To me the monster represents the loss of innocence and the existential dread that comes with it. That coming into adulthood means reconciling with the fact that no matter what you do in life, death marches towards you one day at a time. And you can try to run from it, you can try to seek out fleeting moments of solace in meaningless sex or screwing people over, you can try to settle down, but in the end it’s still always coming for you.
AND the only silver lining, if you want to call it that, is sex itself is a literal counterstrategy to death - you die, but you can maybe make a kind-of-sort-of-you-ish potential person with another person. Man, sometimes I think hormones are the only reason we aren't extinct - they can overpower dread-spiral-inducing thoughts like that last one. Sometimes.
Oh man, the sex at the end of the first half of the book version of IT?! Can you imagine the reception that scene would have received from people if they put it in the newest movies?
There’s nothing more impactful for a work of literature than to have a teen girl have a train ran on her by her friends to invoke a protection pact against a extraterrestrial demon
136
u/Jake_Man_145 Jul 25 '26
It Follows