JRRT, JKR, UKLG, and the complexity of evil

[linman6868 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 19497

Amy Z wrote, and quotes LeGuin:

>    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 <snip>

I hope she's not including George MacDonald among those nineteenth-
century authors.  His fairy-tales are far from simplistic morality 
masks.  The main characters in them are complex, or if simple, still 
wonderfully real.  The evil characters have the same range of evils 
from Fudge to Lockhart to Voldemort.  There are even stories in 
which, as Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and it is us."  Needless 
to say, MacDonald drove his friend John Ruskin up the wall.  I think 
I read a quote by W.H. Auden saying that MacDonald's books were the 
only books he'd read that emanated goodness without being cloying, 
with which I fully agree.  JKR isn't like MacDonald, but she has her 
own brand of impish idealism to offer, and that is what I like about 
her writing in general...

Okay, finished my MacDonald spiel, now for the on-topic stuff.

LeGuin on Tolkien, followed by Amy:

> 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.  

>  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 really like this thought.  However, concerning Voldemort I think 
it's not so much that he's a cardboard Evil Overlord; I think it's 
more that we as ordinary people just don't understand the taste, so 
to speak, of rational and cold-blooded evil.  I for one understand 
the thirst for murder pretty well; I can get into Sirius's mind all 
right, and especially Harry's when he blows up his aunt.  But well, 
what do you say about people who *think out* their hatreds?  (It's 
like what Eddie Izzard says about Hitler:  "What did he do, did he 
just say while he was painting, 'I can't...get...this stupid tree 
right...I will kill everyone in the world!!")

But the thing about the shadows kind of anchors Voldemort to the 
ground a little.  All the similarities between Harry and Voldemort 
mentioned in CoS are, I think along those lines, JKR's way of 
stitching Harry's shadow to his feet a la Peter Pan.

Lisa I.
thanking those who praised her Les Mis filk and adding her praise to 
Caius's latest!