Pennywise may act like a silly, childish clown, but he is still a murderous, killing creature. He kills for a living because villainy is in his blood. He enjoys wreaking havoc in the city of Hometown, and he is smart enough to know about a child's fear.
Ultimately, Stephen King's inspiration for Pennywise was derived from an array of sources ranging from real-life murders to far less sinister clowns. At the end of the day, his main reason for making the central creature of IT a clown was his own fear of them.
King decided for IT to predominantly take the shape of Pennywise the Dancing Clown because he believes "clowns scare children more than anything else in the world." IT influences the adults of Derry to passively ignore it and not interfere with his attacks on Derry's children.
Pennywise pretty much made Derry the perfect place for a creature like itself to live, and with the whole town under its control and with a lot of children (and adults) to feed from, IT didn't really have reasons to leave Derry.
Not only is It a deadly and dangerous predator who enjoys devouring Its prey (even and especially children, as they are easier to both trick and frighten), but It enjoys toying and "bullying" Its victims, terrifying them, tormenting them, and harassing them before finally slaughtering them as fear "floods the body and ...
Stephen King's IT introduced readers to a one-of-a-kind creature that can take any form, the most common one being Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and as menacing as it is, this creature has one big enemy it's truly scared of: Maturin, the turtle.
It's primary goal is to feed on humans, generally preferring children over adults since they were easier to scare and manipulate. According to the creature, frightened flesh tastes better and uses fear to "salt the meat".
IT arrived on Earth through an event similar to an asteroid impact, landing in what would later become Derry, Maine. Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep.
Another explanation is connected to the Turtle and the cosmic side of IT and Stephen King's Macroverse, suggesting the Losers as the “chosen ones” that were guided and thus protected to an extent by Maturin, the only creature IT is afraid of.
Pennywise targets children instead of adults because they are easier to scare and manipulate. Their fears are often simpler, more direct, and easier for Pennywise to exploit.
In both the book and the films, It is an ancient alien creature, older than civilization, and in King's novel, older than our universe. It feasts on the flesh of humans simply because our fears are easy to manifest and they make us taste better.
Movie! Flashback of the past of Pennywise and his. Daughter Kersh 🤗 Of when IT became & took over. Pennywise the Dancing Clown better known as Bob. Gray.
But, the film makes clear, It (sometimes written as “IT”) isn't just a clown. Oh no. As detailed in King's novel, he's an ancient, cosmic being, described in the novel as an “Eater of Worlds”, who is able to adopt a variety of nasty guises.
Bob Gray, (Pennywise's alter ego) is IT'S human form. The thing is now is that IT was NEVER human. Bob Gray was a clown called Pennywise that travelled in the circus with his daughter, Kersh.
In the novel, It's origins are nebulous. He took the form of a clown most frequently, Mr. Bob Gray or Pennywise, but his true form is an ancient eldritch entity from another universe who landed in the town that would become Derry by way of an asteroid and first awoke in 1715.
This cycle is finally completed and forever closed when Pennywise is killed. Thus, the franchise begins and ends with the death of a child: in Georgie's case, an actual, innocent child, and in Pennywise's, the reduction of a horrifying entity to a sad, small, hopeless thing.
Pennywise never seems to bother offing the older folks in Derry, but he has taken out older teenagers and young adults as well as children. It's established early on that Pennywise prefers the taste of children over other types of prey, but such a diet would undoubtedly raise too many questions.
And if his victim believes him to be powerless, he will become powerless. And so the group figures out that their best bet is, essentially, to bully the bully: They mock Pennywise, telling him he isn't scary. Humiliated, Pennywise begins to shrink, transforming into an almost Benjamin Button–like, melted clown-baby.
Throughout the rest of the story, several of the bodies are found to have teeth marks and pieces that were bitten off, but Pennywise doesn't actually eat the corpses. Stephen King actually references this later in the story, mentioning that Pennywise does this as part of the fear. Pennywise doesn't eat human flesh.
In the novel Georgie was left on the street to bleed to death while the full extent of his fate is fairly ambiguous in the miniseries, but here he's dragged screaming wholly into the sewer where we can assume Pennywise ate his physical body.
According the the Wiki set up to explain It and his powers, the red balloon is an illusion — one of many — that can be created to lure It's victims to their deaths .
It's primary goal is to feed on humans, generally preferring children over adults since they were easier to scare and manipulate. According to the creature, frightened flesh tastes better and uses fear to "salt the meat".
It can manipulate weak-willed people, making them indifferent to the horrific events that unfold, or even serve as accomplices. In the novel, It claims that its true name is Robert "Bob" Gray, but decided to be named “It”. Throughout the book, It is generally referred to as male, usually appearing as Pennywise.
Image via Warner Bros. Finally, Pennywise is beaten into submission. He scurries away, utters the word "fear," and partially disintegrates before falling into the void. It's a powerful defeat of a powerful monster, and it's satisfaction enough were IT to remain a single film.
