- After the Flood (1957)
- After the Carnival (1984)
- Six Phone Calls (1985)
- Derry: The First Interlude
- Ben Hanscom Takes a Fall
- Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (I)
- One of the Missing: A Tale From the Summer of '58
- The Dam In the Barrens
- Georgie's Room and the House On Neibolt Street
- Cleaning Up
- Derry: The Second Interlude
- The Reunion
- Walking Tours
- Three Uninvited Guests
- Derry: The Third Interlude
- The Apocalyptic Rockfight
- The Album
- The Smoke-Hole
- Eddie's Bad Break
- Another One of the Missing: The Death of Patrick Hockstetter
- The Bullseye
- Derry: The Fourth Interlude
- In the Watches of the Night
- The Circle Closes
- Under the City
- The Ritual of Chud
- Out
- Derry: The Final Interlude
- Epilogue: Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (II)
Derry: The Fourth Interlude
The final entry in our Trilogy of Narratives also happens to be the weakest of any of the five interludes.
Mike Hanlon starts his journal entry by mentioning that he's drunk, and thus let's the N word slip a few times as he starts writing, showing a more lighthearted mood that usual (though, he writes extremely well and detailed for someone who is drunk or even tipsy. I guess it could be regarded as a conceit of the novel; Mike's original entry was much more jarbled but has been cleaned up for the reader). He tells us the story of a lumberjack named Claude Heroux, a strange loner and serial killer who made his mark on Derry in 1905, culminating with a massacre at The Sleepy Silver Dollar, where he violently hacked several patrons to death with an axe, including a man named Eddie King who may be our author's doppleganger. Yet the patrons of the bar continued drinking and made small talk as this went on, ignoring the event happening literally right in front of them until finally the sheriffs arrived and arrested Heroux. Once the news got out, the drunken men of Derry made out into the night, took Heroux from his cell, and lynched him. Mike gets this story from a stodgy old-timer who mentions having seen a strange fellow, who we recognize as Pennywise. This event occurs during the 1904-06 cycle, which culminated with the Kitchner Ironworks exploding during an Easter Egg hunt, causing another massacre.
This section feels more like a dark comedy than a scene from a horror tale. Of course, this can be attributed to our narrator being drunk, but it seems King is trying to go for the feel of a western here, emphasizing a lot of eccentric behavior and making the drunks so oblivious to the genocide. Pennywise's cameo at the end also lacks the real creepy feel of the previous interludes; it's just too predictable by this point.
This entry ends with Mike mediating on the nature of power, continuing the theme that Ben reflected on at the end of the previous chapter. He concludes that It lives off Its victims not by eating them (that is just part of their fear) but by consuming their faith, for faith is the source of power. However, faith can also be a weapon against It. Adults lose the faith of children, and they especially seem to lose it here in Derry, where adults all turn a blind eye to everything. Now the time has come for Mike to make the calls, because he knows It wants him to, and It knows full well that they are all adults. They have lost faith, and they have lost power.
Mike Hanlon starts his journal entry by mentioning that he's drunk, and thus let's the N word slip a few times as he starts writing, showing a more lighthearted mood that usual (though, he writes extremely well and detailed for someone who is drunk or even tipsy. I guess it could be regarded as a conceit of the novel; Mike's original entry was much more jarbled but has been cleaned up for the reader). He tells us the story of a lumberjack named Claude Heroux, a strange loner and serial killer who made his mark on Derry in 1905, culminating with a massacre at The Sleepy Silver Dollar, where he violently hacked several patrons to death with an axe, including a man named Eddie King who may be our author's doppleganger. Yet the patrons of the bar continued drinking and made small talk as this went on, ignoring the event happening literally right in front of them until finally the sheriffs arrived and arrested Heroux. Once the news got out, the drunken men of Derry made out into the night, took Heroux from his cell, and lynched him. Mike gets this story from a stodgy old-timer who mentions having seen a strange fellow, who we recognize as Pennywise. This event occurs during the 1904-06 cycle, which culminated with the Kitchner Ironworks exploding during an Easter Egg hunt, causing another massacre.
This section feels more like a dark comedy than a scene from a horror tale. Of course, this can be attributed to our narrator being drunk, but it seems King is trying to go for the feel of a western here, emphasizing a lot of eccentric behavior and making the drunks so oblivious to the genocide. Pennywise's cameo at the end also lacks the real creepy feel of the previous interludes; it's just too predictable by this point.
This entry ends with Mike mediating on the nature of power, continuing the theme that Ben reflected on at the end of the previous chapter. He concludes that It lives off Its victims not by eating them (that is just part of their fear) but by consuming their faith, for faith is the source of power. However, faith can also be a weapon against It. Adults lose the faith of children, and they especially seem to lose it here in Derry, where adults all turn a blind eye to everything. Now the time has come for Mike to make the calls, because he knows It wants him to, and It knows full well that they are all adults. They have lost faith, and they have lost power.