The Man Who Played God

Clarence Wall’s novel “The Man Who Played God” is divided into three parts: The Journey The Diary and The Return. In Part I on his return to his birthplace the town of Grover after completing his education as a medical doctor in the east the novel’s main character Franklin Black ”sat in the carriage observing the burnt out remains of the church; and …since its destruction no effort had been made to rebuild or even to tear it down—perhaps to keep it as a reminder of what had happened.“ That night at a party in his honor Black announces that he planned to make a journey to a forbidden place called the Valley of Death which had claimed the lives of many who had ventured there in order e he find the Grover’s pastor Jacob Parker who was also considered the cause of the church fire; he disappeared shortly after the blaze in which many local people were killed. Black was a former suitor of Parker’s daughter Mary Parker and hoped that finding her father will help him win her affection. (Mary’s own husband had died in the church fire.) She has become a virtual recluse after the fire and the disappearance of her father. Part II of the novel reveals what happened on Franklin Black’s journey to the Valley of the Death. And what he discovered there is very strange to put in very mildly—a world turned upside down into one of madness and brutality. To paraphrase the words of Joseph Conrad it is one that has negated the familiar and embraced the strange. Black is captured and detained by an autocrat who simply goes by the name of “the old man of the Valley.” Black discovers that the old man has created an idolatrous religion that the Valley’s natives have been forced to embrace; its practices include decapitation of intruders and eating their flesh—which is described in bloody detail. Part III recounts Black’s return to Grover and the events thereafter. In spite of the horrible events described in Parts I and II the novel ends pleasantly. Other interesting characters in the novel include John Rollins who accompanies Black on his journey and Erick a ward of Jacob Parker and a knife-wielding psychopath.