What's right and wrong with OOP; a prediction (woof!)

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 70989

Pippin wrote:

> Telling. Harry. Is. Telling. Voldemort. Dumbledore did *not* want 
> Voldemort to know what he, Dumbledore, feared Voldemort 
> could do. Even if Dumbledore had a secure means of 
> communication, the information would not have been safe from 
> the Voldemort-Harry mind link until Harry had learned 
> Occlumency.  Once the prophesy is destroyed and Harry 
> discovers another means of banishing Voldemort from his mind,  
> the situation changes.
> 
> What Dumbledore should have done was teach Harry 
> Occlumency long before Voldemort returned to power. But Harry 
> was horrified at the idea that part of Voldemort was inside him, 
> and Dumbledore couldn't bear having to make Harry deal with it.

Ooooh, okay, that's the first time that's made any sense to me!  I
will definitely adopt this theory as one of the many third-party
plug-in explanations that keep my HP experience running smoothly.  ;)

> 
Barbara wrote:
> 
>  >  And then  there's Harry.  In the earlier books, Harry's 
> resilience to the  extreme abuse he took from the Dursleys 
> would be utterly 
>  unbelieveable in the RW.  Okay, suspension of disbelief 
> perfectly acceptable; that is, until in Book 5 JKR shoves cruelty 
> and abuse in our faces and demands we take them seriously.  
> Snape was  abused, Sirius abused, James was a monster, all 
> this  awfulness is NOT to be taken humorously or lightly.    So, 
> how  do we explain Harry?<  
>
I don't know if the point is so much that abuse is damaging, or even
that you should try to be nice to people.  I think the point is that
EVERYONE experiences suffering in life, and everyone will cause
suffering as well, whether they mean to or no.  Molly is cruel to
Sirius;  James was cruel to Snape;  Harry is cruel to his friends; 
and life is cruel to everybody.  Suffering is part who everybody is--
the world is not divided into abusers and victims.  We learn
compassion as we absorb this fact, not because we offer excuses for
specific people's actions with past abuses, but simply because we
sympathise with our common suffering.  

Sorry, I'm straying off your point!  The strain is definitely showing
with the cartoony world of the Dursleys and the rapidly growing-up
world of the wizards, it was starting to creak a little by PoA, IMO. 
It doesn't REALLY make sense that the Dursley's sent Harry a toothpick
for Christmas, or that Vernon drove everybody to a lighthouse to
escape the owls.  Harry's growing-up process is kind of awkward to
follow, because he's growing not from an 11-year-old to a 17-year-old,
but from Cinderella into Holden Caufield.  Its such a daring
excercise, I'm in awe of it being pulled off at all!

And I'm REALLY happy this isn't one of those angst-ridden Young Adult
novels about drug abuse in the suburbs!  For my sins, I had to read a
whole stack of those once for work and man, it was not an elevating
experience. 

Pippin wrote:

> JKR told us repeatedly that this was a dark book, that it had a 
> major character death, that Harry was going to have to look at 
> death more closely. She never promised us an entertaining bit of 
> light reading. OOP is tragedy. 

Oh, Pippin, thanks for writing that!  I don't think she was making
Sirius out to be a hopeless case so that she would, in essence, be
putting him out of his misery and it would be okay.  On the contrary,
I think she made  Sirius suffer so much, be prevented from
experiencing so much, because that is death is-- the monstrously
unfair snuffing out of all potential (snuffing?  Snuffles? hmmmm....).
 Sirius was the picture of unfairly wasted potential.

OoP IS a tragedy-- that's why I had a hard time getting into the
rhythm of it the first time through.  I was expecting a mystery, like
the other four books.  I was waiting for the Big Revelation and the
wrap up at the end.  Instead it's one big series of crossed wires,
missed opportunities, and human error.  Its not going to make it my
favorite HP by a long way (probably GoF, because of its sheer
fecundity of imagination), but it's an interesting and probably
necessary angle.

My favorite filmaker, Miyazake, was asked in an interview what the
difference was between children's and adult's storytelling.  He
replied that in children's films, at the end there's always the chance
to wipe the slate and start afresh.  Adults can't start afresh, they
just have to pick up the pieces and carry on.

Sydney-- getting all drippy...