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Template:It Character Edward "Eddie" Kaspbrak is one of the seven members of The Losers' Club, appearing in Stephen King's novel, It, and its subsequent film adaptations. Along with the other Losers, he fights Pennywise the Dancing Clown , both in 1958 and 1985.
1958
Eddie is technically the first member (besides Bill) of what later would become the Losers Club. His best friends are Bill Denbrough and Richie Tozier, also Beverly Marsh, Mike Hanlon, Ben Hanscom, and Stan Uris Eddie also has a close relationship with Richie, his best friend, who often teases him affectionately about his mom.
As a child, Eddie was regarded as a fragile individual who was a hypochondriac, scared of the world and avoiding most situations in fear of getting sick or injured. However, he later proves that he is one of the strongest of the Losers when he is able to stand up to his overbearing mother and even save the Losers in the sewer.
Family Life
His father died from cancer in 1951, when Eddie was five years old. As a result of this, Eddie's mother Sonia is extremely overprotective of her son. She does not allow him to do many things that the other children do., and always makes sure that he is safe and well-protected. She also convinces Eddie that he has many illnesses, including severe asthma, and Eddie constantly suffers from asthma attacks and needs to have Richie carry around an aspirator with him at all times. Sonia often uses the excuse of Eddie's susceptibility to illnesses as a way to manipulate him and prevent him from ever leaving her. Any time Eddie attempts to rebel against her (especially when hanging out with Richie, who Sonia detests), . Sonia constantly represses Eddie's feelings and emotions, resulting not only in his fears of the world around him and of disease as well as standing up for himself, but also of his sexuality. This fear manifests itself in what It shows as his biggest fear, the leper, as well as several other times throughout the novel.
Start of the Losers' Club
Before the Losers' Club had formed, Eddie had been friends with Bill. On the day that Ben was attacked by Henry Bowers and the other bullies, Eddie and Bill had been attempting to build a dam in the Barrens. After Ben escapes from the bullies, they come to Bill and Eddie to ask if they had seen where Ben had run to. When they answer that they had not, Henry punches Eddie in the nose, causing it to bleed profusely and triggers an asthma attack. However, Eddie's aspirator was empty and as Eddie's breathing continues to struggle, Bill is concerned that Eddie would fall into a "comber." Bill sees Ben and asks him to watch over Eddie as he goes to the pharmacy to get his medication. After Bill comes back and Eddie's breathing is restored to normal, Ben explains how they could build a better damn. They all become friends, and this group of three is the precursor to the Losers' Club before the other members join.
Encounter with It
One day, Eddie goes to watch the trains pass in the train yard as well as possibly listen to the singers at the Gospel Church nearby. On this day, however, he passes the house at 29 Neibolt Street, and feels as though he cannot tear himself away from it. The house is incredibly run down and old, and bears evidence that many hobos and prostitutes had used it as shelter while passing through Derry. Eddie feels drawn to the house and begins to approach it, when suddenly what appears to be a hobo rises from beneath the porch of the house. Eddie believes the hobo has leprosy (but is later corrected by Richie and Bill who tell him he instead had Syphilis) as his skin is severely diseased and his nose appears to have fallen off. The leper begins to chase Eddie, screaming that he would blow Eddie for a nickel, then a dime, and then even for free. Eddie barely manages to escape as the leper begins to run after Eddie's bike. Eddie tells Richie and Bill about what he saw, and later Richie and Bill decide to revisit the house to see if they are able to find It.
The leper is representative of Eddie's fears in two ways: the fear of disease, and the fear of his own sexuality. When seeing the leper, Eddie felt that if it had touched him he would instantly catch every disease that it had and rot from the inside out. This being contains every disease, illness, and infection that Eddie could think of, and threatens to make him sick just the same. In addition, the leper offering Eddie a blowjob is terrifying for him because not only is he confused about his own sexuality, he is confused by sexuality in general. It is something completely foreign and scary for him at this age, not to mention any fear and repression his mother had instilled in him.
Eddie's Bad Break
While walking home one day from Mr. Keene's Pharmacy, Eddie is attacked by Henry Bowers, Vic Criss, Patrick Hockstetter, and Moose Sadler in the park as payback for humiliating them during the Apocalyptic Rock Fight. They push Eddie to the ground near the park benches. Vic, Patrick, and Moose hold him down while Henry beats Eddie, breaking his arm. When Sonia Kaspbrak finds out, she freaks out and believes that the Losers are at fault. She forbids Eddie from seeing them again. However, Eddie is finally able to stand up to her and tell her that she cannot forbid him from seeing them. She, yet again, attempts to manipulate Eddie with her tears and tells him that he is a bad son, but he does not listen and is able to continue to see his friends and go with them into the sewers to fight It.
In the 2017 adaptation of IT, Eddie breaks his arm when he sees IT in the form of a leper when he returns to 29 Neibolt and enters the house with Bill and Richie. His motive for standing up to his mother is also changed, accepting the truth that his medication was in fact a placebo and that she had been lying to him all these years for her own selfish reasons, as well as making him turn away from his friends at his deepest time of need for them.
1985
As an adult, Eddie owns an extremely successful limousine company and has the job of driving many celebrities around New York. He has become very wealthy through this. He is married to a woman named Myra who he realizes is very, very, similar to his mother in personality and looks.
When It had returned, he, along with the other Losers, reluctantly return to Derry to fight and kill It once and for all.
Death
While in the sewers fighting It for the second and last time, Bill misses his hold on the creature's tongue so Richie goes in after him. However, It fights back, and she manages to loosen Richie's hold. Upon hearing Richie's cry for help, Eddie leaps into action, triggering his aspirator into one of It's many eyes. He then proceeds to douse the alien with his medicine while his arm slowly begins sliding further and further into It's open mouth. After triggering his medicine down It's throat a few times, It bites Eddie's arm off. With his few remaining seconds, he tells Richie to stop calling him Eds, before dying. The Losers later leave Eddie’s body in the sewers, despite Richie's protests saying they should take his body back with them.
Appearances
- IT: miniseries
- 11/22/63 (mentioned)
- It 2017: Chapter One
Quotes
1990 miniseries
- "That place scares me green. I think it's haunted."
- ―Eddie
- "Jeez, I hate it when you stutter my name like that Bill!"
- ―Eddie
2017 film
- "A Clown. Yeah I saw him too"
- ―Eddie to Bill
- "Yeah, That's Mike's."
- ―Eddie to Bill about Mike's bicycle
- "They´re gazebos! They're bullshit!"
- ―Eddie to his mother.
- "The Black Spot was a nightclub that was burned down years ago by that racist cult."
- ―Eddie to Stan about the Black Spot
- "He was, like, a walking infection."
- ―Eddie on The Leper.
- "IT saw us. IT saw us and knows where we are!"
- ―Eddie to Bill
- "Do not fucking touch me!"
- ―Eddie to Richie.
- "Okay. So let me get this straight. IT comes out, from wherever, to eat kids for, like, a year, and then what? IT just goes into hibernation? "
- ―Eddie to Losers' club about IT
- "That's where I saw IT. There I saw a clown."
- ―Eddie to his friends about It.
Trivia
Gallery
