Brand Names
Stephen King was one of the first authors to regularly reference brand name products that people actually knew and used in his novels. This decision was routinely criticized at first for various reasons, but whatever the rationale and logic behind such complaints, King studiously avoided the advice. The result is a now-infamous clown (taking the form of Dracula in this case) with teeth that look like a very famous product:
“Its mouth dropped open, revealing a mouthful of Gillette Blue-Blades that had been set in the gums at angles; it was like looking into a deadly mirror-maze where a single misstep could get you cut in half.”
Ben's Poem
Arguably, the most famous metaphor—and, frankly, it’s not really much of an argument—is Ben Hanscom’s haiku composed about, in honor of, and for Beverly. King is not especially noted for his poetry, so there is a certain amount of irony in this being one of his most memorable images:
“Your hair is winter fire,
January embers.
My heart burns there, too.”
“Grownups are the real monsters”
All of the members of the Losers' Club learn valuable lessons, but the curricula reserved especially for poor sickly little Eddie is particularly egregious. At least it would seem to be so considering the metaphorical encapsulation of what that curricula devised by a truly disturbed mother ultimately teaches young Eddie about the fundamental truth of adult human nature.
The Real IT
The entity known as IT often appears in the guise of a clown, but Pennywise is merely a façade. IT is too impossible to imagine in its actual reality because the entity always appears as metaphor, but the there is nothing within the realm of human consciousness that provides for perfection of comparison. And so, the closest anyone ever gets to seeing IT in its essential form can only be described through not quite perfect similes:
“It was perhaps fifteen feet high and as black as a moonless night. Each of Its legs was as thick as a muscle-builder’s thigh. Its eyes were bright malevolent rubies, bulging from sockets filled with some dripping chromium-colored fluid. Its jagged mandibles opened and closed, opened and closed, dripping ribbons of foam.”
Growing Up
The book is to a very large extent about growing up and what happens to the child left behind when adult finally takes his place. Richie, perhaps the adult who has managed to retain the tightest grip on the child he was, muses over this concept and arrives at a philosophical epiphany:
“…that’s the scary part. How you don’t stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown’s trick balloons with the Burma-Shave slogans on the sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you.”
