[HPforGrownups] Abstemiousness with truth - the careful fantasy world of Potter

[Amanda Geist]

No: HPFGUIDX 43420

My heavens, what an articulate break from the enlarge-your-breasts spam.

Darkthirty Binns essayed:

> In all situations in my own life, I have found it both easier and
> more rewarding when the context that obtains is one of open
> communication and transparency, which by extension, creates the kind
> of equality between involved parties that results when little is
> hidden, when information, or knowledge, cannot or is not owned, or
> held as a private possession. A far cry from the so-called magical
> world of Harry Potter.

Do you *talk* this way? We must be related. I should refer you to some of my
Hogwarts heraldry harangues, which some of the older listmembers have
printed out and use for insomnia. But on to your point.

> The hardest thing to accept about the apparent magical world of Harry
> Potter is that, in spite of Dumbledore's reticence regarding the
> reason Voldemort wants Harry dead, in spite of "the restricted
> section," which, I point out, contains information essential to the
> so-called heroes' quest, in spite of so many characters being
> mysteries, as they say, to other characters, as Black and Snape, for
> instance, are, or Neville is to the trio, signs both of
> intransigence, in the first case, or betraying every sign of
> Rowling's unravelling of facts on a "need to know" basis - that is,
> in the context of her literary career, in terms of making the
> series "make sense" at the end of it all - as is the case with
> Neville, in spite of Hermione's secret use of the Time Turner, a
> secret that proved quite dangerous, in particular to Hermione, and a
> secrecy that had to be pierced in order to complete the given quest,
> all of these ignorances involving core aspects of the story, Harry
> and the trio can still succeed.

I shall call my impression of this paragraph the Anti-Kobayashi Maru point.
You are, as I understand it, saying that regardless of the complexity of the
world JKR has created, the means for Harry to succeed are still built in.
Because of this, it's not a realistic world; a realistic world would be one
where it is not only possible but probable and likely that he fail. Is that
correct?

> How is this possible? Are we to assume fate, a grossly misunderstood
> concept in my opinion, being myself something of a secular calvinist,

"Calvinist," deriving from a proper name, should be capitalized. (Sorry.
Can't help it. Personality defect. Cursed by an editor at birth. Etc.)

> declares that Harry and the trio will succeed whether or not those
> around them attempt to keep them in the dark, to impose, in a way,
> ignorance upon them? Do we really believe Harry's successful
> encounters so far have been written beforehand, and the outcome
> assured? His response to the 2nd task seems central here. His success
> depends upon some inner quality, which may or may not be connected to
> his so-called magical qualities, that makes him stay. He goes through
> no internal debate. His staying was not quite a decision; rather, as
> he later reflects, it was an action, the right one, we agree, made in
> ignorance. A bit of pathos.

I'm not at all sure I know what you're saying with this. The second task,
the Egg? How did his success with the egg depend on an inner quality? And
"stay"? It was in facing the dragon that he briefly considered running,
wasn't it? I think you may be making a point worth considering, but I really
can't work it out, please clarify.

> Let me try to demonstrate my reading of Rowling like this - The so-
> called magical world of Harry Potter is, on one level, on perhaps the
> most fundamental level, unequivocally nothing more than the extended
> fantasy-world of an abused boy stuck in a closet. I cannot state this
> strongly enough. Whether the boy is in fact adopted, or is imagining
> that he is adopted, taken from his so-called real parents, whether he
> attends a regular school or isn't even allowed to do that, it is his
> fantasy world to which we are exposed. And the abstemiousness with
> truth characteristic of that world is the signal, the flashing
> lights, as it were, of the guard towers, of the circumference of
> Hogwarts' famous ancient magical protection - read, the constricted
> limits of the abused boy's knowing. That protection, I submit, is
> directed inwards as much as it is directed outwards. Even the
> widespread anti-muggle charms appear to me to be defenses against the
> reality of sustained punishment. There is also mention of some
> similar sort of ancient magical protection regarding the Dursley's
> residence. This too, in my reading, seems as much an inwards pressure
> as an outwards one.

It's an interesting idea, I will admit, that all of this is in Harry's mind.
I like it no better than I did the first time I saw this idea, on some
long-ago thread where people were writing the infamous already-written Last
Paragraph--one person's involved Harry waking up in his cupboard under the
stairs, it all having been a dream. Ugh.

If this is a true interpretation, why does he come back to the Dursleys, to
"reality," at all? Why does he not allow himself to "stay" at Hogwarts over
the summers, too? Will you tell me Harry has internalized the pattern of
terms and holidays to the point of being unable to escape it, or will you
say that all of the experiences with reality that he cannot otherwise deny
or sublimate are compressed in his fantasy to the summer break?

Also, there is the problem of the complexity, which you yourself noted above
in your introductory monolith. Too many of these characters are complex
beyond the range of an eleven-year-old's ability to create or sustain,
especially given that they interact with each other as well as with Harry.
Part of the reason these books have adult readers is that the characters
resonate with adult readers, in responses and actions commensurate with
adults. These characters, to me, seem a bit beyond the level of complexity a
child could invent or project, especially not a child with Harry's limited
experience.

Further, there are a few scenes where the story is *not* filtered through
Harry's perceptions or colored by his presence. The staffroom scene springs
to mind, where the behavior of the teachers is different from the way they
behave in front of the students. I submit that a detail of this level is
probably beyond the fantasizing of a child of twelve. Also, Harry is not
even present in the opening of book 4 (although we learn he dreamed it). If
all this were his fantasy, we, as readers, would not have been provided the
"full" story before reading Harry's dim remembrances. We would not need it,
nor would he, to construct another fantasy structure.

Lastly, Harry is growing and maturing. You postulate that this is an escape
of his circumstances, yet if it is all a fantasy, it's a remarkably edifying
one. Harry is doing far more than getting away from the Dursleys. He is
*learning* from his experiences, growing in wisdom and knowledge. If the
wizarding world is all in his mind, where is this wisdom coming from? One
*can* learn from thought experiments, granted, but Harry's experiences of
people and interactions are hardly enough, in my opinion, to have allowed
him to create such a rich world full of varied personalities whose function
is to dispense wisdom he already, somehow, possessed.

> Do we agree with Dumbledore's assessment that Harry should grow up
> away from what we are supposed to believe are the horrifying and
> dangerous consequences of fame, and be, rather, reared by people who
> hate what he represents, mistrust and abuse him? Of course not.

Um, I agree with Dumbledore, here. I don't think Dumbledore knew how
horrible the Dursleys would be, and his reasoning is sound.

> So we
> must accept that Dumbledore's assurance about the safety of the
> Dursley's house is true - otherwise, he's just being a stupid old man
> who assumes family is more important than human rights. This so-
> called safety certainly looks like the rationalization of someone in
> a hopeless and helpless situation to me. And for someone deprived of
> information, of ways of obtaining it, someone for whom the paths to
> knowledge are closed, ignorance might seem strength. In a real way,
> however, for such a person, ignorance would surely be some measure of
> protection. Ignorance about one's actual hopeless and helpless
> situation, the extent of it, or rather, intensity of it.

Harry does not learn, immediately, that he must stay with the Dursleys
because he is safe there. Nor do we. I'd think that if he were trying to
rationalize his fate by inventing the safety factor, that would be one of
the first things his fantasy addressed. Nor does he seem to embrace
ignorance; he receives knowledge gladly. He does not go seeking information,
but he does not hide from it.

> I'm not sure how much of this line Rowling is conscious of when she
> writes. I have no intention in this post of addressing that
> particular moot area. Rather, this is my reading, and as it seems
> both a general response to the digests I've been getting, on one
> hand, and an idea that has been an acute difficulty for me since I
> first read the books, I thought I'd post it in a new thread, see if
> perhaps this one gets past the Ministry of Moderators.

You must have been coming in through that third-corridor route. Watch out
for the three-headed one.

--Amanda