On Wed, 2005-22-06 at 10:06 -0400, Andrew Barton wrote:
> Dante hadn't died. The Divine Comedy starts 'Midway on this life we're
> bound upon' and there are several references in the story to the fact that
> his living body acts differently to the spirits he meets. IIRC the same is
> true of the Niven and Pournelle story.
No. I'm quite sure that in the Niven and Pournelle story, the hero is quite, quite dead. Especially given the ending of the book.
> The nearest classical story I can think of is that of Orpheus and Eurydice,
> where a living man has a chance to bring a spirit back from the underworld
> and blows it.
Yeah, I thought of that. Although doesn't Hercules also make an underworld trip to find Theseus at some point and succeeds? Or am I just still recovering from the Stomach flu?
> Or in fantasy, several of Terry Pratchett's books contain short passages
> about characters after their deaths. Very occasionally a powerful witch
> can get back to the world of the living, but otherwise the dead have no
> further effect in the world they've left except for occasional hauntings.
> The characters that pay extended visits to Death's home (including his
> apprentice) are again living beings.
How about the The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix? I only read the first one, but thought it was very interesting, with necromancers controlling the dead using bells. There are a lot of voyages into the underworld, even if there may not be a character who dies and then wanders around to still affect the story. (There might be, I haven't read the whole thing.)
I suppose you could make the argument that in the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, Matthew the Raven is an example of a dead person (admittedly from another series) who gets to hang around and be useful.
LC
Powered by hypermail