Tuesday 21 January 2014

Smallville: Curse

In the Smallville TV series, we often see Lana Lang at her parents' grave. In Smallville: Curse (New York, 2004) by Alan Grant, the six page Prologue is narrated in the third person from the point of view of a new character, Cyrus Deen, who has dug graves in Smallville for forty-seven years.

We learn about two important graves:

sweet corn millionaires, the Weighlands, have "...an elaborate tomb topped with a life-size stone angel..." (p. 2);
the Lang's grave has a flower holder with contents replaced every Sunday by Lana who sits on the grass and talks to her parents. (p. 3)

The Langs died when "...a swarm of meteors fell on the town. After a journey through space that had lasted centuries, they arrowed in on Smallville..." (p. 3)

An interstellar journey at a sub-light speed would indeed take centuries or longer but then how does the spaceship that accompanied the meteors contain a three year old child? Maybe it passed through hyperspace, bringing the meteors with it, enclosed in its field? (But Cyrus does not know about the spaceship.)

The Reverend Grindlay says that death is release and peace for the deceased but Cyrus sees that it is misery and pain for the bereaved. Grindlay cares for "...immortal souls..." whereas Cyrus tends to "...mortal remains." (p. 5) Many of us do not believe in souls but can acknowledge the beliefs of church goers and can also accept that souls exist in this fictitious universe. There is plenty of evidence for them.

When Cyrus takes a manuscript found in an old coffin to the minister:

"...an evil from the past stirred in its long, long sleep." (p. 6)

In that concluding sentence of the Prologue, the omniscient narrator steps in, overriding Cyrus' pov. The grave digger does not yet know of any ancient evil.

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