OOP: on "seeing death" (was Re: main list survival strategy)

[bluesqueak]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, artsylynda at a... wrote:
> In a message dated 7/2/2003 5:38:33 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
> HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com writes:
> 
Richelle wrote:
<Snip>
> > Therefore she decided you had to have time to process the 
> > death, think about it a while, and then you see them.  My 
> > particular problem is with the use of the words "seen death."  I 
> > think it should be "witness death" since Harry didn't actually  
> >*see* Cedric die.  Which I seem to be the only 
> > one who has a problem with that particular thing.

Lynda:
> He apparently saw his mother killed, and relives that when the 
> Dementors come around (or did until he was able to conjure up a 
> Patronus), so *logically* he should've been able to see the  
> Thestrals all along.  He didn't see Cedric die, but saw his dead   
> body an instant after it hit the ground, close enough to 
> "seeing" death, I imagine, to count (depending, of course, on 
who's counting! ;->

> )  I think JKR is a brilliant writer, I think she will be this 
> generation's Dickens, but I imagine even Dickens had uneven things 
> in his stories (don't ask me for examples, it's been too long 
since I read Dickens for me to remember). 

Dickens had loads. There was a British TV version of Oliver Twist a 
couple of years ago where the adaptor announced that there were so 
many loose ends he was going to treat the book as a first draft, and 
change things. Everyone agreed with him. Everyone thought 
his 'second draft' *was* an improvement, as well [grin]

[Note: please don't try this at home unless you happen to be an 
award winning playwright in your own right ;-)]

  This Thestral question, though, is quite illogical compared to 
> most of JKR's writing.  JMO.

I dunno. I never saw a problem with it when I read it. Harry didn't 
see his parents die - he heard James yell something, he saw a green 
flash of light, and he saw his mother fall to the floor. At 18 
months old, that is *all* you would understand.

And we know that he hasn't really processed his parents death; in 
PoA he believes that he's seen his father. In GoF he has to be told, 
yet again, that the 'parents'(and other 'people') he saw in Priori 
Incantatum were shadows, not the real people who'd somehow got stuck 
in Voldemort's wand. 

Harry knows that he is an orphan, but that isn't the same as 
having 'seen' (or witnessed) his parents deaths. He's managed to 
dredge up some memories of that, but I think those memories hurt 
more because of what their deaths mean *for him*. 

Part of the storyline throughout the books is his learning to 
understand that his parents were real people who died. Part of the 
storyline in OOP is his learning that James wasn't some ideal hero, 
but a fallible human being.

Cedric, on the other hand, was a real person to Harry. His death was 
real to him, it hit Harry emotionally. Someone he knew and liked is 
now dead. 

I think that this is probably what JKR was thinking when she planned 
to put the Thestrals after the death of Cedric; that 'to see death' 
is to experience the death of someone you know, and to understand 
that they are never, ever coming back.

Though someday you might go to meet them.

Pip!Squeak