From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey@stic.net>
Subject: (urth) More "Kevin Malone"
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 02:54:38 

Tony Ellis wrote:

>Kevin Malone is posessed by the elder Mr Malone. (Do we know his first
>name? Can't remember, but if not then I suspect it may well have been
>Kevin.) That monomaniacal desire to own the big house, to get back to
>his lost childhood, isn't his, it's Malone-the-servant's. That's why he
>could never be happy as master of the house: in the home he "remembers",
>he slept in the servant's annexe.

    The above does not address when/how KM came to be possessed by the elder
Malone. While he was still an innocent (so far as The Pines is concerned)
orphan, who had had no prior connection to the estate? The "spirit", or
whatever, of the elder Malone, operating at some remove from the estate,
attaches itself to a random, orphaned boy, implants false memories of and
causes to pine for, a home the child had never known? Causes the boy to grow
up and amass a fortune just so he can buy the estate (how long did that
take, 20 years, 30 years?)?
    Or did a rich man, who need not have been an orphan, just happen to buy
the estate and only then become possessed? If so, why then give him false
memories, either of growing up on the estate and then leaving for the
orphanage or not growing up on the estate but still going to an orphanage?
    KM can not have the elder Malone's memories of growing up on the estate
because the estate didn't exist when the elder Malone was a boy! We are told
The Pines was one of the estates designed "During the teens and twenties..."
(p-38). The current KM is middle-aged (what, 50?). The "now" of the story is
probably the mid-to-late 1970s, because NASA is mentioned. KM would have to
have been born circa the mid-to-late 1920s, the murder/suicide circa the
late 1930s, in order for him to go to the orphanage at age 12. Betty Malone
is stated to have been 20 years younger than the elder Malone (p-48). Even
if Betty was relatively young when she was killed - say 20 -, that would
make the elder Malone 40. He would have to have been born at about the turn
of the century. Ergo, it was not possible for him to have been raised at The
Pines.
    The dates and ages I have given are necessarily approximations, but they
can't be far enough off for KM to have the elder Malone's memories of
growing up on the estate. My theory is looking better all the time! <g>

Roy



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