Which Years Does The It Book Timeline Cover?

Question

Finished It but still feel lost about the Derry cycles. Need a clear breakdown of Pennywise's active years across the novel's dual timelines.

Mario Burgos · Answer

‘It book’ will cover what length of time for a high school series? Typically a high school series would cover a full four year period and follow a group of characters from freshman year through to the end of senior year. ‘Billy: Branston High Series’ is a great example of this type of book. It follows a group of friends through their school years and shows all the friendships and rivalries develop from the awkward first days of freshman year to the day of graduation at the end of senior year. The characters actually grow up through the books and aren’t stuck at the same school year.

Isaac · Answer

I tell my friends to think of It as a long, creepy subway line that follows two principal stops on the line: 1958 for the body of the novel as a child and 1985 for the body of the novel as an adult. Although those two years are explicitly mentioned as the two points in time when the plot is taking place, lots of historical information about Derry in other time periods is included in the body of the work. In addition, It follows a 27-year cycle of return for the creature. So although two specific years are highlighted as the two points in time when the plot is playing out, the timeline of the book is very large.

Maya · Answer

The time frame for the Losers Club in It, from my most recent read, is approximated in the following timeline: 1958 – summer in which the Losers Club is formed; 1985 – year in which members of the Losers Club are called back to deal with their fears. But the storytelling by King is not confined to these two time frames. There are many flashback scenes from the past as well as historical events that extend the time frame of Derry’s terrible past to generations. One even goes back to the 19th century where there are mentions of prior killings. Then there are scenes from the early part of the 20th century that are filled with strange events. With the creature returning every 27 years, it is clear that the horrors in Derry extend to centuries of time. So while the book covers the years 1958 and 1985, the real scope of horror is far greater.

Jade · Answer

This novel is another that I have made a map of the characters and the time frames in the margins of the book. So it is pretty obvious that the two main periods of time are 1958 when the kids are small and 1985 when they return as adults. However, King is not content to just follow the two main characters through two periods of time. He also delves into the long history of Derry and the terrible things that have happened in that town before the 20th century and even implies that there will be terrible things in Derry in the future. The creature appears every 27 years, for example.

When you read the book and watch the movie, the years have been changed in the movies for the first time ever in 2017 for the big screen for late ‘80s kids and modern times adults, which is very confusing to new readers of the book and I prefer to stick with the original years that King wrote and enjoy finding many more tiny incidents and lots of local lore that he spread out through decades to prove Derry is old and alive.

Xander · Answer

One of the biggest things that hooked me to It is how Stephen King uses time in the novel. The basic storyline takes place over two years: the kids in the summer of 1958, and the adults in 1985. The bulk of the novel follows The Losers Club as children, and then as adults 27 years later when they return to face their fears.

But there is so much more to Derry’s past than just the 19th century. So much more to Derry’s violent history than just that one time. And all of it is woven into It in subtle but significant ways. How the past and present relate in Derry is a large part of the book, and it’s a big part of the fun of reading It more than once. The creature’s 27 year cycle of return to Derry implies that there were appearances of it long before 1958, and there will be appearances after 1985. Just reading about the town’s history, and King’s take on the cosmic nature of that history, is far greater than the sum of those two years.

Blake · Answer

One of the simplest ways to explain the timeline of It is to tell people that the kids in the story live in 1958 but the story is told from their adult perspectives in 1985. This is also true for the novel. Reading It, however, reveals a whole lot of other incidents from Derry’s past that the author wove into the story. So while the core of the novel does take place within the two year time frame of the kids, the events and the creature’s 27 year cycle extend far beyond that which is why the author included all of the older historical tidbits in the story. Enjoy them on a reread – they add a lot of chill to the story.

Mercy Guadalupe Sa · Answer

One of the first things to note is the timeline of the novel. Major parts of the book take place in the summer of 1958 and the fall of 1985. But between these two periods, King includes a variety of historical interludes that stretch the scope of the novel far beyond what would normally be required to tell a single story. An early settler encounters the creature in 1740-1743. It disappears for good in 1851, as a lumber camp is lost to the woods. A century later, in 1876, there is the explosion of the Ironworks, followed by the Black Spot fire of 1930 and the brutal massacre of the Bradley Gang in 1935. And finally, in 1906, the unsolved murder of Claude Heroux. Each of these interludes functions as a documented "feeding" of It, every 27 years or so. Thus, Derry becomes a fully fleshed out character, with a long and bloody history. And the 27-year cycle of It's appearances mirrors Bill Denbrough's own journey through life, from childhood to middle age, in a battle against both the monster and the passing of time. The details of the timeline are what make the book's horror so inevitable and uncontrollable.

Vióricka Paredes · Answer

However, I have to say, the Ironworks explosion of 1876 was written as a standalone horror story. The timeline is not a simple list of years, rather a list of incredibly vivid and horrific moments in American history. How It adapts to the fears of different eras is a giant bird for lost lumberjacks, explosions for working class folks in the factories, and a creepy clown for 20th century kids who grew up on TV and on the posters of circus clowns. The timeline of Chapter 12 follows the evolution of the monster and the possession of the town by It. So your question about the years covered by this chapter is in fact a question about the biography of a monster and the town he possessed.

mariangins · Answer

Listening to the Losers audiobook does an excellent job showcasing the timeline jumps. The narrator Steven Weber is able to change up tone dramatically between decades. The 1958 time frames have an adventurous tone that gradually becomes more and more foreboding as the chapters progress. The 1985 time frames are drastically different and have a much wearier tone. The historical vignettes are delivered in much the same way that a local historian would tell ghost stories or that you would experience grim newsreel footage. It really makes you able to feel the weight of the years on the Losers as they are not just fighting to survive against the clown, they are also fighting against the years of dark, unnatural history of their home town. The time line becomes a very real, almost tangible thing.

Beverly Mabanag · Answer

Reading IT as a teenager versus as a 40+ something year old is so different for me based on the timeline of the book. As a teenager I mainly got satisfaction from the 1958 sections of the book — the kids, their adventure, their monster. The 1985 sections seemed to drag as they were boring adult sections that I had to read through to get back to the ‘kids at play’ sections. However, as an adult in my 40’s the 1985 chapters are brutal. The melancholy that the story conveys, the sense of wasted time and the torture of trying to recapture who you were in the past – that is real horror. The way the book covers two time periods of life means that the book grows with you. IT is about facing your childhood fears when you are about that age. But IT is also about the haunting power of memory when you are removed from that age. The two timelines in the book make it permanently relevant.

Which Years Does The It Book Timeline Cover?

10 Answers

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