Greta Bowie

Greta Bowie is a minor but memorable figure in the social landscape of Derry during the summer of 1958. She comes from one of the wealthy families on West Broadway, living in a green-shingled house with cone-shaped turrets, a side lawn with wicker furniture and a croquet set, and a gardener who eyed passing children suspiciously. Her family's status places her firmly among the town's elite children, a world entirely separate from the slummy apartments of Lower Main Street where Beverly Marsh lives. Greta's friendship with Sally Mueller, another rich girl, is cemented by their shared neighborhood and social standing; they are described as "a couple of conceited snots" by Ben Hanscom, who observes their disdain for Beverly from the vantage point of his own outsider status.

Social Cruelty and Class Antagonism

Greta's primary narrative function is to enact the casual, everyday cruelty of class privilege against Beverly. On the last day of school, when Mrs. Douglas hands out report cards, Sally Mueller chirps to Beverly about hoping she passes, and Beverly responds with indifference. Sally's sniff of disapproval—"Ladies don't use such language"—is immediately followed by her turning to Greta, a gesture that signals their alliance and Beverly's exclusion. Ben Hanscom notes the vast distance between West Broadway and Lower Main Street, a distance not measured in miles but in the quality of Beverly's cheap sweater, her too-big Salvation Army skirt, and her scuffed penny-loafers. Greta and Sally, with their permed hair and nice clothes, represent a world that Beverly can never enter.

The Croquet Game and Eddie's Crush

Eddie Kaspbrak, walking past the Bowies' house one summer day, catches a glimpse of Greta playing croquet on the back lawn. She is holding a lemonade and a croquet mallet, her blonde hair falling to the shoulders of her blue culotte dress, her sunburned shoulders looking "wonderfully pretty." Eddie falls in love with her a little that day, but when he raises his hand in a timid hello, she does not see him—or chooses not to. He walks on with no resentment, understanding that a beautiful girl like Greta would never invite a kid like him to her Saturday-afternoon croquet games. This moment crystallizes the social gulf that Greta represents: she is not actively malicious in this instance, but her obliviousness to those beneath her station is itself a form of cruelty.

Later Life and Death

Decades later, when Eddie returns to Derry in 1985, he considers walking over to West Broadway to look at the old houses again, but decides against it. He does not want to see Greta with gray in her hair, her hips and legs thickened with age. The memory of her as a pretty, untouchable girl is safer preserved than confronted with the reality of time's passage. Eddie's encounter with Greta's ghost during his walk near the abandoned Tracker Brothers' Truck Depot confirms her death: she appears to him as a half-faced corpse, one side of her face gone, maggots crawling in the churned red meat, telling him she died at eighteen in a car crash, drunk and done up on reds. She holds a green balloon that reads "ASTHMA MEDICINE CAUSES LUNG CANCER! COMPLIMENTS OF CENTER STREET DRUG." This grotesque apparition, a fusion of her teenage beauty and violent death, serves as one of It's manifestations, using Greta's familiar face to terrorize Eddie in the Barrens.