Death in GoF

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 17440

Lucy wrote:

> > I was also much more affected by hearing it read.  Suddenly it hit 
me
> > just how quickly Voldemort could kill,

Amanda wrote:

> I think JKR did a great job of both catching how callous Voldemort 
is,
> how little life matters (that "Kill the spare" line is chilling), 
and of
> communicating how bad guys really kill people, how death happens.
> Sudden. No warning. No opportunity to speak, no last words. Not the 
way
> deaths are usually handled in literature at all, and very effective. 
I
> was very impressed.

Me too, me too, me too, and this is why I can't understand the critics 
who say HP is evil because "four people die in the first chapter of 
GF" (this is by their addition, not mine), or because it's about evil, 
or because there isn't always a happy ending.  If people think these 
themes are too advanced for eight-year-olds, that's one thing, but as 
for judging the books immoral on this basis, I couldn't disagree more. 
 I firmly believe that literature should portray death the way it 
really happens, which is often sudden, cruel, arbitrary, and without 
apparent redemption.  If there is to be a happy ending for Cedric, the 
reader will have to believe in heaven and imagine that that's where he 
is now--which is fine.  But in the books, as for the rest of us here 
on earth, all anyone knows for sure is that a kind and good young 
person is dead for no good reason.  His parents are left to suffer, 
there's no bringing him back, and the only consolation anyone can take 
is that he died fast (and at a time that he was happy, as Mrs. 
Diggory says) and his body wasn't left to be mutilated.  This, to my 
mind, is exactly the kind of thing that makes HP such fine moral 
literature.

Thanks for letting me rant,
Amy Z