Various ships / who'll die?

[naama]

No: HPFGUIDX 8279

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> 
wrote:
> 
> 
>   Hey, I enjoy Freddy Kreuger as much as the next guy, but let's 
look at a more exalted parallel - the Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre.  
(And that may be "exalted" in the sense that the John Huston 
character in Chinatown noted that old businessmen, old whores and old 
buildings all get more respectable with age). Suppose that 
Shakespeare doled out Hamlet to his public an act at a time, and 
we've so far been given the first three acts.  So, we've had one 
death so far (Polonius), though we've also learned in Act III that 
Claudius did murder his elder brother.  Now let us further suppose 
that Shakespeare in the course of interviews with the press revealed 
that he had the entire plot of Hamlet sketched out, and that there 
were going to be a lot more deaths before the play's final 
resolution...How might we have possibly predicted the final 
resolution of the play (ANSWER: We would not have even come close: 
that's what makes Shakespeare and JKR geniuses, and the rest of us 
mere fans.....)
> 
I see your point, but I must say I think you've picked a very poor 
example to demostrate it. It would be quite enough to read act I of 
Hamlet to be sure that the play will not end happily. I wouldn't be 
able to predict all the deaths, suicides and murders, of course, but 
I wouldn't at all be surprised by them (and that, also, is what makes 
Shakespeare a genius). The first act, let me remind you (thought you 
obviously don't need a reminder), shows us the hero as a young man 
deeply grieving the loss of his father, disgusted and horrified by 
his mother's obscenely early marriage to an uncle he dislikes. At 
this point Hamlet feels this:
    "O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
    Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
    Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd  
    His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
    How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
    Seem to me all the uses of this world!"
    (Act I, Scene II)

He is already contemplating suicide! THEN he and we find out that the 
adored father was cold-bloodedly murdered by the uncle. What would 
you expect after that but madness, grief and death? 
And its not only in the plot, either. The first act already reeks 
with the smell of blood, ill omens and horror. For instance this 
speech by Horatio:

    "In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
    A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
    The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
    Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;  
    As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,
    Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
    Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
    Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
    And even the like precurse of fierce events,
    As harbingers preceding still the fates
    And prologue to the omen coming on,
    Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
    Unto our climature and countrymen."
    (Act I, Scene I)


On the principle that the gun seen at the first act will shoot at the 
third act (Chekhov, I believe), do you really see such hints in the  
HP books? (I'm not talking only of plot, but also about the 
atmosphere, the feel of the books.)


>   I've previously given my guesses on the Vol 5-7 death toll: among 
the good guys, Dumbledore, Hagrid, Black, Lupin, Moody, but not 
Hermione, any of the Weasleys, or Harry Potter (although I confess 
that my confidence is most shaky with respect to our titular hero); 
>

Just to be clear on this - do you think all the good guys you 
mentioned will die or just one or two of them?


Naama