1957

1957 is the year the horror begins, the year that sets the entire story of It in motion. It is the year of George Denbrough's murder, an event that not only claims the life of a six-year-old boy but also fractures his family, scars his older brother Bill, and ultimately draws together the seven children who will become the Losers' Club. The year is defined by a specific sequence of events: the flood that precedes George's death, the murder itself, and the subsequent killings that establish the pattern of the entity's 27-year cycle.

The Flood and George Denbrough's Death

The autumn of 1957 is marked by a devastating flood in Derry. The Kenduskeag Stream crested just below its banks, and the town was battered by steady rain and high winds for a week, leaving most sections without power. The floodwaters tore chunks out of the streets, and the Public Works Department struggled to keep roads open. It was in the aftermath of this flood, on a gray October afternoon, that George Denbrough, wearing a yellow slicker and red galoshes, went out to sail a paper boat his brother Bill had made for him. The boat was carried by the receding floodwaters down Witcham Street toward a storm drain, where George encountered Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The clown, appearing from the drain, seized George's arm and tore it from its socket, killing him. The boy's body was found by a neighbor, Dave Gardener, who pulled him from the gutter, his left side a bloody ruin. The boat, waterproofed by the two brothers, sailed on through the drains and eventually out of Derry, a symbol of the innocence lost that day.

The Aftermath and the Beginning of the Cycle

George's death has profound and immediate consequences. His brother Bill, who was home sick with the flu, is consumed by guilt and develops a severe stutter that will plague him for years. His parents, Zack and Sharon Denbrough, fall into a deep, cold grief, withdrawing from Bill and from life itself. The murder also marks the beginning of a series of child killings in Derry that will continue into the following year. The first victim after George is Betty Ripsom, a thirteen-year-old girl found mutilated and frozen into the muddy earth on Outer Jackson Street just after Christmas. She is followed by Cheryl Lamonica, a sixteen-year-old whose body is found in a stream, and Matthew Clements, a three-year-old boy taken from his tricycle. These murders, along with the disappearance of Edward Corcoran and the death of Veronica Grogan, create a climate of fear in Derry, leading to a city-wide curfew and a pervasive sense that something is terribly wrong. The year 1957 thus establishes the entity's modus operandi: it preys on children, using their fears against them, and its arrival is preceded by a period of heightened violence and unease.

The Cycle of Violence and the Town's Forgetting

The events of 1957 are not isolated; they are part of a larger, recurring pattern. Mike Hanlon's research later reveals that Derry has experienced similar cycles of extreme violence and child disappearances every 27 years, stretching back to the town's founding. The year 1957-58 is one such cycle, and George Denbrough's death is its opening act. The town itself seems complicit in this cycle, with a collective amnesia that allows the horror to be forgotten and repeated. The flood of 1957, which physically reshaped parts of Derry, also serves as a metaphor for the overwhelming force of the evil that is about to be unleashed. The year is a threshold, a point of no return, after which the lives of Bill Denbrough, his friends, and the entire town of Derry are irrevocably changed. It is the year the past becomes present, and the nightmare begins.