Tuesday, 18 June 2019

Malice In Wonderland

Some Christians wish each other ill in the hereafter. See the reference to Milton in Through The Western Gate.

On Avalon, when Draun of the Old Faith kills a Terran, he says:

"'Hell-winds blow you before my chothmates! Tell Illarian they are coming!'" (p. 549)
-copied from here.

At least two fictional characters expect that they themselves will have the power to wreak harm in the hereafter:

SM Stirling's Count Ignatieff expects to be not a victim but one of the torturers in Hell!;

Dornford Yates' Barabbas, knowing that he is about to be executed by his enemies, inquires how his subordinate had slipped up so that he will be able to deal appropriately with him in the hereafter.

In Barabbas' case, the narrator comments:

"So far as I was concerned, that was the grimmest moment of all that terrible night, for here was a malefactor, standing upon the drop, yet so far from considering how he should meet his God, preparing to deal with his late accomplice in crime and actually seeking information to serve his filthy turn in the world to come."
-Dornford Yates, Gale Warning (London, 1939), CHAPTER XIV, p. 280.

I agree. And, again, Poul Anderson never created villains as evil as that!

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Now that was interesting, Dornford Yates creating a character so evil he planned to continue doing evil after getting hanged! Shades of the devout Count Ignatieff longing to become a torturer in Hell!

Sean