fall of 1957

The fall of 1957 in Derry, Maine, is the season of origin for the novel's central horror, a time when the ancient entity known as It first manifests in the narrative by claiming its most consequential victim: six-year-old George Denbrough. This single murder, occurring during the receding floodwaters of a devastating storm, fractures the Denbrough family, deepens Bill Denbrough's stutter into a near-total impediment, and establishes the emotional and psychological foundation for the Losers' Club's eventual confrontation with the monster. The season is defined by the flood, the murder, and the immediate, chilling aftermath that sets the stage for the summer of 1958.

The Flood and the Murder

The terror of the fall of 1957 begins not with a monster but with a flood. A week of steady rain and two days of wind have left Derry waterlogged and powerless. The Kenduskeag Stream crested just below its banks, and the Canal was nearly overflowing, prompting a frantic sandbagging effort by the town's men, including Zack Denbrough. The rain slackens on the day of the murder, but the streets remain rivers of runoff. It is into this gutter-swollen world that George Denbrough, a six-year-old in a yellow slicker and red galoshes, ventures to sail a newspaper boat made for him by his older brother, Bill. The boat, waterproofed with paraffin, races down Witcham Street toward a stormdrain, and George chases it. When he peers into the drain, he is met not by darkness but by a clown who calls himself Pennywise. The clown offers George his boat and a balloon, and when George reaches in, the clown seizes his arm. The creature's face changes into something terrible, and it pulls George into the drain, ripping his left arm from its socket. Dave Gardener, a neighbor, finds the boy's body moments later, the left side of his slicker soaked in blood, his eyes staring up into the white sky. The boat, meanwhile, continues its journey through the stormdrains, eventually emerging into the Penobscot River, still afloat, a silent testament to the brothers' handiwork.

The Immediate Aftermath and the Fracturing of the Denbrough Family

George's death has an immediate and devastating effect on the Denbrough household. Bill, who is ten and recovering from influenza, is home when the murder occurs. He hears his father sobbing in the parlor, a sound that replaces the music of his mother playing "Für Elise" on the piano. The family is shattered; the coldness that settles between his parents becomes a permanent fixture of Bill's life. The murder also deepens Bill's stutter, which had been moderate before, into a severe impediment that makes communication at school nearly impossible. The memory of his mother playing "Für Elise" becomes forever linked to the moment of George's death, a trigger for gooseflesh and a sinking heart. The photograph album George kept, filled with family pictures, becomes a haunted object; when Bill looks at George's school picture, taken just ten days before his death, the eyes roll and the picture bleeds, a supernatural manifestation of the trauma and the evil that has entered their lives.

The Cycle Begins and the Town's Response

George Denbrough's murder is the first in a series of child killings that will terrorize Derry throughout the fall of 1957 and into the summer of 1958. The town, already uneasy from the flood, is gripped by fear. A curfew is imposed, and parents warn their children about strangers. The murders of Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, Matthew Clements, and Veronica Grogan follow, each one more gruesome than the last. The town's response is a mixture of panic and a peculiar, almost willful amnesia, a pattern that Mike Hanlon will later identify as characteristic of Derry's relationship with the evil that periodically awakens there. The fall of 1957, therefore, is not just the season of George's death; it is the season when the cycle of violence begins anew, a cycle that will draw the Losers' Club together and ultimately lead them into the sewers beneath the town.

Thematic Significance: The Origin of the Quest

The fall of 1957 serves as the narrative's point of origin, the moment when the personal and the cosmic intersect. Bill Denbrough's grief and guilt over his brother's death become the engine for the entire plot. His promise to avenge George, made in the cold silence of his broken home, is the catalyst that transforms a group of misfit children into a determined club of monster-hunters. The season establishes the key thematic elements of the novel: the power of childhood belief and imagination, the failure of adults to perceive or confront the evil in their midst, and the cyclical nature of violence in Derry. The image of George's paper boat, sailing on through the darkness, becomes a symbol of the lost innocence and the enduring, fragile hope that drives the Losers' quest.