| Posted: 15 August 2024 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | 2
|
post reply
|
|
I do not think it's pedantic to object to Mr. Claremont's having Scott think Professor X "cruel" when we take the word seriously...
Cruel means "(of a person or action) extremely unkind and unpleasant and causing pain to people or animals intentionally" (Cambridge Dictionary); "used to describe people who hurt others and do not feel sorry about it" (Britannica); "willfully or knowingly causing pain or distress to others; enjoying the pain or distress of others" (dictionary.com); and so forth.
There's a reason why Jean Grey was happily weeping in #65 when she could finally admit that Prof X was alive. There's a reason why Hank in #65 says he now knows what Hamlet felt to see the ghost of his father. There's a reason why Warren exclaims surprise that Prof X had been alive and well "right under our noses!"
Of course they were shocked. And of course they suffered real trauma.
But as much as the original X-Men were like a family, they were not civilians: they were "soldiers," superheroes. They all would understand, and Scott more than any of them.
Unless he or any of them had reason to think Prof X was lying or recklessly, negligently wrong that utmost seclusion was required for him to devise a counter-attack against the Z'Nox to save the planet, then why would any of them of them think he was "cruel"?
Mr. Claremont did not in #138 provide any such reason. It was a quick "thought" put into the expressive mind of Scott Summers -- who, at the grave of Jean Grey, could have been just as fully upset at the "cruelty" of his beloved who herself kept Prof X's secret.
(Just a tangent for Athanasios: we can easily in Greek say for the word cruel, σκληρός, which in English typically means "hard," and no doubt it was very hard for the X-Men to think that Prof X had actually died! But the way cruel is given and taken in Scott's thought would be more like άσπλαχνος or απάνθρωπ_ 9;ς. Δεν μπορώ να γράψω σωστά την τελευταία λέξη. Συγνώμη!)
Edited by Michael Penn on 15 August 2024 at 2:05pm
|
