Re: Harry’s fate according to the bookies (more literary spoilers)

[justcarol67]

Carol earlier:
> > It's something I was taught in one of my English classes in grad
school. The teacher said that R&J followed all the conventions of a
romantic comedy (star-crossed lovers, misunderstandings, etc.) except
for the ending (and the two deaths I mentioned earlier--three,
counting Paris, whom I'd forgotten about). Imagine Juliet waking up
just half an hour earlier, in time to prevent Romeo's mistake. All's
Well That Ends Well, so to speak. 
> > 
> 
> Dung:
> You mean it really *did* start out as Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's 
Daughter?! Damn. And there I was thinking Norman and Stoppard were
being brilliantly clever and original...
>
Carol:
LOL. They were. R&J, like most of Shakespeare's plays, borrows its
plot and characters from various sources and thaen adapts them in an 
original way.  It started out as Pyramus and Thisbe (which Shakespeare
turns into "a most lamentable comedy" in "Midsummer Night's Dream")
and a number of similar stories, including one about Rhomeo and
Giuliette, IIRC. They all had similar tragic endings. But the genius
of Shakespeare was to *structure* the play like a romantic comedy,
except for a few characters being killed (instead of injured or almost
killed or exposed to humiliation) along the way and the star-crossed
lovers dying. Comedy centers on conflict and confusion, but in the
end, it's all resolved.

Look at "West Side Story," R&J updated and made into a musical, with a
"Titanic"-style ending. And then imagine a happy ending instead, and
you'd have a romantic comedy, not in the sense of comedy being funny,
but in the sense of "All's Well That Ends Well." Structurally, R&J has
more in common with that play (or "Twelfth Night" or even "Midsummer
Night's Dream," with all its comic mix-ups, than with the major
tragedies focusing on a flawed hero doomed by his own ambition or
uncertainty or doubt or hubris or whatever hamartia Shakespeare chose
to assign them.

Miraculously, I found a website that actually discusses what I brought
up here in relation to Shakespeare's plays:

"The terms comedy and tragedy commonly refer to the ways in which
dramatic conflicts are resolved. In comedy, the confusion ends when
everyone recognizes what has been going on, learns from it, forgives,
forgets, and re-establishes his or her identity in the smoothly
functioning social group (which may return to the original normality
or may be setting up a better situation than the one the group started
with). Comedies typically end with a group celebration, especially one
associated with a betrothal or wedding, often accompanied by music and
dancing The emphasis is on the reintegration of everyone into the
group, a recommitment to their shared life together. If there has been
a clearly disruptive presence in the action, a source of anti-social
discord, then that person typically has reformed his ways, has been
punished, or is banished from the celebration. Thus, the comic
celebration is looking forward to a more meaningful communal life
(hence the common ending for comedies: "And they lived happily ever
after").

"The ending of a tragedy is quite different. Here the conflict is
resolved only with the death of the main character, who usually
discovers just before his death that his attempts to control the
conflict and make his way through it have simply compounded his
difficulties and that, therefore, to a large extent the dire situation
he is in is largely of his own making. The death of the hero is not
normally the very last thing in a tragedy, however, for there is
commonly (especially in classical Greek tragedy) some group lament
over the body of the fallen hero, a reflection upon the significance
of the life which has now ended. Some of Shakespeare's best known
speeches are these laments. The final action of a tragedy is then the
carrying out of the corpse. The social group has formed again, but
only as a result of the sacrifice of the main character(s), and the
emphasis in the group is in a much lower key, as they ponder the
significance of the life of the dead hero (in that sense, the ending
of a tragedy is looking back over what has happened; the ending of
comedy is looking forward to a joyful future).

"This apparently simple structural difference between comedy and
tragedy means that, with some quick rewriting, a tragic structure can
be modified into a comic one. If we forget about violating the entire
vision in the work <snip>, we can see how easily a painful tragic
ending can be converted into a reassuring comic conclusion. If Juliet
wakes up in time, she and Romeo can live happily ever after. If
Cordelia survives, then Lear's heart will not break; she can marry
Edgar, and all three of them can live prosperously and happily for
years to come. And so on. Such changes to the endings of Shakespeare's
tragedies were commonplace in eighteenth-century productions, at a
time when the tragic vision of experience was considered far less
acceptable and popular by the general public."

http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/eng208NotesOnComedyAndTragedy.htm

The author of the article also makes a comment regarding conflict
(applicable to both tragedy and comedy) that I thought was apropos to
the HP books: "Attempts to understand what is going on or to deal with
it simply compound the conflict, accelerating it and intensifying it."

Obviously, the HP books are neither Shakespearean tragedy nor
Shakespearean romantic comedy (or any form of drama), but they do have
both tragic and comic elements. (Shakespeare also mixed genres; most
of his tragedies have at least one comic character, and the comedy
often verges on tragedy.)

One more statement from this author on the comic vision of experience
(or life): "When the normal community is upset, the main characters in
a comedy will normally have the initial urge to seek to restore that
normality, to get back what they have lost. Initially, they will be
unsuccessful, and they will have to adapt to unfamiliar changes (funny
or otherwise). But in a comedy the main characters will have the
ability to adjust, to learn, to come up with the resources necessary
to meet the challenges they face. They may also have a great deal of
luck. But one way and another, they persevere and the conflict is
resolved happily with the reintegration of the characters into a
shared community."

Even though the HP series is literature, not drama, that sounds to me
like the direction in which JKR is headed. IOW, I think that DH will
have a happy ending, despite losses and sorrow and mistakes by the
protagonists along the way. Harry will need all his luck and the
ability to adjust, but he'll persevere and he'll triumph. I think
that's JKR's vision of both her protagonist and her invented world, as
well as the real world we all live in.

Carol, noting that the Sorting Hat's comments on unity and DD's
comments on mutual understanding despite differences of language and
culture point to a reintegrated WW ("comic" ending) at the end of the
books