Did anyone find the end of IT to be scary? (Stephen King)

[Anaamika]

Obvious spoilers.

For a while I thought it was just because I really liked spiders that I didn't find her particularly scary. But as I read around the boards I find more and more people who seem to agree wit me.

I mean, what a freakin' disappointment that was! Here we have this pretty good book, with tons of history and background, building up to a very dramatic ending - and it's a goddamn spider. Whoop-dee-doo. Spiders don't scare me, not even giant ones.

I can think of several ways he could make it more frightening. I play D&D, after all! A giant tentacled beast. Something from the planes of Hell. Or if he had to make it a spider, maybe a spider with a human head! Now that's freaky!

Seems like he just got to the end of the book and then decided, "Hey, everyone's afraid of spiders, let's make it a spider."

And while we're on the topic, what did everyone think of the child-sex scene at the end? That didn't particularly spoil my enjoyment of the book, not like the spider, but I was still like eh? :dubious:

[ShibbOleth]

Anaamika, I think that the spoilers are supposed to be inside the thread, not in the thread title.

[Anaamika]

Apologies, but I really only wanted to discuss the spider, not the whole book. If a mod wants to change it to...er..."Did anyone find the end of IT scary?" that'd be OK, I guess!

[Mr. Blue Sky]

I thought it was pretty lame. The kiddie orgy was a bit disturbing, too.

[Zsofia]

He's got a real problem with writing endings. I burned with the fury of a thousand suns to find in the last Dark Tower book that
there was ANOTHER GIANT SPIDER. Arrrgh!

I guess I see his problem - I mean, what could really have measured up to the buildup in It? But, giant spider? Yeah, yeah, "It only looked like a giant spider", says one of my dumber acquaintances. :rolleyes:

[norinew]

"It only looked like a giant spider", says one of my dumber acquaintances.
Well, I'm not really an acquaintance of yours, but I'm equally dumb, I suppose. That's pretty much my feeling. It's not really a spider, per se. It doesn't have a physical manifestation, but must assume one in order to feed. The spider thing is pretty handy, too, as it allows It to wrap up food to save for later. After all, It probably doesn't have a deep freezer or anything.

Surprisingly enough, the kiddie sex thing bothered me a lot more as an adult than as a kid (well, I was about 17 when I read the book the first time). When I read it as a teenager, I thought 'yeah, that makes sense', but then when I re-read it as an adult, it kind of skeeved me out.

[Anaamika]

norinew, that is right - it was supposed to be only a manifestation of the real thing, but SPIDERS AREN'T INTRINSICALLY SCARY! At least not to me and obviously to many others. I just think that King could have come up with a hell of a lot more.

His short stories are way more scary anyway.

[delphica]

I think it was one of those things where nothing could have been as scary as the anticpation in the reader's mind, so spider, tentacle monster, whatever, as soon as it gets a form it's just not as scary as the creepiness of not knowing and waiting for it. That's okay, though, I still like the book. Plus, stomping on the spider eggs was a good gross-out moment.

I'm with norinew on the kid sex part ... when I first read it, I was a lot closer to the age of the characters and it seemed perfectly fine and made sense. It seems a lot oogier the older I get. Which might be the point.

[HPL]

I get the feeling he was trying to go for a lovecraft-like monster, but lovecraft usually didn't bother to try to explain what the creature looked like, leaving it up to your imagination(and using as many bizarre adjectives as possible).

[Zsofia]

Well, I'm not really an acquaintance of yours, but I'm equally dumb, I suppose. That's pretty much my feeling. It's not really a spider, per se. It doesn't have a physical manifestation, but must assume one in order to feed. The spider thing is pretty handy, too, as it allows It to wrap up food to save for later. After all, It probably doesn't have a deep freezer or anything.

Surprisingly enough, the kiddie sex thing bothered me a lot more as an adult than as a kid (well, I was about 17 when I read the book the first time). When I read it as a teenager, I thought 'yeah, that makes sense', but then when I re-read it as an adult, it kind of skeeved me out.
Dude. Giant spider. Don't you snicker a little bit, thinking "....and then it was a giant spider"?

I, also, read it when I was, I dunno, maybe 13? And the orgy seemed perfectly natural. I haven't read it as an adult but suspect I'd find it far, far oogier now.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

I haven't read this in a long time. Why does everyone seem to think the kiddie gang bang was necessary or even logical?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I was disappointed by the ending of It as well. There was some good build up in the book and some good storytelling ifor a while, but in about the last third of the book it became progressively more chaotic and absurd and unsatisfying. I thought the spider was lame but King really lost me at the kiddy gang bang scene. After that I just started skimming.

I guess he was on a lot of drugs back then. He says there were one or two books that he doesn' even remember writing (I think The Tommyknockers is one that he claims to have no recollection of writing. having read it, I believe him).

I do think King is a talented storyteller but he went through a period where he was really undisciplined and self-indulgent. His best work is the stuff that's tightly constructed and controlled (Carrie, The Running Man, and The Shining are all good examples.

I agree that he's always had trouble with endings. Even the ending to The Stand was pretty lame. Ironically, I think what is probably his best, most audience pleasing ending ever was in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, a non-horror novella that's one of his best works. The ending to that was a surprise but a fair surprise. There were plenty of clues throughout the story and it didn't seem contrived. It also made for a great movie moment, of course.

[Eonwe]

Am I the only one reciting "kiddy kiddy gang bang" to the rhythm of "chitty-chitty bang bang?" Yes? Oh.

[badbadrubberpiggy]

I never thought it was scary, but I always thought giant bugs as the "monster" always made for really silly horror movies and books. Anyway, I've heard that the reason King uses spiders so often is that he is terrified of them (http://www.horrorking.com/biography.html). I'm not sure how accurate this link is, but it's the first google hit of many, so I think it's safe to say that spiders scare him more than the average person.

Also, count me as another person who thinks the kid orgy was a little gratuitous. At least they were ALL 11-12.

[Snickers]

Was gonna say - "spiders not intrinsically terrifying?!" The hell? For you, maybe - me, I'm terrified of the damn things. Thank heavens SpouseO doesn't mind killing them for me.

[Lute Skywatcher]

For a while I thought it was just because I really liked spiders that I didn't find her particularly scary. But as I read around the boards I find more and more people who seem to agree wit me.I think he was going for gross more than scary. Witness the crushing of the baby spiders!Ew!

[lorinada]

It's been a llloooonnngggg time since I read the book, but I remember being let down, then coming to the conclusion that the spider was just a representation of whatever horrified you. If I had been a character, it would have been a roach, not a spider, for instance.

I don't remember how the kiddy porn scene struck me.

I agree that his best works are his non-horror and his short stories.

[ivylass]

It's not that the spider was what scared you the most. The spider was what it looked like when it was at home (one assumed It didn't assume a guise, but was "itself") and Spider-ish was the closest their minds could come to identifying It.

The ending was very disappointing. In the book they killed It by getting into Its head (there was a whole thing about mentally grabbing Its tongue) but in the movie they just punched it to death.

Once again, the monster on screen is not as scary as the monster in your head. That's why I think King's psychological horrors (Misery, Shawshank, The Body) translate much better than the ones with the boogie monsters.

[zoid]

I assume the sex part was left out of the movie?

I'm not a big SK fan and so I only saw the movie, but color me :confused: and a bit :eek:

Did it serve any purpose? Can someone put some reference around it so it makes sense or it is just a big WTF!? moment in the story? At what point does it occur? And PLEASE fell free to leave out any graphic details of the scene itself – I don’t think I want to know :dubious:

[zoid]

Oh, and IMHO.....

clown = scary
spider = stupid

In the movie at least :D

[Scumpup]

The spider was ridiculous in book and movie both.

[Anaamika]

zoid,
The sex part was when they were children. They were getting lost on the way back out, away from the spider, and bitching at each other and sniping. If they had continued in this vein, they would have been lost forever, under the tunnels. Its last victory, you could say.
Instead, Beverly let them all have sex with her...it sounds oogy, but I guess it was fairly justified. She knew this was the only way to "bring them back together", and in the end, it did work. Everyone calmed down and Eddie was able to find the way out.
The first time I read it through, I did see the point of it, but each successive time it's seemed more and more oogy. Others can add more, but I do think it makes sense where it is, even if perhaps there might have been a different way to do it!

[delphica]

I haven't read this in a long time. Why does everyone seem to think the kiddie gang bang was necessary or even logical?

Keeping in mind that I do agree it seems freakier now as an adult, I'm trying to remember what made it seem logical when I read this book -- I was 16 when I read it, which is a bit older than the kids in the story, but I did identify more with the world of kids than the world of adults. (Spoilers ahead, fyi)

I guess what I remember is that a big part of the book is that the kids are put into this position of having to fight IT on their own, which in many ways means that they have to deal with things like adults. Many times, it's pointed out that the actual adults dismiss them as "just kids" who are playing around, and are oblivious to the fact that the kids are making complex plans, dealing with complicated situations, and making adult, life-or-death decisions. They also assume adult-like responsibility for each other, and really, for all the kids in the town, because they realize that the adults aren't able to do anything to fight IT.

This mirrored an attitude that I perceived from my own parents and teachers -- a vague sort of message that kid friendships weren't the real thing, that everything we did was mostly play, which at the time, seemed extremely insulting and dismissive of the very real, nuanced relationships I shared with my group of friends. I felt quite ready should my set of friends even be in a position where we had to function with maturity in the face of Evil. (This is sort of funny now, I still think we would have done okay with Evil, although clearly we were not so proficient with the maturity when faced with situations like Mom and Dad are Out of Town, and I Know Where They Keep the Spare Car Keys :) )

So, it made sense to me that the kids in IT would create a bond with each other that was adult -- just about everything else in their battle with IT involved them acting like responsible adults even when the grown-ups assumed they were acting like kids. And even while their success against IT sprung from their child-like beliefs, like the silver bullet killing the werewolf, the kids themselves are aware that they're walking this line between childhood and adulthood. The sex scene kind of sealed the deal into adulthood ... I would even argue it's key in how they forget the specifics of what happened to them as they grow up and leave childhood behind, but they are then able to return as adults for the final confrontation because their bond is an adult one, or maybe more accurately, an experience that bridges their childhood and adulthood.

I don't know, that was just the impression I had. I can certainly see how weird the scene reads for a first-time adult reader, although I still think it's consistent with the logic of the story, if by "logic" you mean "whatever loose set of rules that SK was playing with at the time." And, well, yeah, it's still weird with or without that logic, but I don't think it's particularly worse than the other stuff that happened to the kids while they were fighting IT.

[Poysyn]

First of all, I was also disappointed with the spider. However I do have a theory -

I think the problem was (and this is my shady memory, so if I am wrong, sorry) in the book SK refers to IT as "the most alien thing" and sort of the worst thing you can imagine.

So, that leaves a lot up to interpretation. Spiders are pretty alien looking, so I guess Hollywood went with that.

[Zsofia]

I never saw the movie. It's a spider (or "spider-ish thing") in the book, too. However you slice it, "closest thing your mind will comprehend" or "symbolic" or whatever, it's still a hell of a disappointment after all that buildup. There's nothing he could have written that would have felt appropriate, I guess.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

I assume the sex part was left out of the movie?

It's not very graphic, as I remember. Each boy, uh, took his turn.

There's no way on earth they could've included in the movie (it was a TV miniseries) or even hinted at it.

[AHunter3]

I've posted my take on King's stupid spider before, here (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=889997&postcount=25)and again here (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=2234035&postcount=36).

[Anaamika]

I've posted my take on King's stupid spider before, here (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=889997&postcount=25)and again here (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=2234035&postcount=36).
You were one of the people I was thinking of in the OP, that didn't like the spider bit.

[meat1981]

I loved the book overall, and I even loved the ending. As for the spider itself I have a pretty bad case of arachnaphobia so it made sense to me. What would have been a better idea for It to be though. The sex scene seems really disturbing to me now even though not much really offends me. When I originally read the book though (around age 15) it didn't seem quite so strange.

[Push You Down]

My reaction to kiddie kiddie bang bang was- Well, when has sex ever made the male/female dynamic less complicated. I'm surprised none of the boys beat to death the one that lasted the longest with her. Jealously and all that.

Annanmika's interpertation actually makes it make sense to me a bit.

[Rhiannon8404]

Oh, and IMHO.....

clown = scary
spider = stupid

In the movie at least :D

I agree!

[FinnAgain]

I laughed.

And I'd second that bit about D&D, a horde of Ilithids would've been much scarier.

[C K Dexter Haven]

Moderator comment: I've modified the title here, I'm not sure if the spider is a spoiler or not.

[Eve]

Scary? No, I was delighted when Clara Bow finally won Tony Moreno away from his snooty fiancee!

(Wait . . . Stephen King? Crap, Where can I go to discuss Elinor Glyn's It?)

[Cat Whisperer]

<snip> There's nothing he could have written that would have felt appropriate, I guess.
I dunno - there are plenty of authors who can write a decent ending - Stephen King just isn't one of them. He should farm out his endings like George Lucas should farm out his dialogue writing.

[Anaamika]

I laughed.

And I'd second that bit about D&D, a horde of Ilithids would've been much scarier.
*shudders*

[Susie Derkins]

He should farm out his endings like George Lucas should farm out his dialogue writing.


Instead of "Nooooooooo!!!!" we could have heard, "What's this happy crappy?"

[Guinastasia]

The gang bang at the end was by far the most disturbing part. If they had been teenagers, it would have worked. But they were only about 11, 12 at the oldest. That was just wrong.

[Little Nemo]

This one of the reasons I think (and yes I know there are people who vehemnetly disagree) that The Blair Witch Project was a great horror movie. What you imagine is always scarier than what you see.

Unless you happened to see something that really was the worst thing you could imagine. Then I suppose just imagining it would have been better than actually seeing it.

[Cat Whisperer]

Instead of "Nooooooooo!!!!" we could have heard, "What's this happy crappy?"
I think you're onto something here - we should start a thread. It can be the next "Princess Jedi Bride."