From the Shadows A Light Shall Spring WAS Re: Abstemiousness with truth

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 43446

I think it's time for Tolkien and Lewis.

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of 
fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that 
I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now 
so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary 
criticism give no warrant at all." -J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy 
Stories."

If I understand you, darkthirty, your reading of the Harry Potter 
books is one of escapism, escapism on Harry's part from the Dursleys, 
escapism on our part from the real world.

"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries 
to get out and go home?" - Tolkien, OFS

Several people have responded and tried to argue points which show 
that Harry cannot have dreamed up the whole situation. That does not 
seem to be your reading of the text. You said that Harry's world is a 
world in which everything is arranged for him, a world in which 
nothing can fail, a world that, as a result, lacks reality, a world 
that on one level can be read as Harry's protest and escape against 
the cruel and miserable real world. 

"For my part I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley 
station is more "real" than the clouds. And as an artefact I find it 
less inspiring than legendary dome of heaven. The bridge to platform 4 
is to me less interesting thn Bifrost guarded by Heimdall with the 
Gjallarhorn." - Tolkien, OFS

We, the readers, in this understanding, are reading and creating this 
world in protest and escape against our world, against reality.

I think it's important to make clear that this "absetimousness from 
truth" is not a hallmark of Harry Potter only, but of most fiction, 
especially that which we know as fantasy or fairy tales. In all these 
stories, even ones that try to be modern and realistic, to my mind, 
everything is arranged for the characters. To write might be to rebel 
against reality.

"The dangerous fantasy is always superficially realistic. The real 
victim of wishful reverie does not batten on The Oddyssey, The 
Tempest, or The Worm Ouroboros: he (or she) prefers stories about 
millionaires, irresistable beauties, posh hotels, palm beaches, and 
bedroom scenes - things that really might happen, that ought to 
happen, that would have happened if the reader had had a fair chance. 
For, as I say, there are two kinds of longing. The one is an askesis, 
a spiritual exercise, and the other is a disease." - C.S. Lewis from 
"Three Ways of Writing for Children."

So, if on one level, all literature is an escape, where are we 
escaping to? To irreality? Or reality?

"The notion that motor-cars are more "alive" than, say, centaurs or 
dragons is curious; that they are more "real" than, say, horses is 
pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory 
chimney compared with an elm-tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial 
dream of an escapist!" - Tolkien from OFS.

Perhaps we go to the fairy-tales to escape to reality. Why should we 
assume that the world that seems so inhospitable, the world of the 
Dursleys, is the real world? Perhaps, when we think this way, we are 
seeing the world wrong. In the fairy tales, perhaps, we learn to see 
the world right. 

"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or 
more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for 
there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the 
things fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 
"escapist" nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - 
setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on 
to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow 
and failure: the possiblity of these is necessary to the joy of 
deliverance; it denies (int he face of much evidence, if you will) 
universal final defeat and is far is evangelium, giving a fleeting 
glimpse of Joy, Joy behind the walls of the world, poignant as grief." 
- Tolkien from OFS

If one wants to believe that Joy does not exist, then there is little 
I can say. I have felt it and so have most people, I would guess. To 
board the Hogwarts Express, in my opinion, is to return home from 
exile. For I find more of the real world there than in Little 
Whinging, Surrey. I find in this fantasy world love, hatred, honour, 
envy, cowardice, fate, free will, guilt, courage, innocence and its 
loss, friendship, pity, sorow, and Joy. And I believe these things to 
be as real as anything else under the sun.

Eileen