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 the novel, it's explained that Pennywise targets children because their fears are less complex than those of adults, allowing It to easily take the shape of whatever its victim fears.
In the books it describes that It prefers feasting on children because they have more vivid imaginations and are much easier to scare. Adults are described as “complicated”. It takes a lot more work to scare adults, and they're not as tasty.
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.
Pennywise had targeted Georgie when the boy was too young to know any better or fight back. In the clown's most contemptible murders, Pennywise did not rely on visions or fears to lure Georgie in; instead, Pennywise exploited Georgie's trust and turned it into a fatal weakness.
Pennywise offers Georgie his boat back, but when Georgie attempts to reach out to it, Pennywise grabs Georgie's arm and bites it off, leaving Georgie to bleed to death in the rain.
However, he doesn't seem to target adults like he does kids, which is odd, seeing as how, as many will agree, adults have just as many fears, worries, phobias, anxieties, and insecurities as any child, maybe more since they've lived longer and thus had more time to develop more things to be afraid of.
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 has a preference for children since their fears are easier to interpret and adults are more difficult to frighten while It is in physical form. It can manipulate weak-willed people, making them indifferent to the horrific events that unfold, or even serve as accomplices.
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.
They reach the conclusion that Pennywise has all of the adults under some sort of spell that prohibits them from seeing him. The adults of Derry are shown to be villainous in their own right as well. The adults of Derry are shown to be true villains of the story in the same way as Pennywise.
Throughout Stephen King's It, Pennywise is referred to as a male, but author Stephen King pulled a fast one on readers in the It book ending by revealing the creature's true form was a pregnant spider, implying that it is, in fact, biologically female.
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.
As the other posters mentioned, IT does seem to thrive in an environment of fear and bad feelings, so it is possible that IT was toying with them like a cat would with a mouse to elicit these feelings, figuring it could finish them off later. Killing them right away would ruin the narrative and there would be no book.
Originally Answered: Why did Pennywise start on Chapter Two with attacking an adult? Pennywise thrives on fear. By killing him, Pennywise gets the town starting to fear others. Setting the stage for his return.
He can kill you if he wants to anytime and doesn't care. Although, if you are not scared, he will either leave you be for a little while or just kill you in the instant . Remember, the only way to avoid him is to keep a close group of people and avoid wet and damp places as much as possible.
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.
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.
Though there are some IT characters just as scary as Pennywise, the film's main villain proves to be its deadliest, with a kill count that actually reaches into the tens of thousands. Reddit user u/angelholme estimates that Pennywise actually took the lives of between 12,117 and 18,011 people.
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.
Pennywise the Clown is not a clown at all. The Pennywise the clown origin story sees an ancient, evil being that is perhaps as old as the universe itself. In the novel, however, the entity IT/Pennywise has a real name — Bob Gray. Bob Gray isn't human, however, and shares the same origin as IT.
If you want to get technical, It is an alien, but It's origin goes well beyond that. It is actually an ancient cosmic deity. A god of destruction, not just of our world, but of multiple worlds and even multiple universes.
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.
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.
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 .
