JRRT, JKR, UKLG, and the complexity of evil
Amy Z
aiz24 at hotmail.com
Fri May 25 16:13:45 UTC 2001
No: HPFGUIDX 19478
Susan Hall's post on Lockhart put me in mind of something I just read
last night. If you will forgive my quoting a long passage, I found
that it described very well one reason I love Rowling. I'll get back
to HP after the quote.
It is from an essay called "The Child and the Shadow," in _The
Language of the Night_ (New York: Berkley, 1979), a collection of
Ursula K. LeGuin's essays and speeches about fantasy and science
fiction. She is as good an essayist as a novelist, and I recommend
this and all her essays very highly.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Various fascinating observations about shadows and Jungian/fairy-tale
ways of seeing precede this.]
In many fantasy tales of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the
tension between good and evil, light and dark, is drawn absolutely
clearly, as a battle, the good guys on one side and the bad guys on
the other, cops and robbers, Christians and heathens, heroes and
villains. In such fantasies I believe the author has tried to force
reason to lead him where reason cannot go, and has abandoned the
faithful and frightening guide he should have followed, the shadow.
These are false fantasies, rationalized fantasies. They are not the
real thing. Let me, by way of exhibiting the real thing, which is
always much more interesting than the fake one, discuss _The Lord of
the Rings_ for a minute.
Critics have been hard on Tolkien for his "simplisticness," his
division of the inhabitants of Middle Earth into the good people and
the evil people. And indeed he does this, and his good people tend to
be entirely good, though with endearing frailties, while his Orcs and
other villains are altogether nasty. But all this is a judgment by
daylight ethics, by conventional standards of virtue and vice. When
you look at the story as a psychic journey, you see something quite
different, and very strange. You see then a group of bright figures,
each one with its black shadow. Against the Elves, the Orcs. Against
Aragorn, the Black Rider. Against Gandalf, Saruman. And above all,
against Frodo, Gollum. Against him--and with him.
It is truly complex, because both the figures are already
doubled. Sam is, in part, Frodo's shadow, his inferior part. Gollum
is two people, too, in a more direct, schizophrenic sense; he's always
talking to himself, Slinker talking to Stinker, Sam calls it. . . .
Frodo and Gollum are not only both hobbits; they are the same
person--and Frodo knows it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Someone posted recently that Draco is Ron's double, etc. (please take
a bow--I couldn't find your post to give credit where credit is due).
Voldemort, in multiple ways that have been said many times here, is
Harry's. They share a history; they are similar enough to illustrate
JKR's theme that we are shaped by our choices, not only by parentage,
inborn attributes, and status. If Voldemort is too bad to be quite a
full-fledged character (which I do think he is) and Harry is too good
to be one (which I don't think, but just for the sake of argument--),
this simplicity is redeemed by their being paired; they are, in a
sense, two sides of one person, just like Frodo and Gollum. I tend to
read the books novelistically rather than mythologically--looking for
complete, rounded characters rather than archetypes--but I think you
can do both. I do it with Tolkien (Frodo is a rounder character than
LeGuin makes out, even without his shadows Sam, Smeagol, and Gollum,
e.g.) and it works for HP too.
Amy Z
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"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school
song!" cried Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other
teachers' smiles had become rather fixed.
-HP and the Philosopher's Stone
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