But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee Came not all hell broke loose?
John Milton, Paradise Lost
What is Hell? The most common description is of a fiery underworld where the souls of the damned are punished eternally. The vision believed by most is of a world made solely of fire or lava. It is a fire which burns yet doesn't consume. It causes a pain that will never be satiated. Despite the fire Hell is supposed to be absent of light. The darkness, comparable to the Egyptian plague, is a supernatural state of being incomprehensive to us on Earth. It represents the chaos that was before God separated light from dark.
There are many who don't believe in Hell. Their arguments come from all directions: some say there never was a God or anything supernatural in the first place, some say that a loving God would never create a realm whose purpose is the torment of his creation, and yet others point out its emergence from the Babylonian exile and its origins in the Zoroastrian faith.
Many believe Hell to not be a physical realm, but a state of being, namely the absence of God from one's life. Those who don't see the world from the Christian point of view might define it as a place where evil reigns supreme. A warzone, a crime-riddled ghetto, a corrupt government. Yet someone who saw their child killed, or who is ridiculed unjustly by their community, or who are alcoholics, or drug addicts, or suffering from pain which no doctor can help, could be said to be living a Hellish life.
Sgt. Mack Bolan was living in Hell during his Vietnam tours of duty. It was Hell for him to be called home on emergency leave after his father gunned their family down. It was Hell to learn that his father succumbed to pressure after being strong-armed by the Mafia. It was Hell to learn that the police weren't going to see it that way.
And it was Hell when Mack Bolan, The Executioner, decided to take matters into his own hands and fight America's real enemy.
Being realistic about his choice Bolan didn't expect to live long but he left his hometown's mob in ruins and then headed cross country. With a $100,000 bounty on his head and every law enforcement official on his tail The Executioner continued to live in Hell.
After meeting up with an old war buddy in California Bolan ended up recruiting nine Vietnam veterans to be mercenaries in his war. Occasionally the sarge questioned inwardly his right to involve these men in a fight that wasn't theirs and which they could not win, yet always the response was the same. These men were trained for Hell, they could only be alive while living in Hell. They brought Hell to the Los Angelos mafia then Hell was given back to them.
The original Hell was when Adam and Eve brought Death to the world and were kicked out of Paradise. Sgt. Mack Bolan is now living a new Hell, the Hell of being a survivor when others equally worthy, or more, didn't.
The Executioner books aren't exactly the best examples of top writing. Characters are rarely given a chance to be fleshed out before they're cut down. That may be necessary. With all the death this series presents it would be Hellish for a reader to get emotionally attached to a character. Unfortunately it means that many interesting creations get short-changed, especially the enemy. John Milton opened Paradise Lost with Satan's point-of-view. Although Milton considered Satan the enemy and unworthy of having an advocate he knew from a psychological stance (which is impressive concerning psychology wouldn't exist for another 300 years) that if the audience was first sympathetic towards Satan, and then experienced for themselves his treachery, lies and evilness that the impact of the Fall of Mankind would be understood better. Perhaps Don Pendleton's books could have benefitted from such detail but ultimately it doesn't matter. These are action-adventure books. The reader expects shooting and maybe a car chase or a description of strategy. The reader gets all that and then some.
Will I continue to read and write about The Executioner? Hell yes.
No comments:
Post a Comment