[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry getting killed off

[Doreen]

No: HPFGUIDX 15481

Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer wrote:
>
> Hi --
>
> Doreen wrote:
>
> > It really disturbs me that JKR has said before that she would never
> > kill off Ron Weasley, Harry's best friend, but she has teased several
> > times about, "How do we know that Harry will survive the series?"
> > Does anyone else have a problem with this?
>
> Actually, she hasn't said "never" with respect to killing off Ron.
> She's said that she finds it funny that kids are always asking her not
> to kill off Ron.  She said they know enough to recognize that the hero's
> best friend often dies.  She's bothered by the fact that noone seems to
> concerned about whether Hermione will die or not.  Everyone just assumes
> she'll be fine.

At the risk of starting up the gender-equality discussion all
over again, I suspect this is because  Hermione is female.
Heroines and/or love interests are =much= less likely to die than
(male) heroes' (male) best friends.

Note that I'm talking about reader expectations here, not any
assumptions about what JKR might or might not do!


--Margaret Dean
  *****************************************
You are right ... she did not say "never" ... but she did say, in Time
Magazine, 10/30/00:

"It's great to hear feedback from the kids. Mostly they are really worried
about Ron. As if I'm going to kill Harry's best friend. What I find
interesting is only once has anyone said to me, "Don't kill Hermione," and
that was after a reading when I said no one's ever worried about her.
Another kid said, "Yeah, well, she's bound to get through O.K." They see her
as someone who is not vulnerable, but I see her as someone who does have
quite a lot of vulnerability in her personality. Hermione is me, near
enough. A caricature of me when I was younger. I wasn't that clever. But I
was that annoying on occasion. Girls are very tolerant of her because she is
not an uncommon female type--the little girl who feels plain and hugely
compensates by working very hard and wanting to get everything just so."
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I guess that I just took the "as if" to mean that she would never do that.
In the US, "As if" means "that is the last thing in the world I would do."
Doreen
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