JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 300 из 359Scott doesn't always know what to do. He fumbles the ball frequently, and when he does, he goes on to do what most of us would probably do under the circumstances: he has the adult equivalent of a tantrum.
In fact, if we regard Scott's shrinking as a symbol for any incurable disease (and the progress of any incurable disease entails a kind of power loss which is analogous to shrinking), we see a pattern which psychologists would outline pretty much as Matheson wrote it . . . only the outline came years later. Scott follows this course, from disbelief to rage to depression to final acceptance, almost exactly. As with cancer patients, the final trick seems to be to accept the inevitable, perhaps to find fresh lines of power leading back into the magic. In Scott's case, in the case of many terminal patients, the final outward sign of this is an admission of the inevitable, followed by a kind of euphoria.
We can understand Matheson's decision to use flashbacks in order to get to "the good stuff” early on, but one wonders what might have happened if he had given us the story in a straight line. We see Scott's loss of power in several widely spaced episodes: he is chased by teenagers at one point-they think, and why not, that he is just a little kid-and at another he hitches a ride with a man who turns out to be a homosexual. He begins to feel an increasing disrespect from his daughter Beth, partly because of the "might makes right" idea that works unobtrusively but powerfully in even the most enlightened parent-child relationships ( or, we could say, might makes power . . . or might makes magic), but perhaps mostly because his steady shrinking causes Beth to have to constantly restructure her feelings about her father, who ends up living in a dollhouse before his fall into the cellar. We can even blackly visualize Beth, who doesn't really understand what's happening, inviting her friends in on a rainy day to play with her daddy.
But Scott's most painful problems are with Lou, his wife. They are both personal and sexual, and I think that most men, even today, tend to identify the magic most strongly with sexual potency. A woman may not want to but she can; a man may want to and find he cannot. Bad news. And when Scott is 4'1" tall, he comes home from the medical center where he has been undergoing tests and walks straight into a situation where the loss of sexual magic becomes painfully evident: Louise looked up, smiling. "You look so nice and clean," she said.
It was not the words or the look on her face; but suddenly he was terribly conscious of his size.
In fact, if we regard Scott's shrinking as a symbol for any incurable disease (and the progress of any incurable disease entails a kind of power loss which is analogous to shrinking), we see a pattern which psychologists would outline pretty much as Matheson wrote it . . . only the outline came years later. Scott follows this course, from disbelief to rage to depression to final acceptance, almost exactly. As with cancer patients, the final trick seems to be to accept the inevitable, perhaps to find fresh lines of power leading back into the magic. In Scott's case, in the case of many terminal patients, the final outward sign of this is an admission of the inevitable, followed by a kind of euphoria.
We can understand Matheson's decision to use flashbacks in order to get to "the good stuff” early on, but one wonders what might have happened if he had given us the story in a straight line. We see Scott's loss of power in several widely spaced episodes: he is chased by teenagers at one point-they think, and why not, that he is just a little kid-and at another he hitches a ride with a man who turns out to be a homosexual. He begins to feel an increasing disrespect from his daughter Beth, partly because of the "might makes right" idea that works unobtrusively but powerfully in even the most enlightened parent-child relationships ( or, we could say, might makes power . . . or might makes magic), but perhaps mostly because his steady shrinking causes Beth to have to constantly restructure her feelings about her father, who ends up living in a dollhouse before his fall into the cellar. We can even blackly visualize Beth, who doesn't really understand what's happening, inviting her friends in on a rainy day to play with her daddy.
But Scott's most painful problems are with Lou, his wife. They are both personal and sexual, and I think that most men, even today, tend to identify the magic most strongly with sexual potency. A woman may not want to but she can; a man may want to and find he cannot. Bad news. And when Scott is 4'1" tall, he comes home from the medical center where he has been undergoing tests and walks straight into a situation where the loss of sexual magic becomes painfully evident: Louise looked up, smiling. "You look so nice and clean," she said.
It was not the words or the look on her face; but suddenly he was terribly conscious of his size.