‘What a bunch of losers they had been—Stan Uris with his big Jew-boy nose, Bill Denbrough who could say nothing but "Hi-yo, Silver!" without stuttering so badly that it drove you almost dogshit, Beverly Marsh with her bruises and her cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of her blouse, Ben Hanscom who had been so big he looked like a human version of Moby Dick, and Richie Tozier with his thick glasses and his A averages and his wise mouth and his face which just begged to be pounded into new and exciting shapes.’
This quote sets the foundations for introducing the Losers to the story. All of them have their own reasons for being labelled as an outcast, and this quote summarizes it as a quick overview. The reader can draw their own conclusions from this initial impression, but it would only be a superficial outlook for all of these individuals have a greater backstory. For example, ‘Beverly Marsh with her bruises’ could initially imply a drug abuse problem or a scrappy kid, but later the reader realizes it may have been a result of the sexual violence she endures at the hands of her own father. Likewise, naming Stan Uris with ‘Jew-boy nose’ highlights the anti-Semitic sentiment that he must endure, but this extends throughout his life.
‘Ben could see the clown's face clearly. It was deeply lined, the skin a parchment map of wrinkles, tattered cheeks, arid flesh. The skin of its forehead was split but bloodless. Dead lips grinned back from a maw in which teeth leaned like tombstones. Its gums were pitted and black. Ben could see no eyes, but something glittered far back in the charcoal pits of those puckered sockets, something like the cold jewels in the eyes of Egyptian scarab beetles’
This description of It is truly describing how terrifying It must look, with his ‘dead lips’ and ‘arid flesh.’ Through use of words like ‘tombstones’ and ‘dead’ King is highlighting that It and death are one and the same. The fact that It takes on the form of a clown, an idea used to appeal to young children and be a source of joy, is a juxtaposition and makes It that much more terrifying. However, it is the ‘Charcoal pits’ for eyes that truly emphasizes that death is imminent, as eyes are deemed to be the windows to the soul, but It has ‘no eyes’ and therefore, has no soul.
