What Does 'They Float They All Float' Mean In It?

Question

I'm haunted by that line, especially how it evokes Pennywise's clown form in the original Stephen King novel and movie. Such a creepy mantra!

Lori Solis · Answer

This is the line which the evil Pennywise the clown uses to market fear in the classic horror novel by Stephen King, ‘It’. The children he killed are all floating down in the sewers below, and he revels in their deaths. This is one of the most famous lines of horror ever written and it is simple yet so creepy. Underwater is another way to experience submerged dread. The novel is set in a deep-sea research station and the crew are seeing things in shared, terrifying hallucinations. The pressure of the abyss outside them makes their psychological collapse seem inescapable.

Flynn · Answer

One of the lines from ‘It’ by Stephen King that has been seared into my mind ever since I finished reading the book is ‘They float… they all float’ (spoken by Pennywise the Dancing Clown in a hellish nursery rhyme fashion). This line, it seems to me, is a reflection of two ideas that have always been at the heart of IT’s obsession with fear and the related, intuitive sense that much childhood trauma is based upon: the bodies of the victims of IT are found floating in the sewer of Derry, but more importantly, fear (and the associated trauma) floats in Derry much like water. The Losers’ Club must constantly confront the notion that, even though it may seem to have sunk below the surface of their present lives, all trauma actually resurfaces.

King takes the very innocent imagery of children's balloons and makes them fear-inducing. I found the imagery of balloons particularly powerful. The kids of Derry are forever tormented by memories of Georgie's death, when his paper boat sailed merrily down the drain. The idea of something so carefree and buoyant bringing such terror never leaves my mind, much like one of the damned balloons of It floating in the recesses of my brain.

Owen · Answer

This is ‘It’ distilled down to three words: “float”. Floating is unnatural. Things that are dead don’t float around like toys. Derry’s evil refuses to remain buried, and “float” encapsulates this perfectly. It’s no accident that little Georgie’s boat ‘floats’ down to the bottom of the tub before he does. And in the (?) PENNYWISE The Dancing Clown scene where Beverly sees ‘blood geysering upward’ in a defiadtion of gravity as It attacks her, ‘float’ again is the恐riffing relation between the childs fear and the physical manifestation of that fear. What scares me most about Pennywise’ ‘float’ though, is the manner in which he delivers this with a childlike, gleeful, and verging on vertiant (!) sense of play. It’s a joyous, playground invitation to come down and join in on the worst carnival ever, and the only way out, is down.

Jason · Answer

“they all float” can be interpreted as Pennywise’ gleeful notion of the great cycles of time when he goes on a child-eating binge in Derry. It is not just bodies floating in water, it is a morass of fear that keeps Derry in this moribund state of suspend animation. The memories of the great horror are periodically resurrected every 27 years, and, in the intervening time, the adults of Derry “forget” in a most convenient fashion. The way that “they all float” mirrors how trauma is stored, locked away in a subconscious recesses of the brain.

The Losers do float in the novel, but with a different sense. Their connection to each other is able to rise above the horror of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. While the writer’s use of ‘they float’ provides insight into the horrific nature of It, there is also a juxtaposition of this to the ways in which the young characters experience floating, such as in the water-filled quarry jumps that King wrote about in order to highlight the young characters’ sense of freedom.

Sheena Mae Ponce de Leon · Answer

This is really interesting. I’ve never actually broke down what it is about this sentence that is so creepy before. The line is simple and frightens because it is eerie. Taking too close of of a look at the things that scare us can sometimes destroy their magic. The things that scare us are often mysterious.

YUZUWINO · Answer

I've also wondered if there is some kind of connection with the Paul Bunyan statue from the real world in this book. The animatronic lumberjack is kind of a weird character and I could've sworn it said that line at some point, but I don't think it did. The statue is just one of the many bizarre things in Derry and serves to further reflect its hostile and off-putting environment. Perhaps the ‘float’ concept of It manifests in all of its different forms, and not just the ones that are connected to water. And I suppose that just like in the ‘real world’ one can fear whatever it is that they fear and that fear can just seem to ‘float’ in the air, causing discomfort at places around town like Dead Dog. But that's probably just a really obvious reading, and King's work is chock full of little tidbits of information about the world of Derry, so who knows?

Nora Entsie · Answer

Floating over dirty water as a simple physical phenomenon is translated into surreal, terrible events for ‘they all’ (supposed to be dead children) of the clown story. It’s a simple verb that has been made horrid in the most supernatural way. Are they floating in sewer water, or are they floating in the deadlights? This phrase allows for a large amount of horror to be stretched in two different ways. The first is the immediate, gross and dirty horror of the physical situation, and the other is the cosmic, mind-shatteringly horrible fear of the story’s basic premise. Few lines of horror can evoke as much fear in as many different ways as this.

Anthony Te Namu · Answer

Of course, there is also the nihilistic read: ‘They all float.’ No one makes it out of Derry alive. None of the Derry kids of previous generations managed to vanquish IT in their youth. All the Losers could do was fail, just as their precursors did. The phrase doesn’t allow for the possibility of survival or of triumphant battle. It is a declaration of utter and complete conquest. Yes, for most of the book it is simply accepted that this is the way it is. The rest of the novel is then the story of a group of children attempting to deny this unvarnished, abyssal horror, to claim that yes, in fact, it is possible for some of them not to float. They have to overpower this atavistic horror using nothing but their faith in themselves, their names, rocks, slingshots, and silver.

Nick Fulmer · Answer

“ dredge up ” is another term for memory & trauma. All that is buried does not remain buried forever. It eventually will “ float ” back up to the surface of one’s memory. The Losers Club had put their childhood trauma “ away ” for decades and it “ floated ” back up when It returned. Events of violence in Derry such as the Bradley Gang shootout and the Kitchener Ironworks explosion “ float ” in the collective unconscious of Derry residents. Pennywise is the form that buried memories take when they return to haunt us. The constant chant a reminder that what we attempt to forget will not remain buried down. In therapy, avoidance doesn’t work. The fears we avoid will “ float ” up until we face them. This book is, in part, a horror story of the necessary terror with which we must confront our repressed memories and fears.

What Does 'They Float They All Float' Mean In It?

9 Answers

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