What's Wrong With Metathinking?

[ats_fhc3]

No: HPFGUIDX 45271

Iris wrote:
"Hi everybody,
I have read many posts in which some fellows of the group were 
debating about what you call "metathinking". Forgive me;
I'm rather 
new on this group and though I've sent several posts yet, it is 
clear that I can't compete with many of you in discussing about 
Magic Dishwasher (a brilliant theory) or future romances in the HP 
world."

Until I read your post, I still wasn't clear on what metathinking 
was. Now I know. I am completely lost on MAGIC DISHWASHER. I'll try 
to find time later to look it up. Oh, wait. I just re-read part of 
your post and found out for real what metathinking is. Okie, NOW I 
know what metathinking is. 

"However, I noticed that the general tendency of this group is 
analysing the Harry Potter books from one's own experience, and
that it seems you don't like very much "metathinking" and
literary analyse- I should better say academic analyse."

I love literary analysis! I spent the past two years trying to 
figure out why dead white guys wrote their poems. However, I also 
have a tendancy to think, "maybe he/she just put that in their 
because they liked it. Did anyone ever consider that?" It's like the 
number 20 in the HP series. Maybe J.K. Rowling just likes that 
number. Or maybe she just keep putting it in there as she's 
rummaging for a general number. I sometimes wonder if we over-
analyse.

"I think you are completely right when you rely first on your own 
experience to analyse JKR books. It's a normal reaction and it 
proves how human those stories are. Harry Potter true magic is that 
when you read one of the books, you inevitably find in it a 
character you can identify with, an event that reminds your self-
experience. When we were children, we all have been one day or 
another Harry, Ron, even Draco. We all have met when we went to 
school or to the university teachers who were "our" Snape,
Lockhart or Binns.Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I personally can 
denounce one of my literature teachers as a bearded hybrid of 
Gilderoy Lockhart and Professor Binns. His main work was making his 
students write essays he published then with his own signature, and 
he was so boring that sometimes we couldn't help skipping his 
classes."

I usually look at books that I'm analysing in an objective light. I 
also don't participate in discussions much, unless they interest me 
(meaning, unless they're about Snape). However, I like the idea of 
using personal experience to look at the books. I mean, these books 
ARE about a kid coming of age. We are following Harry and Co. from 
the age 11 to 17/18. For me, I just turned 18, so I could probably 
look at Harry's experiances and relate, as I can still remember 
being 11 (barely, though; I have the memory of a goldfish).

I actually never thought of relating the book to my own experiances, 
because I've always been taught to quote the reading, look at the 
era it was written in.   

"And that's why the series appeal both children and adults.
It's made of human reality, our reality. Will we ever say enough
how 
well JKR knows what it is like to be human? Her painting of human 
nature is exceptional, and true. That's why this group's
members who 
analyse her books from their own experience are right. The Harry 
Potter series is our own Mirror of Erised. It has been a long time 
since a book hadn't given us such a true reflection of who we
are, of what we feel."

I agree with you in your comment about the Mirror of Erised. All of 
us wish that we were young witches and wizards attending Hogwarts. 
SO, not only would we be analysing the books from our own 
experiances, would we be analysing the books from the way we would 
react in the same situation, if we were Harry and Co.? I know that 
in GoF, chapter 27, I would feel the same way towards Snape as Harry 
does, and I LIKE Snape.

"Now I come to "metathinking"."   

Which I now know the definition 
of.                                                           

"I believe it is necessary if we want to understand the complete 
magnitude of JKR books. When we try to understand some
character's behaviour, when we try to explain why he acts that
way, 
we open the door to metaphysics even if we are not conscious of 
doing it. JKR herself never stops questioning, and making us 
questioning about human nature, about the society we live in, about 
the future we want to give our children."

I think that if you picked up a book at random, and had no idea 
about it's history, you would still be able to place it in a time 
period, because of the society, the way people live, the way they 
act, or talk. JKR's books are bound to have themes that are...well, 
I want to use the work prevalent, but I just looked it up, and it 
doesn't quite fit. Well, themes that are discussed most today, 
especially in England, because, obviously, that's where she is. 
There's the issue of terrorism, there's prejudice, politics, 
education. All these things are big issues in the States right now, 
particularly terroism. I don't know about England and terrorism, but 
I remember some posts dicussing terrorist acts that JKR should 
remember. Basically, JKR is including about issues that have been 
raised in reality.


"Let me take an example.
Trying to guess why the Sorting Hat wanted to put Harry in 
Slytherin is a very exciting challenge, but no one can deny this 
scene from Book 1 has also a metaphysical meaning: it is a 
questioning about what determines a destiny. Is it predestination? 
Is it choice? As you can see, this questioning has an echo in many 
posts of the HPfGU group. When somebody tries to determine whether 
Harry makes free choices, whether he is influenced (for example in 
the Shrieking Shack, when he decides to believe Sirius) and takes 
their personal experience as a reference, this is "
metathinking". The fact you don't quote Freud or Nietzsche,
and take 
rather an example of your own, when you explain a behaviour or an 
event, doesn't mean you are not pointing however a metaphysical 
aspectof the story. The scene in the Shrieking Shack can be an 
illustration of the questioning about free will, independently from 
its emotional impact. And as you don't need more than your own 
emotions to feel the same as Harry's, you don't need an
academic 
cursus to point out there's something particular that makes the 
scene more than a new development in the narration."

I don't see wondering about pre-destination and free will as met-
thinking. I think that's more like literary analysis. What you just 
described above IS literary analysis. The emotional aspect of the 
Shrieking Shack scene doesn't really have anything to do with what 
the scene means. If you were to read that scene on one level you'd 
see exactly what was written. If you were to go a level below, as we 
do here, or several levels below, as other people do here, you would 
be analysing the actions of the people involved in that scene. I 
honestly don't see how one could use their own experiances for that 
scene, unless you regularly find yourself in an old shack with a 
werewolf, a convicted murderer, three children, and a momentarily 
insane wizard. 

"Nevertheless, "metathinking" often deals with academic
analyse, and I don't think it would be a good thing to ban it
from 
the debate about Harry Potter. For example, quoting some 
philosophers or writers can be very useful to demonstrate the 
magnitude of JKR books. It is obvious that the Harry Potter books 
are fun, and are accessible to everyone. However, no one can avoid 
the evidence: at the same time she writes an exciting story, JKR 
develops considerations about politics, good and evil, education, 
society, etc; all topics that have been debated yet by philosophers 
and writers. By quoting those philosophers and writers in an analyse 
of her books, it is possible to make her detractors understand the 
real meaning of the Harry Potter Series, it is possible to show 
those who think this is just childishness and marketing, how 
exceptional JKR's work is."

I think that there are some places where no one has any personal 
experiance in, and you have to use literary analysis. Others, for 
instance, scenes involving Harry at school, family troubles with the 
Weasleys and the Dursley's, people can use personal experiance for.

As I mentioned before, the stories do deal with topics being debated 
in reality, and we can also take that and relate it to reality, and 
our own experiances with the topic. Because the series is being 
written as we speak, we have that luxury of comparing it to a 
society that we live in, instead of having to look it up in a 
history book somewhere. Some people's analysises will obivously be 
different because they are living the exeperiance in a different 
way. However, it is JKR who is writing the book, and not us, and we 
have to take into consideration her own experiances, and how they 
influenced plotlines in the books.

"As an example, if we don't take into account there is in the
story of Harry an application of the Freudian theories, we can't
explain why we enjoy them so, why they remind us our own experience, 
our own feelings. If we admit the tie between JKR's books and
those 
theories, if we quote them, we are able to demonstrate partially why 
Harry Potter is fascinating to both adults and children, and we 
prove that his appeal is not the mean result of marketing and 
fashion."

I don't know much about Freud. No, wait, I don't know ANYTHING about 
Freud. However, I have always explained the broad audience of HP as 
the fact that everyone wants to believe in magic. As kids, we 
believed in it, and as an adult, it sort of brings back the memory 
of being a kid and believing magic existed. Who wouldn't want to 
live in a world where you can just point you wand and a chair will 
appear? That's pretty much what drew me to the series in the first 
place.

"We've got an extraordinary luck. We are witnessing the creation
of a great work. Harry Potter is a universal work. It can please 
those who read it for fun, and those who want to see in it the last 
expression of the everlasting human questioning: where do we come 
from (what happened in Harry's past?) who are we (who is that boy 
the WW seems to turn around?) and where are we going to (what is 
Harry's future?).

Both readings are interesting, and furthermore they are 
complementary. Just the way the chocolate frog and the card that 
gives the key to the mystery. Between fun and metaphysics, the 
posibilities are infinite but they all have a meeting point: 
humanity. "

Exactly. Harry Potter can be read on different levels. We here 
obviously, read it at the deeper levels, looking at actions and 
meanings. Children will just read the first level, and have fun with 
the book. Analysing the book to death can be fun, too, though.
 
"Hope it wasn't a too long post, and you all will go on
searching and debating. This is a top group, for amazing books.

Iris, who didn't agree when some said  at work JKR is not a
major author."

I guess she is a major author, but it's hard to get past the 
stereotype of children's books. However, how many author's can get 
that broad of an audience out of their books? Children reading it 
and enjoying it, like dime novels, adults reading it and looking at 
the deeper meanings, like literature.

And this is the longest post I've ever done. And I got up to do my 
laundry and forgot what I was going to say.

-Acire, who is worried that she'd rather spend half the morning 
organizing her thoughts for this post then writing an easily BS'd 
essay for class.