"It" Book Club! discussion

2) my current theory about the nature of IT and the evil of Derry relates to - and bear with me - a flower.
The way I learned it in school is that flowers are pretty and smell nice to draw insects which are carrying the pollen they need to reproduce ... so from that perspective, IT spreads an aura of hate, bigotry, abuse etc. as a means to get the fear it needs.

Sarah, this is actually a really good metaphor. I had never quite thought of Derry and IT that way, but I see what you mean. The flower is a unique way to represent the the hate/pollen that is carried by It and Derry, but also something that feeds on it.

I can't see the original questions for this week but I think we were supposed to discuss the general malaise around Derry. From my first read of the book it seemed to be that the bad things in Derry fed off of death, destruction, racism, murder, hate, etc.... but also that there are lots of little evils that benefit from one another as well. This is sort of similar to your flower metaphor because we know that whatever is "feeding on Derry" needs the fear and negativity to continue to live.