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Something that I like about Stephen King’s IT—and this was true when I read the book ten years ago, and also when I read it this past couple of months—is Mike Hanlon’s exploration of the history of Derry, Maine. Mike does research in that he reads whatever documents can he find, and he also does interviews with people who lived during significant events in Derry’s past. He gets to buy a historian lunch. He listens to a guy who lived in the 1890′s and “remembered when there were no cars, no electric lights, no airplanes, no state of Arizona” (page 892). He compares official accounts (i.e., newspapers) with people’s memories of what really happened. He learns about how people he knows acted in these events—whether they acted nobly or not.
I suppose that one reason I like these parts of the book is that I am somewhat of a researcher myself, a student. But there is also something cozy about someone going on a quest to find answers to questions, and meeting different people and learning different things along the way. This is a motif that appears often in stories, whether those stories are in movies, television shows, or books. Just off the top of my head, I think of the movie, The Christmas Wish, in which Neil Patrick Harris goes on a journey to learn who Lillian (a woman his late grandfather mentioned in a letter) was (see here). There’s Dagny Taggart in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged trying to find out who the mysterious John Galt is. There’s Travis Jordan in Frank Peretti’s The Visitation, seeking to learn the identity of a miracle-worker who claims to be Jesus. There’s Alex Haley, searching for his roots. I’m sure that there are many more stories like this.
I also like these parts of IT because I myself am from a small town in rural Indiana. I enjoy hearing older people tell their stories about the way things used to be, and how people we know were back then. I am part of a web page that reminisces about my small town, and I like the stories about people—such as teachers (who are liked by some, and disliked by others), or a doctor who was compassionate and made house visits in the 1950′s, yet had a slight problem with the bottle. My small town also has somewhat of a shady past, albeit not as bad as that of Derry, Maine. Way back whenever, the county seat was moved to my small town from another town, because its courthouse burned down and the records needed to be moved. The other small town says that my small town caused the fire, which we (of course) deny. My Mom used to tell me this story to illustrate how my small town was corrupt even in the old days!
In Stephen King’s IT, Mike’s father, Will Hanlon, was an amateur historian of Derry, even though Will was a newcomer to the town. (Will was stationed there in the military, moved away, and later returned.) Mike says on page 725 that this is because Will feels as if he came in the middle of the movie and wants to see what came before. I don’t entirely identify with this. I’m interested in the history of the small town where I grew up, but I really have not cared about the history of any place where I have lived since—both big cities and small towns. I’m more interested in the history of what I know, than what I don’t know so well.
