Neville: Memory, History, Legacy, Power (LONG!)

[lupinesque]

No: HPFGUIDX 38455

I was absolutely wowed by this essay, Elkins.  This is the number one 
reason why I read stories: to gain the sorts of insights you have 
gained here.  I doubt I would ever have gained them from my own 
reading of the books, however, so I am very grateful to you for your 
beautiful synthesis of all JKR is saying about memory, legacy, and the 
uses of the past.  I barely dare add my incoherent little murmurings, 
but I'll do my best.

You worry that JKR does not give enough weight to the value of 
forgetting and renunciation of the past.  And David suggested:

> What I 
>think *is* outside her vision is the idea that some sleeping dogs 
>really are better let lying.

You both may prove right, and I agree that it would be unfortunate.  I 
see one strong piece of evidence, however, that JKR does not believe 
that remembering is always preferable to forgetting, that she 
recognizes that not all truths are better off dredged up--at least if 
they won't go quietly back underground after we've taken a good honest 
look at them.  This evidence is the Dementors.  One of the worst 
torments Rowling's imagination has devised is the inability to escape 
memory, and she makes it clear that these floods of memory, far from 
being empowering, drain one of one's powers and make one completely 
ineffectual.  

It's true that Harry is driven, and almost driven to a disastrous 
action, by his Dementor-induced memory of his mother:  one of the 
things that most enrages him about Black is that he, the murderer, 
doesn't have to relive this memory while Harry does.  

  *But the Dementors don't affect him,* Harry thought, staring into 
  the handsome, laughing face.  *He doesn't have to hear my Mum 
  screaming if they get too close--* (PA 11)

  'I understand a lot better than you think,' said Harry, and his 
  voice shook more than ever.  'You never heard her, did you?  My mum 
  . . . trying to stop Voldemort killing me . . . and you did that . . 
  . you did it . . . ' (PA 17)

That moment is the closest Harry comes to killing Sirius, driven by an 
inescapable memory; the past, forcibly recalled, can turn one into an 
avenging angel.

But for all that, the chief effect of memory as exemplified by the 
Dementors is to enervate one completely.  When forced to remember his 
parents' deaths, Harry can't think of anything else, he can't talk to 
his friends, he feels a cold paralysis, he finally *is* paralyzed in 
that he passes out.  When he does take action, his power comes not 
from these memories but in spite of them.  They do not power his 
Patronus but drain it of energy.  JKR clearly believes that there is 
such a thing as too much memory--that some dogs are better off, if not 
left asleep, then allowed to sleep again once they've been awoken.

Would she recommend that Neville not visit his parents, then?  Would 
we?  Surely there are ways to help a child recall his past, the bitter 
as well as the sweet, without rubbing his face into it and saying "See 
this?  See what was done?  You must act upon it, you must be our 
avenger . . . "  The latter may be what Gran is doing--Elkins makes a 
good case--but we have yet to see.  We also have yet to see whether 
*JKR* thinks children of murdered or harmed parents should bear the 
burden of revenge.  So far I see Harry feeling this way on occasion, 
but without endorsement from Dumbledore, Sirius, Lupin, or that 
ultimate of parent-figures, his creator.  She does not want people to 
be controlled by the past.

Elkins asks:

>I think that as readers, we can state with some certainty that our 
>strong and heart-felt desire is for history *not* to repeat itself, 
>or at least not precisely as it did the last time around.  But the 
>question then becomes: to what extent does knowledge of the past help 
>or hinder this goal?  Is it really those who are unaware of history 
>who are doomed to repeat it?  Or is it perhaps *only* those who 
>choose to reject history who stand the slightest chance of resisting 
>the patterns that history imposes upon the culture and those who live 
>within it?  Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?

Naturally I want to say the latter.  If we wish to be free and act 
morally, we can neither reject history in the absolute sense of 
refusing to acknowledge it (keeping it buried), nor steep ourselves in 
it completely.  We look into the Mirror of Erised, sigh with longing 
that it is not real, and move on.  I hope that's the model that JKR 
will finally endorse:  one that mixes memory and renunciation.

Laura wrote:

>How DARE they use Memory Charms?

>Seriously, I can think of nothing more evil -- they ought to be 
>Unforgivable.

>I mean, my memories -- they're all I *have*.  They're the only thing 
>that make me *me*, you know?  How could anyone try to take even a few 
>of them from me?  It's like rape.  Worse.  

I'm so glad to hear this from someone else.  In my fantasies in which 
I stumble upon someone from Harry's world and witness them doing magic 
(doesn't anyone else indulge in these, or are you all edging away from 
me and reaching for the straitjacket?), I then beg them not to wipe my 
memory.  May I be Crucio'd if I breathe a word of what I've seen--just 
don't take away a part of my mind.  <shudder>

I don't think it needs to be Unforgivable, but it has to be very 
tightly controlled.  As Bernadette writes, it's too easy to be 
careless  about concealing magic if you can just use Obliviate when 
some Muggle sees you.  The WW may address this through harshly 
penalizing wizards who are seen.  I hope so.

>This also bothered me in the Dark Is Rising series...at the end when 
>the minds of all the humans are wiped.  Only one is even given the 
>*choice* to remember.  How could the forces of "Light" *do* something 
>to someone -- especially against their will?

Drifting OT here, so we can discuss this in detail over at OTC, but 
IIRC, in The Dark is Rising they do it with great reluctance and a 
proper sense of gravity.  I am not recalling the final such scene too 
well, but when Will wipes Stephen's memory earlier, it's a very sad 
moment.  (And as long as I'm making OT comments about other writers' 
memory incidents, if you don't like Total Recall, Grey Wolf [and it 
was horrifically bloody], read the original, by the great Philip K. 
Dick.  It's a story called "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.")

Amy Z