It

It

by

Stephen King

Eddie Kaspbrak Character Analysis

Eddie is the most fragile member of the Losers’ Club, though a violent childhood incident with Henry Bowers proves that he is stronger than he believes himself to be. Eddie is supposedly asthmatic and develops hypochondria due to the imposed fears of his mother, Sonia Kaspbrak. Eddie’s first confrontation with It is when It shapeshifts into a leper who lives in the abandoned, ramshackle house on 29 Neibolt Street. Eddie is known in childhood for having an excellent sense of direction, which helps the other children navigate through the sewer’s tunnels toward It. Eddie grows up to become the owner of his own limousine company—Royal Crest—which caters to a celebrity clientele in New York City. He is described as a short, balding man with “a timid, rabbit sort of face.” On the night that Eddie receives a phone call from Mike Hanlon, he is due to pick up Al Pacino. His wife, Myra, is very similar to his mother, both in regard to her obesity and her neediness. She begs Eddie not to leave for Derry. While in Derry, Eddie is attacked by Henry Bowers in his hotel room but succeeds in killing his former bully with a letter opener. Eddie is later killed when the Losers’ Club confronts It in its lair. It takes the form of a giant spider and bites off one of Eddie’s arms. At Beverly’s prompting, Eddie’s friends decide to leave his body behind in It's lair, due to the sense that “this is where he’s supposed to be.”

Eddie Kaspbrak Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by Eddie Kaspbrak or refer to Eddie Kaspbrak . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Evil and the Supernatural Theme Icon
).
Chapter 7 Quotes

The leper was crawling out. It was wearing a clown suit, he saw a clown suit with big orange buttons down the front. It saw Eddie and grinned. Its half-mouth dropped open and its tongue lolled out [….] The leper's tongue had not just dropped from its mouth; it was at least three feet long and had unrolled like a party-favor. It came to an arrow-point which dragged in the dirt. Foam, thick-sticky and yellowish, coursed along it. Bugs crawled over it.

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Eddie Kaspbrak
Page Number: 318
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures at other times had different words for it, but they all meant the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou, which sometimes took the shape of a mountain-lion or an elk or an eagle [….] The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou (which he pronounced “le loopgaroo”) could be anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak
Page Number: 683
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

He looked at his mother, seeing her clear in his pain: each flower on her Lane Bryant dress, the sweat-stains under her arms where the pads she wore had soaked through, the scuff-marks on her shoes. He saw how small her eyes were in their pockets of flesh, and now a terrible thought came to him: those eyes were almost predatory, like the eyes of the leper that had crawled out of the basement at 29 Neibolt Street […] Even through the haze he could see that the nurse was angry and he thought he said, She’s not the leper, please don't think that, she’s only eating me because she loves me, but perhaps nothing came out because the nurse's angry face didn't change.

Related Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak , Sonia Kaspbrak
Page Number: 800-801
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Bill marked it as a paper boat. Stan saw it as a bird rising toward the sky—a phoenix, perhaps. Michael saw a hooded face—that of crazy Butch Bowers, perhaps, if it could only be seen. Richie saw two eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Beverly saw a hand doubled up into a fist. Eddie believed it to be the face of the leper, all sunken eyes and wrinkled snarling mouth—all disease, all sickness, was stamped into that face. Ben Hanscom saw a tattered pile of wrappings and seemed to smell old sour spices […] Henry Bowers would see it as the moon, full, ripe…and black.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Eddie Kaspbrak , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Oscar “Butch” Bowers
Related Symbols: The Paper Boat
Page Number: 1048
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire It LitChart as a printable PDF.
It PDF

Eddie Kaspbrak Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by Eddie Kaspbrak or refer to Eddie Kaspbrak . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Evil and the Supernatural Theme Icon
).
Chapter 7 Quotes

The leper was crawling out. It was wearing a clown suit, he saw a clown suit with big orange buttons down the front. It saw Eddie and grinned. Its half-mouth dropped open and its tongue lolled out [….] The leper's tongue had not just dropped from its mouth; it was at least three feet long and had unrolled like a party-favor. It came to an arrow-point which dragged in the dirt. Foam, thick-sticky and yellowish, coursed along it. Bugs crawled over it.

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Eddie Kaspbrak
Page Number: 318
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures at other times had different words for it, but they all meant the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou, which sometimes took the shape of a mountain-lion or an elk or an eagle [….] The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou (which he pronounced “le loopgaroo”) could be anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak
Page Number: 683
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

He looked at his mother, seeing her clear in his pain: each flower on her Lane Bryant dress, the sweat-stains under her arms where the pads she wore had soaked through, the scuff-marks on her shoes. He saw how small her eyes were in their pockets of flesh, and now a terrible thought came to him: those eyes were almost predatory, like the eyes of the leper that had crawled out of the basement at 29 Neibolt Street […] Even through the haze he could see that the nurse was angry and he thought he said, She’s not the leper, please don't think that, she’s only eating me because she loves me, but perhaps nothing came out because the nurse's angry face didn't change.

Related Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak , Sonia Kaspbrak
Page Number: 800-801
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Bill marked it as a paper boat. Stan saw it as a bird rising toward the sky—a phoenix, perhaps. Michael saw a hooded face—that of crazy Butch Bowers, perhaps, if it could only be seen. Richie saw two eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Beverly saw a hand doubled up into a fist. Eddie believed it to be the face of the leper, all sunken eyes and wrinkled snarling mouth—all disease, all sickness, was stamped into that face. Ben Hanscom saw a tattered pile of wrappings and seemed to smell old sour spices […] Henry Bowers would see it as the moon, full, ripe…and black.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Eddie Kaspbrak , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Oscar “Butch” Bowers
Related Symbols: The Paper Boat
Page Number: 1048
Explanation and Analysis: