[HPforGrownups] Remember Cedric

[Rita]

No: HPFGUIDX 45515




Richelle wrote:
Okay, I need help. Can someone clear this up for me? This comes from 
Dumbledore's end of year speech to the students in GoF:

"Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make 
a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to 
a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the 
path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."


Me:
I've seen that many people share my view on this point. Dumbl's speech
merely described someone who didn't deserve to die at such a young age ( as
if anyone did! but that's another story), the bit about choice was entirely
directed to his ' audience' to give them some 'concrete' example of evil,
something they can relate to. Shaun put it very well in his post ( Hope you
got some good news about you friends missing in Bali!):

<<And how do we know its evil - we know its evil by its actions. And which
action is 
going to be most real, and most immediate, to the kids at Hogwarts School -
which 
one is closest to most of their lives (not all, by any means - both Harry
and Neville 
have faced the loss of their parents). For many of the kids at Hogwarts, the
fight 
against Voldemort is an abstract - a matter of history. Dumbledore is making
it real 
for them - he's making it direct and personal. How better to illustrate to a
group of 
children what evil is, and what evil they face, than to ask them to remember
the 
vicious and totally senseless slaughter of one of their own.>>

But I read something a little different in his use of 'easy' juxtaposed to 
right'. I believe that Evil's ( let's say) temptations are subtle. In real
life you usually are not confronted with a dramatic choice like "murder or
not?" "betray or not?", sometimes a quite harmless action is presented to
you and you have to understand all it entails to make the right choice. LV
could go to someone and ask nothing more than a glass of water, not a big
deal, but it's at that point that they have to remember Cedric and hold on
to one's principles and sense of what's good.
 I guess the example I chose is very bad, let's try this way: someone you
know, a friend, may be up to no good and tells you not to say that you saw
him/ her in a particular place doing something as harmless as having a coup
of coffee.  Nothing dramatic, but what if that bit of info would implicate
your friend in a crime? Or  just mean that said friend is cheating on
his/her partner? What is 'easy' and what is 'right' in this case? To keep
one's mouth shut is definitely easy, while to spill the beans is, on one
hand, to do the right thing but, on the other, to betray your friend. 

This is the kind of choice that, I think, even in the fight against LV they
will be most likely confronted with. Only a few characters seem to be
inclined towards evil from the beginning and their choice seems already made
 a choice that concerns the principles that direct their actions. The others
will rather have to  understand which action works for the good cause and
which doesn't. And this is not easy at all, we must not forget the alluring
quality of evil, which can make look bad things in a not-so-very-bad light
and another aspect of the question was caught by Shannon:

 <<For some students these will be hard 
choices. They'll be afraid, and some of them will be facing pressure from 
family and friends to choose Voldemort's side. It would be easy to cave in 
to that pressure, or give in to that fear. Voldemort's casual murder of 
Cedric is really the essence of why he is so hated and feared. Dumbledore 
wants them to realize that and make their decisions accordingly.>>


that's my 2 cents.

And now something completely unrelated. But I'm a curious girl. Grey Wolf
wrote:

<<I've been told before, but in my own language "m" 
can only go before vowels, "p" and "b". Any other letters get an "n".>> 

 That rule sounds kind of familiar even though I thought it run rather " 'm'
can go  almost anywhere ( there's no 'mt'), while 'n' *can't* go before 'p'
and 'b' ".
So the question is: what is your language? I'd say a romanic one, but my
study of linguistics dates from a few years ago and my memories are kind of
unreliable at this point!


R.