It (novel)

It (Original title: It ) is a horror - novel of the American writer Stephen King . It tells the story of seven children who have to defend themselves against a clique of violent boys and together take up the fight against an unnamed monster ( Es ) (often in the form of a clown named Pennywise) that kills children in the fictional town of Derry . The novel also tells how the now grown up children take up the fight with the monster again.

The novel was first published in German in 1986.

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The novel is set in the fictional town of Derry in the US state of Maine . The seven main characters Bill Denbrough, Mike Hanlon, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, Stan Uris, Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak met in 1958 at the age of about eleven. What they have in common is that each of them is socially discriminated: Bill stutters, Mike is black, Ben is overweight, Beverly is poor, Stan is Jewish, Richie is cheeky and wears glasses and Eddie is short and sickly. They call themselves The Losers Club. They band together because they are not accepted by the other children. They are particularly troubled by Henry Bowers, a twelve-year-old boy who likes to beat up small children - but recently Henry has been losing his mind and it's no longer just brawls.

At the same time, children are being murdered or disappearing in the city. One of the victims was Bill's younger brother Georgie. The children are horrified to discover that this series of murders is repeated every 27 years. These series of murders always have their sad climax, with many, sometimes hundreds, people dying at once: For example, in the fire in 1929/30 in the Black Spot, in which many black people died, or 25 years earlier when the ironworks during an Easter egg hunt in the building exploded, killing around 80 children. It is most powerful weapon that it can take the form of the biggest fears of its victims. Each of the losers' clubs has a personal encounter with it. However, each of the seven children experiences it as a different figure. Mike sees a huge bird that attacks him while exploring the ruins of the former ironworks, Beverly hears voices at home from the drainpipe of the sink and suddenly a huge fountain of blood spurts out at her, but her parents cannot see it. Stan has an encounter inside the notorious Derry water tower, Eddie Kaspbrak sees It as a leper under the veranda of the cursed Derry house, Richie Tozier and Bill notice a photo in the album of dead Georgie moving and Bill's fingers hurt as he puts his hand in it. Ben sees It outside on a dark, stormy winter evening as a mummy, and Richie and Bill see a werewolf under the porch of the cursed house Eddie said about, who even chases them for a bit while Bill and Richie try to close Silver on Bill's bike to flee. They face horror and it meets them in the Derry sewers. There, they found, was it his home. Worst of all, It can take the form of the greatest fear of the person it is attacking. Most of the time, it appears in the form of the clown Pennywise , because this is attractive to children.

In the sewers they injure It and disappear, mistakenly believing that they have killed It . However, they swear to come back if It should ever come up again. As adults, they live all over the world. Bill becomes a successful writer, Ben becomes an architect, Beverly fashion designer, Richie radio host, Stan management consultant and Eddie runs a successful chauffeur-driven company. They all have their childhood largely forgotten or repressed, suggesting the encounter with it is due. Only Mike stayed in Derry and was far less successful than the others. He is the head of the city library and follows the trail that Es draws through the city's history. Since he also remembers the events much better, he also looks older than the others.

It seems to resurface in 1985 , first through the murder of a homosexual man. Then children start disappearing again. Mike calls his friends to finally defeat It . All but Stan are returning to Derry - he cut his wrists in the bathtub after Mike called. At the same time, Es tries to manipulate the aged Henry Bowers into killing the members of the “Losers Club” one after the other. He stabs Mike Hanlon in the main artery, whereupon he ends up in the hospital. In the unsuccessful attempt to kill Eddie Kaspbrak, Henry himself is killed. Five of the rest of the “Losers Club” look in the sewers for It, which has been preparing hatefully for this confrontation for 27 years. After a bitter struggle with united forces, they kill It. Bill rips out Es 's heart, but before it dies, Es bites off one of Eddie Kaspbrak's arm, causing Eddie to bleed to death. With the death of Es , everyone is rapidly forgetting about the events and Derry itself. The members of the Losers' Club even forget any memory of their old friends. The novel ends with this process of forgetting.

Edition history

The first German translation was published in Edition Phantasia in 1986 . Shortly thereafter the novel was published by Heyne Verlag and as a licensed edition by Bertelsmann , where it became a bestseller . He was nominated for the prestigious World Fantasy Award in 1987 .

World premiere in the Phantasia Edition

It was published in Germany in 1986 in a limited luxury edition (full leather strap with red velvet slipcase) numbered to 250 copies and another 30 in Roman numerals by Edition Phantasia . This total of 280 copies appeared as the world's first edition before the US edition.

Translations into German

A complete translation was not available on the German book market until 2011: The first translation by Alexandra von Reinhardt was an abridged edition of the original; Even the revision and partial new translation by Joachim Körber did not contain the entire original text. However, the new edition from 2011 contains the complete text.

main characters

Bill Denbrough

Freckled boy William "Stutter-Bill" Denbrough is the leader of the "Losers Club". He was sick with the flu and was in bed when his younger brother George was killed by Es . Since he made a boat out of paper for him and George Elmer Denbrough never came home from the boat excursion, he blames himself for his brother's death. His parents have been petrified since the accident and fall into self-pity instead of worrying about the remaining boy. So Bill fled to his friends. He is very brave, clever and therefore has many admirers, including Beverly. He takes the initiative and leads his troops to victory in the fight against evil and also against Henry Bowers. Bill leaves town for reasons not mentioned and becomes a writer. His success seems predetermined, as does the other five who left Derry. He marries the actress Audra Phillips, who looks very much like a certain person: Beverly Marsh. Even in the present, Bill takes the wheel in the fight against It . This time he has to accept the loss of Stan and Eddie; In addition, his wife Audra is led into the dwelling of Es by Beverly's husband Tom, whom Es uses as a tool , and then loses all emotions and madness. But in the end Bill remains the winner - with a rapid ride across Derry on his old bike Silver , he finally frees Audra from her catatonic rigidity.

Mike Hanlon

Mike is the last member of the club. He is taken in when, while on the run from Henry Bowers, he runs into the others who immediately come to his aid. Mike is marginalized because of the color of his skin. In addition, his curiosity, especially about the gritty aspects of Derry's past, makes himself unpopular with the adult “silent cartel”. But this doesn't bother the club members at all and they take him into their group right away. Mike is the only one who doesn't leave Derry. He becomes the library director of Derry. He also keeps a record of the city's past and the atrocities that have taken place there. It is also he who, after much deliberation, decides to call the members of the club back and remind them of the task they still have to do. The second time Mike doesn't go down the sewer, because Henry Bowers was also called back by Es and chased on the losers. Henry seriously injures Mike, but Mike survives his injuries, while Henry is eventually killed by Eddie.

Ben Hanscom

Before meeting the others, Ben is a loner because he's fat and everyone laughs at and ridicules him, including some adults. He is also traumatized by the loss of his father, who has been missing since the Korean War. The boy often spends his free time in the library, which Mike later takes over. This makes him very smart and thus the brain in the club. Adults generally liked him because he was polite, considerate, quiet, and sometimes very amusing. For precisely these reasons, most of the children did not like him (p. 196 of the Heyne paperback edition). Ben is not only particularly clever, but also madly in love with Beverly. This is expressed, for example, in a haiku that he writes to her on the last day of school before the summer holidays and sends it anonymously. He too left Derry to become a famous architect. He's also lost weight from being insulted by his coach in his high school years and looks very athletic as an adult.

Beverly Marsh

Beverly is the only girl in the club. She is very poor and suffers from her father, who is very bossy and strict and who often beats her up. Trapped in a vicious circle of total reverence and smoldering hatred for him, she is unable to defend herself. Like the others, she finds refuge in the community of the “Losers Club”. Besides, she's a very pretty girl and not only Ben adores her. She later married Tom Rogan and became the head of a fashion company. Tom is very similar to her father and he also raises his hand against her if she does not follow the "rules of the game" imposed on her. When she gets back to Derry, she first has an affair with Bill and after the "job done" she and Ben become a couple.

In the 18th edition from 1992 by Heyne Verlag , her husband's name is Tom Huggins, which probably means that her last name is also Huggins.

Richie Tozier

Richard "Schandmaul" Tozier is the punch in the losers club. He wears glasses and has a line in store for every situation, which often gets him into trouble. He is very fond of imitating voices, which his friends often don't do that well. But later he becomes a radio presenter and his sayings and voice imitations become his trademark. When Mike calls him, he has no idea who Mike is at first, but gradually the repressed memories come back and he immediately goes to Derry. Without him, Bill would have failed in the second fight in Pennywise's brood chamber.

Eddie Kaspbrak

Eddie, also known as Edward Kaspbrak or Eds , is a Methodist and asthmatic. His mother is constantly worried about him, funnels him with medicine, and she doesn't want him to mess with the other children either. But although he is very sickly and small, he has a lot of courage. Especially in the presence of William Denbrough, he is bursting with confidence. As an adult, he runs a successful chauffeur company. He marries a woman named Myra McCandless. This is very similar to his mother, but when he too receives the message from Mike Hanlon, she too cannot stop him from going back to Derry. During the fight with Es , Eddie sacrifices himself for Bill and jumps directly into the claws of the spider, whose shape Es takes on.

Stan Uris

Stanley "Stan" Uris is Jewish and bird lover. As an adult, he runs a successful market research company. He is very neat and realistic, this is one of the reasons why he is most afraid of It . After Mike called him about It , he kills himself in the bathtub by slitting his wrists. He leaves a single word written in his blood: IT .

Henry Bowers

Henry is a thug used by Es to weaken the losers' club so that Es can have an easy time of it. But this only works to a limited extent. His gang, which consists of Victor Criss, Belch Huggins and Patrick Hockstetter, is killed by Es and Henry ends up in the madhouse. 27 years later, Es brings him back to Derry in the form of one of his dead friends, gives him back his old switchblade from earlier times and sets him on the loser again. This time he can almost kill Mike, which weakens the “Losers Club” in their fight against Es , but ultimately he too loses his life to Eddie Kaspbrak.

It

It is a being that has lived on earth for millions of years. It embodies pure evil and can create illusions that people think are real, like the clown Pennywise, who doesn't really exist. It is through these illusions (not metamorphoses) that it often confronts its victims with their greatest fears. For example, it appeared for Eddie as "Jack the Leper" ( leper ), for Richie as a werewolf or for Mike as a giant bird (he had a traumatic experience with a crow as a child). However , it mostly appears as the clown Pennywise . With this costume and colorful balloons, Es attracts the children of the city, first to torment them and later to eat them. In a cycle of about 27 years, It haunts the small town of Derry to feed on children. During this time, the murder rate increases many times over. Each cycle ends with a terrible event (e.g. the fire in the “Black Spot” or the explosion of the ironworks). In 1958 the club of losers It seriously injured before the completion of the cycle, puts it , the aim of later revenge on the seven children to take.

The true form of the nameless being, incomprehensible to the human mind, is “ [..] a nightmarish spider from the other side of time and space, a spider from the worst visions of horror of the beings who might live in the deepest depths of hell . [..] not a spider, [..] but it did not take this shape from our imagination; it is simply the shape which our mind can just grasp, which [..] comes closest to whatever it may actually be. ".

In a few paragraphs of the book the story is told from the point of view of Es . Billions of years ago it lived in a macroverse with a turtle . One day this spat out the universe. (More background information on the turtle can be found in the series on the Dark Tower , especially in volumes 6 and 7). It also turns out that it is female and is preparing for the birth of offspring. It is killed in the fight with the club . The eggs that were laid quickly are destroyed by Ben. The arrival of the being on earth is portrayed in a sequence, in a ball of fire like a meteorite, in primeval times, long before humans existed.

Film adaptations

In 1990 the novel by Tommy Lee Wallace was filmed in a two-part version as Stephen King's It . The film adaptation works through the mostly subtly introduced horror. The special effects are limited. The main characters are Richard Thomas , best known as the former John Boy Walton and Tim Curry as the diabolical clown Pennywise . Other actors are John Ritter , Jonathan Brandis and Seth Green . However, the film adaptation differs in detail very much from the novel.

Part 1 of the remake with Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise came out in theaters in September 2017. The second part was released in German cinemas on September 5, 2019.

Links to other works

• Mike Noonan's wife Johanna reads Bill Denbrough ( Sara ) books .
• Ben Hanscom, who discovered his passion for architecture in Es , would later build the Derry Civic Center on which Ed Deepneau carried out a malicious attack in Sleepless .
• Mike Hanlon is still the librarian in Schlaflos ; he tries in vain to help Ralph Roberts overcome his sleep problems.
• Dick Hallorann, who survived the devastating fire at the Black Spot nightclub, later becomes a cook at the Overlook Hotel ( Shining ).
• Aloysius Nell, the policeman who surprised Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, Bill Denbrough, Richie Tozier and Stan Uris after building their dam, appears in the short story Sometimes they come back again. He's already retired here and Jim Norman is on the phone to find out details about his little brother's murderers.
• Ralph Roberts recalls the futility of murdering gay Adrian Mellon in Insomniac .
• The Juniper Hill asylum is often mentioned in King's work, for example in Time Lapse (from Night ), Sleepless , Stark - The Dark Half and In a Small Town .
• Steven Bishoff Dubay, one of the people involved in the murder of Adrian Mellon, is sentenced to 15 years in Shawshank State Prison. This prison is the main location of the short story Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption from Spring, Summer, Fall and Death and the film based on it, The Convicted .
• Mike Hanlon tells his colleagues about a place called "La Plata", where people live together particularly peacefully. In The End of the Whole Mess (from Nightmares ), Bobby Fornoy attributes this fact to a soothing drug in the water of the city and decides to use it to save the earth - whereby he destroys the entire world population.
• Richie Tozier moves into room 217 - the infamous room number from Shining .
• A ghost drives a car that is clearly reminiscent of Christine .
• The turtle, the embodiment of goodness and a mystical counterweight to the monster Es , is also of central importance for Roland Deschain in his search for the dark tower . She is one of the guardians of the beams.
• Stan Uris thinks he is not ready to accept another universe where there are monsters and z. B. roses could sing. A singing rose is a central element of the Dark Tower cycle mentioned above.
• In the showdown takes it the shape of a spider, probably because it can spread the greatest horrors in this form. The spider is an animal that appears again and again in King's works: David Drayton fights mutated arachnids in The Fog (from In Dawn ); Milkman Spike (from At Dawn ) delivers full-grown tarantulas; In In a Small Town, Polly Chalmers tries to fight a spider that is growing with every step; a city worker reported in Graue Masse (from night shift ) that he had seen a spider in the sewers, "the size of a medium-sized dog, in a web with lots of young spiders, all wrapped in silk threads," Mias' son transforms himself in the dark tower into a spider.
• After the many stories that the fear of children and adolescents themed (z. B. the novels Carrie , Cujo or Christine or the short stories The specter of night shift , Omi made at dawn or The Raft of The song of the dead ), acts it as a grand finale and a turning point. From then on, the writer's fear was a central theme (starting with You and going through to Love from 2006 ).
• Mention is made of a painter named Pickman and his strange paintings, which is a reference to HP Lovecraft's short story Pickman's model . It also mentions the goat-milking birds that frequently appear in HP Lovecraft's stories. In addition, the figure of the monster Es is inspired by the "great ancients" from Lovecraft's Cthulhu myth .
• Duddits from the book of the same name lives in the city of Derry. The book mentions a statue that the Losers Club erected in memory of the victims of Es . The words "Pennywise is alive" were written above the plaque.
• The adult Ben Hanscom lives in Hemingford Home, Nebraska , the same town where mother Abigail from the novel The Stand lives.
• In The Monstrosity - Tommyknockers novel , Tommy Jacklin thinks he's going crazy when he sees a clown poking out of a manhole cover while driving through Derry. In the same novel, Ev Hillman believes he can hear giggling sounds coming from the drain while in Derry.
• The successful American punk band Pennywise has named itself after the character of the clown and has also released a song with the same name that contains the character's lyrics.
• The Dresden band last instance has released a song called Pennywise on their first album Brachial Romantik , which also refers to the character.
• In The Attack , the time traveler Jake Epping prevents a family drama in Derry - with clues provided by Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh. Furthermore, a bartender named Fred Toomey tells the time-traveling Epping about child murders in Derry, which are associated with a man in a clown costume. He tells in detail about George Denbrough, who was found dead with his arm severed.
• The film The Devil's Cloud of Monteville mentioned in the novel provides the template for the illusions.
• In Mr. Mercedes , protagonist Bill Hodges compares the murderer's clown mask with Pennywise.
• Norbert Keene is the pharmacist at Center Street Drug Store in Derry. In this role he sells his asthma spray in Es to Eddie Kaspbrak, among others . Jake Epping in The Attack is also a customer in this pharmacy and stocked up on Kaopektat - a remedy for nausea and diarrhea - and incontinence underwear for diarrhea.
• The Losers Club from Mario Fesler's Lizzy Carbon series is no coincidentally named: In a scene in the first volume, the eponymous heroine Stephen King reads Es .

construction

The novel is divided into five sections or parts. At the beginning of each part, King provides a quote from the long epic Paterson by the avant-garde poet William Carlos Williams , which can be understood as epitaphs . Grave inscriptions that mourn the way people deal with the surrounding nature. In addition to the introductory poems, there are musical quotes from an American popular culture that between 1958 and 1985 dealt increasingly critically with the American way of life . Song lyrics such as that of the Canadian folk rock musician Neil Young Hey Hey My My (Out of the Blue) quote a culture of protest that accuses nature of being overexploited during the colonization of North America and gives the novel its rock 'n' roll backbone.

A list of the titles that can be heard in ES:

• Neil Young - Hey Hey My My (Out of the Blue)
• Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days
• Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through the Grapevine
• The Spinners - Rubberband Man
• The Penguins - Earth Angel
• Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin 'Goin' On
• Jerry Lee Lewis - High School Confidential
• The Fleetwoods - Come Softly Darling
• Bobby Day - Rockin 'Robin
• The Four Seasons - Walk Like a Man
• Frankie Lymon - I'm not a Juvenile Delinquent
• The Doors - Light My Fire
• Little Richard - The Girl Can't Help It
• Gene Vincent - Be-Bop-A-Lula
• Eddie Cochran - Summertime Blues
• Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
• Traditional - Camptown Ladies
• Traditional - The Battle Hymn of the Republic

literature

• Stephen King : It. Roman (Original title: It ). German by Alexandra von Reinhardt , edited and partly newly translated by Joachim Körber . Abridged edition. Ullstein, Berlin 2005, 1214 pp., ISBN 978-3-548-26308-3 or ISBN 3-548-26308-9
• Stephen King: IT , Heyne. 1534 pages, unabridged edition, ISBN 978-3453435773

Web links

• Detailed table of contents and listing of all characters in KingWiki
• Adrian Daub: Our collective nightmare . In: ZEIT Online , September 23, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the World Fantasy Awards
2. ↑ A small example (from the scene when Eddie leaves for Derry) should demonstrate this:
   Original text : 'As if on cue, lights swept across the wall; a horn honked once as the cab turned into the driveway. He felt a surge of relief. They had spent the fifteen minutes talking about Pacino instead of Derry and Mike Hanlon and Henry Bowers, and that was good. Good for Myra, and good for him as well. He did not want to spend any time thinking or talking about those things until he had to. Eddie stood up. '
   German translation : 'Spotlights flooded over the dining room wall; he could see her through the archway. A horn sounded. Eddie got up. '
   
3. ↑ Stephen King: It . 5th edition. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-453-50403-5 , part five: The ritual of Chüd; Chapter twenty-one: under the city, p. 1409 (American English: It . New York 1986. Translated by Alexandra von Reinhardt and Joachim Körber, edited and partially re-translated by Anja Heppelmann, the translator of the original text and not the author of the quote is responsible for any grammatical and spelling errors).
4. ↑ George Beahm: The Stephen King Companion: Four Decades of Fear from the Master of Horror . St. Martin's Press 2015. pp. 56ff.
5. ↑ livejournal: a partial list of songs featured or mentioned in Stephen King novels. stephenkings Journal, September 25, 2010, accessed June 22, 2017 .