- 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)
One of the Missing:
A Tale From the Summer of '58
I hate this chapter. I really do.
It breaks the pattern in the "June of 1958" section of beginning each chapter with an adult character having a flashback, and what it tells isn't really worth telling. It sticks out like a sore thumb in this section.
This chapter can be summed up in two parts. The first part is the story of a boy named Edward "Eddie" Corochan (we'll refer to him as Edward to distinguish him from Eddie Kaspbrak) who is "one of the missing" from that summer. A series of news headlines and stories reveal his disappearance and progressively reveal that his abusive stepfather murdered his brother and is the main suspect. King then reveals that this is a coincidence and that Edward instead was killed by It, which appeared to him first as his dead brother Dorsey, and then as the Creature From the Black Lagoon.
My issue with this first part is the same as with the Adrian Mellon section: it's a tangential story that is interesting, but might have worked better as a separate short story. Later on, our heroes mention in one sentence that Edward has been missing for some time. Now, if this chapter was absent from the book but that one sentence was still there, would it have changed the story at all? You see my point. I give King credit for the sequence with the newspaper clippings; in addition to continuing the motif of domestic abuse that permeates this story, it also continues another theme: that Derry is a rotten town where everyone has a dark secret. We are told that Dorsey's teacher became aware of the abuse and tried to do something about it, but the school silenced her. Again, Derry has a way of ignoring what's going on.
The second part of the chapter follows Young Mike as he finds Edward's bike tracks and has a flashback of his own Horrific Experience with a giant bird, which he was just able to fend off.
My problem with this section? First off, maybe it's just me, but I don't find a giant bird that scary. Granted, if I were to actually run into a giant bird in real life, I probably would be scared, but for within the purposes of this story, which is all about supernatural horrors, the giant bird seems out of place. Secondly, I don't think there should be giant animals of any kind as it lessens the impact of the revelation of It being a giant Spider at the end. Third, it hurts the flow of the story. While the other kids are slowly meeting each other and forming their group, Mike hasn't yet "entered the story," so to speak. This is just a little anecdote that happened to Mike that could be plucked out and put anywhere. I understand why King put it in; Mike wouldn't be in the "June of 1958" section otherwise and this way he gets to have his own chapter as do all the others, but that leads into another criticism of mine: "The Apocalyptic Rockfight" chapter should have been included as part of this section. I also imagine King wanted to include the giant bird here as well so that he could refer back to it in the Second Interlude, but again, I don't consider it that important.
So all in all, this chapter doesn't work for me and I feel like it was added after the fact, maybe on a revision. But at least it's the last time we'll have a tangent in the story outside of the interludes.
It breaks the pattern in the "June of 1958" section of beginning each chapter with an adult character having a flashback, and what it tells isn't really worth telling. It sticks out like a sore thumb in this section.
This chapter can be summed up in two parts. The first part is the story of a boy named Edward "Eddie" Corochan (we'll refer to him as Edward to distinguish him from Eddie Kaspbrak) who is "one of the missing" from that summer. A series of news headlines and stories reveal his disappearance and progressively reveal that his abusive stepfather murdered his brother and is the main suspect. King then reveals that this is a coincidence and that Edward instead was killed by It, which appeared to him first as his dead brother Dorsey, and then as the Creature From the Black Lagoon.
My issue with this first part is the same as with the Adrian Mellon section: it's a tangential story that is interesting, but might have worked better as a separate short story. Later on, our heroes mention in one sentence that Edward has been missing for some time. Now, if this chapter was absent from the book but that one sentence was still there, would it have changed the story at all? You see my point. I give King credit for the sequence with the newspaper clippings; in addition to continuing the motif of domestic abuse that permeates this story, it also continues another theme: that Derry is a rotten town where everyone has a dark secret. We are told that Dorsey's teacher became aware of the abuse and tried to do something about it, but the school silenced her. Again, Derry has a way of ignoring what's going on.
The second part of the chapter follows Young Mike as he finds Edward's bike tracks and has a flashback of his own Horrific Experience with a giant bird, which he was just able to fend off.
My problem with this section? First off, maybe it's just me, but I don't find a giant bird that scary. Granted, if I were to actually run into a giant bird in real life, I probably would be scared, but for within the purposes of this story, which is all about supernatural horrors, the giant bird seems out of place. Secondly, I don't think there should be giant animals of any kind as it lessens the impact of the revelation of It being a giant Spider at the end. Third, it hurts the flow of the story. While the other kids are slowly meeting each other and forming their group, Mike hasn't yet "entered the story," so to speak. This is just a little anecdote that happened to Mike that could be plucked out and put anywhere. I understand why King put it in; Mike wouldn't be in the "June of 1958" section otherwise and this way he gets to have his own chapter as do all the others, but that leads into another criticism of mine: "The Apocalyptic Rockfight" chapter should have been included as part of this section. I also imagine King wanted to include the giant bird here as well so that he could refer back to it in the Second Interlude, but again, I don't consider it that important.
So all in all, this chapter doesn't work for me and I feel like it was added after the fact, maybe on a revision. But at least it's the last time we'll have a tangent in the story outside of the interludes.