of the time) for me It's scariest form was when one of the losers (been a while since I've read it so forget who) was wailing by an abandoned house and saw it as a hobo who propositioned for a blowjob and then morphed into penny wise/it...something about his tongue lashing all about just erred the hell out of me- can't get it out of my head when I think about it...therefore Mr. King is doing his job right!!!
That was Eddies personal horror as they called it in the book.
 
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Mr. Gray Robert

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
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Dallas, Texas
It is perhaps easier to explain what I mean by saying what it isn't (or what it appeared to me that it wasn't).

It never struck me as horrifying. It was malicious, murderous, and generally ill-disposed to us ordinary folks, but I never found it even slightly horrifying (as opposed to the horrific drain-dwelling manifestation as embodied on screen by Tim Curry) perhaps because, as delivered on the page, it was altogether too
alien
and remote for me to identify with it as a threat. There seemed to be an absence of physicality in the final manifestation, which meant that it wan't visceral.
To me the fact that IT's final "physical" form was
a pregnant female scared me more than anything!!! Just think of the possibilities, e.g. Pennywise Lives.
.
 

sam peebles

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2008
2,080
509
Massachusetts
I love the ending to this novel.

I even love the
cosmic spider, but even more than that, I love Bill's spirit being ripped through the sewers, tossed into the sky, and dragged kicking and screaming across the universe. That is some epic imagery. I loved the shell of the turtle, more of a husk now and covered in spider webs (What is it that It says about the turtle? "Choked on a galaxy or two a couple centuries back." Something like that.)

Anyhoo, I loved everything about this ending--King gives us the physical form of a spider, always making me think of Ungoliant, and he gives us the incomprehensible madness of the Deadlights and the Ritual of Chud. You can't please everyone all the time, but I think King tried damned hard in this case, giving readers two options. I personally like the enormity of the Deadlights and Ritual of Chud aspect better, but c'mon! He also gave us a giant chittering spider! He gave us the grounded violence of the silver slugs and coupled that with the spirituality of the Native American ritual.

Haven't read it in a while, and my memory might be off on some of the details above.

Discussion about the ending always reminds me of a Richard Matheson anecdote. I think it's Matheson, but it could've been Harlan Ellison. He was working on Star Trek the Motion Picture, and came up with the ending of the Enterprise reaching the end of the universe and coming to a blank wall. They torpedo the wall, and behind its crumbling surface appears the eyes of God, staring back at them.

Upon hearing this Gene Roddenberry reportedly said: "No, no, no! We need something bigger!"

Matheson supposedly threw his hands up and quit.
 
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César Hernández-Meraz

Wants to be Nick, ends up as Larry
May 19, 2015
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Aguascalientes, Mexico
About Its final physical shape...

I think the shape is just part of what frightens the heroes. By that moment, they have gone through a lot of perils, both out and in the tunnels. The door itself marks the last barrier to Its chamber. Once they cross it, everything would be frightening to the extreme.

The light emanated by It would not be very natural, and it would help to make things look strange.

The "feeling" inside that place would be too heavy. You know how some houses which have been closed for some time make you feel like the air is old; now imagine how old this air must be, with It living and feeding there.

The web with the corpses. I think most of us would freak out by seeing a murder victim's corpse, even if it is still well preserved. But seeing so many mutilated and decomposing bodies, imagining what must have been done to them, would be a big hit to one's sanity.

The full realization (even if they already knew this) that It has been living below their town even thousands of years before the town existed. Just knowing about it would not be preparation enough, I think. Once there, they may face the reality and see what it really means to go against an ancient evil, for whom we are nothing but lesser beings who can only hope to live (perhaps) one hundred years.

The spider itself. Just seeing as a big-sized spider does not do It justice, in my opinion. It should be something that dominates the view. Something that makes you not even immediately realize the webs and the corpses are there. It is also evident to 10 and 11 year old kids that It is pregnant. I am not sure I can tell if a spider is pregnant just by looking at it, so I believe in this it case was more noticeable somehow that It was carrying something alive inside It.

Something that could have worked against It in the end. It is very powerful. Yes, this caused It to be overconfident, but there surely was a reason for this confidence. I think that if It had used physical attacks against the kids as Its first option, they would have been obliterated. Of course, It would enjoy breaking them more. Also, when It already fears the existence of the Other, a simple physical victory would not stop Its fear. However, all of this means that the heroes were facing a creature that could kill them in seconds, and that was powerful enough to do something much worse than that.

I go for all of that when the final door is crossed. So it is not only Its final form that causes the greatest shock, but all of this at the same time. Even if It were a small doll instead of a spider, all of the other elements would still be there (the same or with some variations) and would cause the same fear in the protagonists.