Sharon Denbrough

Sharon Denbrough is the mother of Bill and George Denbrough. A classically trained pianist who studied at Juilliard, she is first heard playing Frédéric Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach in the family parlor, and she abominates rock and roll. In the autumn of 1957, as George prepares to sail his newspaper boat, she is playing "Für Elise" on the piano; the piece becomes permanently linked in Bill's memory to the moment of his brother's death. After George is murdered, Sharon stops playing the piano entirely, and the instrument's cover grows dusty.

Grief and Withdrawal

Following George's death, Sharon Denbrough becomes emotionally unreachable. She and her husband, Zack, sit at opposite ends of the couch like bookends, sending out a cold that Bill cannot penetrate. When Bill tries to tell a joke one evening, she asks absently, "Did you say something, dear?" without looking up from the television. When Zack attempts to box up George's toys for donation, Sharon flies into a rage, her hands plunging into her hair like "startled white birds," and screams at him not to dare take George's things. Zack returns the toys to their exact places. Bill later finds his father kneeling by George's bed, crying, and hears his mother crying alone in the kitchen, the two of them grieving "so far apart."

Relationship with Bill

Sharon's emotional paralysis leaves Bill feeling like a ghost in his own home. He describes the space between his parents on the couch as "white wastes" and feels that the real "killer from the white wastes" is the invisible, one-armed ghost of George. Bill's stutter, which worsens after George's death, goes largely unremarked upon by his mother. When Richie Tozier calls home from the Denbrough house, Sharon calls back a greeting that is "disconnected, almost not there at all." She offers Richie supper in a voice that lacks any real presence. Bill's attempts to please her—particularly his struggle to recite the tongue-twister "He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts" without stuttering—are a private fantasy of winning back her love, but she never witnesses his success.

Narrative Role and Thematic Significance

Sharon Denbrough embodies the theme of parental abandonment through grief. Her coldness is not malice but a complete collapse into her own sorrow, which she cannot share or resolve. She represents the failure of the adult world to protect or even see its children, a failure that parallels Derry's larger, more sinister neglect. Her frozen state contrasts sharply with the active, desperate love the Losers' Club members have for one another, and her inability to move past George's death leaves Bill to find his own way through the horror alone, forging the friendships that will ultimately save him.