I don't see Harry dying

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 72777

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "susanbones2003" <rdas at f...> 
wrote:
>> I like that way of putting Harry's feeling much better 
than "love." I 
> hate to admit that but it explains much better why JKR wouldn't 
just 
> come out and say "love" and it explains why DD couldn't just come 
out 
> and say "you weren't afraid of death, you wanted to embrace 
death." 
> But I can't help but love Harry for the reason he wanted to 
embrace 
> death, in part it was to end the pain but he'd faced pain many 
times 
> before. I think what makes Harry so powerful is that he wasn't 
afraid 
> of death because of love for Sirius. Is that maudlin? I believe 
> ultimately and this has been said before by many better than me, 
that 
> this story is about facing death. 


I think that's a perfect description of these stories: it's about 
facing death.  And I don't think it's a maudlin theme, either.  The 
old "Love conquers all" theme, that I mistakenly first thought was 
what JKR was getting at in Dumbledore's speech - THAT would have 
been maudlin...and cliched.  I also wondered why she was being so 
cagey there - if it's Love, why not just SAY that?  It's because 
it's more complicated; the formula is Love + Death.  Voldemort 
wasn't defeated by Lily's love for Harry; it was when her love led 
her to willingly lay down her life for him.  And I couldn't help 
noticing that, if Harry's great power is his love, we found out 
about it in the volume that showed him at his least loving!  Perhaps 
the clue to how this will defeat Voldemort at the end is in his own 
nature: Voldemort has spent his entire life fleeing Death - trying 
to escape it, outwit it, ultimately defeat it.  And his entire 
strategy is based on the assumption that everyone else fears Death 
as much as he does, and wants to avoid it.  When he faces a victim - 
like Lily, and like Harry - who willingly accepts death *for the 
sake of love*, it short-circuits both his attack and his defence.  
He doesn't know how to deal with such an opponent, and it seems to 
me that the act of killing a person at such a moment, almost opens 
up a sneaky backdoor for Death to attack HIM (Voldemort). This is an 
interesting subject, and I think it's starting to fuse with the 
thread above about "Emotion".  I think we're starting to make sense 
of the overarching plan of the stories here.

Wanda