Part 2, Chapter 4 : June of 1958 (Ben Hanscom Takes a Fall)
Summary
While Ben Hanscom‘s flight weaves through bad weather, he remembers the last day of school in 1958. As a kid Ben wears a sweatshirt in June to conceal his weight. He collects his report card, and Henry Bowers mocks him. The bright spot of his day is Beverly Marsh wishing him a good summer on the school steps.
Henry Bowers fails fifth grade and must go to summer school because Ben wouldn’t let him copy his final test paper. Ben fears Henry’s revenge, so he spends the afternoon avoiding Henry and his toadies. Ben goes to the park, where he finds a bag of glass bottles. He takes the bottles to Costello Avenue Market and exchanges them for the deposit money, which he spends on candy.
Ben’s favorite activities are building models and reading. He goes to the Derry Public Library, and Henry, along with his friends Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, and Patrick Hockstetter, watches Ben from afar. Inside the library Ben sees a sign reminding him of the 7 p.m. curfew and hears the librarian reading “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” for story time. Ben remembers all the kids who have been killed or gone missing in recent months. Ben’s mother has cautioned him not to go around town alone, but Ben doesn’t have any friends.
Ben checks out some books and buys a postcard. He writes a haiku on the card: “Your hair is winter fire / January embers / My heart burns there too.” Outside the library he mails the card—unsigned—to Beverly and daydreams about kissing her.
Henry Bowers and his gang catch Ben on Kansas Street, which runs next to a vacant wilderness called the Barrens. They attack Ben, and Henry threatens to carve his name in Ben’s belly with his knife. He gets the H done before Ben kicks himself backward and down the hill into the Barrens. The bullies chase him into the brush, and the fighting continues in the Kenduskeag Stream. Ben escapes and hides in some underbrush. He hears the bullies harass some other kids who are building a “baby dam” in the stream. Ben dozes off in his hiding place and dreams about a winter day when he stayed late at school helping his teacher. On the walk home he saw a clown with the face of a mummy standing on the ice on the frozen canal. The creature crawled up to the bridge and touched Ben’s boot. Ben ran home.
When Ben wakes up he approaches the boys who were building the dam. Bill is there with Eddie Kaspbrak, who is in the throes of an asthma attack after the bullies bloodied his nose.
Analysis
When Ben Hanscom visits his local bar in Chapter 3, Ricky Lee, the bartender, says he believes Ben is the loneliest man in the world, even though Ben is a handsome and successful architect. In Chapter 4 the source of Ben’s loneliness is revealed. Ben endured a childhood of teasing and bullying because of his weight. He filled his time with models, construction sets, and books, which kept him happy but also kept his mother from noticing he had no friends to help protect him when Derry became a dangerous place for children. Ben’s solitary pursuits made him confident of his abilities and set him up for later success in his career. However, the bullying and teasing took away his social confidence, and this insecurity follows him into adulthood.
Harboring a deep love for Beverly Marsh, Ben sends her a poem in the mail—yet he doesn’t sign it. He chooses to write haiku because he likes the way it uses a defined structure—even in poetry he is an architect and engineer. He allows himself brief and chaste fantasies about Beverly, but he never believes anything will come of his feelings. He doesn’t think he might get a girl’s attention in real life.
Ben’s intelligence also makes him a target for Henry and the other bullies. Henry blames Ben for “making him” fail fifth grade, although Ben has sound reasons for not letting Henry cheat on the test. If the teacher catches Henry copying Ben or figures out he did so, they will both fail the test. Ben is a convenient scapegoat for Henry’s failures, but Henry is mostly angry because Ben is smarter than he is. Much of Henry’s later bullying appears to stem from a similar sense of inferiority.
Even though Ben is shy and avoids confrontation, he proves—both to himself and to Henry—he is no pushover. When Ben is cornered, he does know how to fight back, as he demonstrates with his daring escape into the Barrens. Ben is willing to risk injury by tumbling down an overgrown bank rather than accept the certain injury Henry wants to inflict. Furthermore, if Ben gets hurt in the Barrens, he has chosen to be there, which is better than remaining passive under Henry’s blade and fists. This shows his emerging fighting spirit, which will enable him to fight I
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