HP and the Voice of the Silence, HP's end

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 72122

Hans, I'm sorry about the way my comments regarding yours were buried 
in a pile of responses - it was a madness came over me, and I had to 
answer a thousand things, I felt.

The drawn piano keyboard - it was an image in a story, which I won't 
go into, for unspecified reasons - but the idea was that one could 
play music on it - the question would be, does the music exist? This 
is what literature in general asks us, it seemed to me, when I was 
writing that, literature like Rowling's that uses a metaphysical 
code. In Rowling's case, the code is directly related to getting the 
boy out of the closet. When I see arguements that suggest HP's end 
will be like Ged's in Le Guin, I wonder that perhaps it is a failure 
to see how Rowling can free HP. No ending would be less satisfying, 
in a way. In Le Guin, the idea of magic is a very different thing, 
and it costs a great deal to use it at all. Not so in Rowling. Magic 
is more pedestrian there, it answers to daily needs, not just 
philosophical ones - it plays down its own importance, to show the 
greater importance of the characters' motivations etc. At any rate, 
lots of differences. But the world Ged is left with is a folk and 
folklore rich world - HP would be left with Little Whinging! Yuck!

So, Rowling makes sense to me as a mission - the MAGIC DISHWASHER 
crowd definitely have their finger on something - a mission to free 
the boy. He lived, but will he LIVE?

No matter what the plot twists and character developments, no matter 
whose ship sinks or floats, there is one duty that Rowling faces, and 
that is to free the boy in a way that satisfies the very challenges 
she has set for him. The fantasy of the witch wizard world is like 
the music of that drawn piano keyboard, and exists, I suggest, 
whether anyone else hears it or not. Think of we readers as the 
audience in a performance of music played on a drawn piano. If we 
lose the music, it's almost as if we are consigning the boy to the 
closet until the end of time.

A bit odd, but there you go. 

dan