How would you react if your mother - who you believed had died saving your life just after you were born - suddenly reappeared and said, "Oh, no, we were too embarrassed to tell people I was pregnant, so your dad and I gave you up for adoption in another country, and your dad just died a few weeks ago and asked me to look you up. Here I am!"
That isn't what happened.
His parents sent him away because they couldn't (or, to Clark's mind, wouldn't) admit that they had lost control of their passions, not to save him from certain destruction.
That is
absolutely not what happened!
Clark's parents
did send their son away to save him from destruction. Not from certain destruction, all right, but from
probable destruction. I don't have the strength to go looking for previous parts now, but I distinctly remember that the mores of Krypton were such that if an illegitimate child was born, the head of the family or the klan passed judgement on whether or not the child would be allowed to live. Jor-El and Lara believed that their son would be sentenced to death, if others found out about his existence.
I'm all but certain that it has been common in certain cultures to sentence unwanted newborn
girls to death. That practice has morphed into large-scale female foeticide in countries like India and China. Admittedly I don't know of any culture where families have killed their own unwanted
sons, but Mary's explanation for how it could happen on Krypton rang true to me. Out-of-wedlock sex was seen as so reprehensible that the fruits of it were put down.
I think there is a big misunderstanding between Clark and Lara. Clark believes that Lara and Jor-el sent him away because they didn't
want him. Lara believes that Clark is dismayed because she and Jor-el made him by having illegitimate sex. I do hope that Clark can accept the illegitimate aspect of himself - after all, even Jesus was an illegitimate child, or he looked that way to the people of his home town, to be sure. And I very much hope Clark can accept that his parents
did send him away to save him, only not from an exploding planet. To continue the biblical comparisons, consider Moses. His mother put him in a 'spaceship' of his own - okay, not a spaceship, but a small 'ark' ( as King James' Bible describes it), and sent him away down the river Nile to an unknown fate, but hopefully to salvation. Moses was saved, and so was Clark. And Clark, if you are like Jesus and Moses, why should you complain?
Moses is saved by Pharao's daughter.
I can understand Lara's heartbreak. She had to send away her son, because she had born him out of wedlock. Afterwards, when she had married her beloved Jor-El, she was unable to have more children. She watched her husband die. She went looking for her son on the Earth, and found him, only to have him reject her and accuse her of being a liar and a terrible mother. Poor Lara!!!
Ann