‘We lie best when we lie to ourselves’: Stephen King’s It and the horrors of nostalgia

Abstract

Stephen King’s 1986 novel It follows a traditional horror story arc of restoration of order through defeat of a monster, but the interlude sections of the novel complicate this narrative structure with an alternate story arc in which the people of Derry are also a source of horror within the novel, who enable the monster with their desire to sanitize the past of the town. This arc, in which the townspeople are perpetrators and enablers of horrors, reflects a cultural tendency towards nostalgic views of the past that would have been noticeable in political and cultural movements of the 1980s. As nostalgic currents have returned to prominence in political movements surrounding the election of Donald Trump and other populist movements, re-examining the interlude sections of It reveals commentary about the horrors of nostalgia that, like the cyclical reawakening of the novel’s monster, are relevant once again.