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:
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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not a big SK fan and so I only saw the movie, but color me 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:
and a bit :eek: