Fiction isn’t always meant to be enjoyable. 1984 and Animal Farm are depressing, and meant to be so.
Fiction can intend to shock, discomfort, or educate. Ideally there should be a valid purpose for such. But some less talented authors will shock for its own sake. Perhaps to create controversy and gin up sales or critical acclaim.
Points taken.
But IT crossed the line.
No lessons to be learned from its shock tactic, unlike 1984.
Reminds me of reading class in 9th grade. I read all the books in the schools library ( part of that class was speed reading where I got up to 900 words per minute with 95 percent comprehension and retention )
When I told the teacher she ordered more books. One of the books that was sent to our school was Clockwork Orange. Talk about perversion, damn. I pulled teacher aside and asked her if she really wanted kids reading it and showed her dog eared pages ( dog eating was a no no she was upset at first when she had seen I had done that to this book ) that depicted assault, rape, sodomy.
She turned pale when she read them, she had no idea that crap was in that book. She shit canned it then and there.
My point is that fiction isn’t an excuse to justify writing perversion.
That kind of fiction serves zero higher purpose or provide anything good or enjoyable.
It’s pure trash and needs to be viewed as just that, destructive, corrosive to society in general and the reader in particular.
Jmho.
King went there and like it or not that’s telling and reason to condemn him for trying to normalize pedophilia.
He didn’t write that to expose or warn or condemn it, it had zero redemptive value.
That leads me to conclude he had detrimental reasons to write that ending.
To postulate that good could come from kids having sex.
And that’s exactly what he did with IT.
The kids defeated the threat and saved themselves by having sex among themselves
Sick.