Playing cards

The playing cards in It are not merely a child's toy but a potent auditory symbol of speed, freedom, and the boundary between childhood and the adult world. Most famously, they are clothespinned to the spokes of Bill Denbrough's bicycle, Silver, where they produce a loud, rapid clicking sound that becomes the bike's signature roar. This sound is first described in detail during Bill's desperate ride to get Eddie Kaspbrak's asthma medicine, where the cards "machine-gunned" as he raced down Up-Mile Hill, a sound that marked his flight from the memory of his brother's death and his headlong rush to help a friend. The cards are a crucial part of Silver's identity; they are what make the old, beat-up bike seem alive and powerful, transforming Bill from a stuttering boy into the heroic "Big Bill" who could "beat the devil." When Bill, as an adult, finds Silver in a secondhand shop and begins to restore it, he instinctively knows he needs playing cards. Mike Hanlon, as if guided by the same force that brought them all back to Derry, produces a new deck of blue-backed Bicycle cards and clothespins. When Bill shuffles them, they spray across the floor, and only two cards land face-up—both aces of spades, one from a blue-backed deck and one from a red-backed deck, an impossible occurrence that signals the supernatural forces at play. He attaches them to the rear wheel, and the sound of the cards against the spokes in the silent garage confirms that the magic of their childhood is returning. The cards are thus a tangible link between the past and the present, a tool of transformation, and a marker of the extraordinary events that are about to unfold.