if Harry survives

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 74052

In a message dated 7/29/03 3:22:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
cathio2002 at y... writes:
> I never understood why Snape started on the count of
> three. The Dark Lord isn't going to say, "Okay Harry,
> one, two, three, I'm reading your thoughts." Snape
> should have taken Harry off guard every time. It would
> have been better practice for Harry.

~*~*~Oryomai~*~*~
>I have to agree with that. No matter how young and inexperienced 
Harry is, 
>he knows that there's more riding on this. (Blah, blah, blah...I 
have no 
>sympathy for Harry in situations like this...). He *knows* he needs 
to learn 
>Occulmency, but he lets his hatred for Severus get in the way 
(hm..."hatred
>getting 
>in the way"...who does that sound like?). I know Harry's only 15. I 
know 
>he's a *boy* (no offense). Apparently the way the Order of the 
Phoenix works
>is 
>that Dumbledore says "jump" and they say "how high?". Harry needs to 
learn 
>how high to jump.

The conflict between HP and SS at occlumency I found on a different 
level. HP was, primarily, curious. His dreams of the corridor and the 
room etc. weren't painful in the way his nauseating dreams of being 
LV or the snake were. They came from a different source, or were more 
likely to have come from a different source, that is, his own desire 
to know, his quest, as it were, which everyone else seems to want to 
direct. SS wanted to destroy that curiousity. Also, SS lied to HP 
directly in these so-called lessons, lied straight out. He told HP 
there was nothing that concerned him in the DoM. You can justify SS's 
lying all you want, the point is, he lied, apparently for the first 
time, to anyone in the books, with the exception of his work for the 
OOP. People on the list shrug this off, or come up with lame excuses. 
But SS lies to HP once in the books, directly, by telling him that 
nothing in the DoM concerns him. Either SS doesn't believe the 
prophecy is labelled correctly, or he his teaching method is so poor 
that he can't afford the luxury of, instead of lying, redirecting HP 
to more fruitful areas of interest.

Reducing what HP "needs to learn" to blind, unfeeling obiesance to a 
sadistic git like SS is like saying the only thing black people have 
to learn is their place.

Does a ski jumper start with a 90 metre jump? Well, wouldn't be many 
ski jumpers with usable legs, would there? I mean, what teaching 
theory advocates such nonsense? The relationship between HP and SS is 
one of imbalance, as well. SS could have had HP lieing on his back, 
relaxing, and saying, "okay, i'm going to start out lightly, and as 
these lessons progress, i will give you less and less warning, and 
use more and more power, so that you WILL BE prepared when you have 
no warning at all." Starting out with a 90 metre jump is just bloody 
stupid.


katie:
>Harry's pissy mood pissed me off

Why?

> 0r Will this all be a dream like on Dallas, and he'll wake up under 
> the stairs at the dursley's feeling a little less pitiful.
> 
> I was just wondering. This kid has it so rough already, I can't 
> imagine what would happen if he did live. I know I'm being a bit 
> dramatic with the possibilities but maybe not so dramatic


>Has anyone thought that the ultimate fate in store for Harry is that 
>he might lose his magical powers in the final duel with Voldemort, 
>and just become an ordinary muggle as a result ? And that the whole 
>magical interlude of the 7 books turns out to be the product of the 
>over-vivid imagination of a boy, who finally grows up and becomes an 
>adult and forgets it all ? 


~*~*~Oryomai~*~*
>I've said before that I don't *really* think Harry will live...I'm 
more of a 
>>fan of "Harry-will-die-and-everyone-will-forget-about-him," but if 
he lives I 
>think it's a dream. He'll wake up and be an eleven year old still 
under the 
>stairs at the Dursleys, but he'll know that he can survive them. Or, 
perhaps 
>he'll wake up and find a letter coming through the mail slot for him.
>
>Another theory I'm a fan of (mentioned a few messages ago by CW) is 
that he 
>loses his powers. Harry doesn't need magic. He's a strong person - 
even 
>without them. I have a little bit of faith in that Potter boy ... 

Well, here it is again. The either/or. But I have suggested, and 
continue to do so, that the books operate for us in much the same way 
as the fantasy WW world operates for the boy in the closet. Now, this 
closet may be physical, it may be symbolic, it may be philosophical, 
it may be starvation, whatever, but it is a closet, a closed room, a 
locked door, a hopelessness. In ANOTHER HARRY I suggest Rowling knew 
and remembered an abused kid, maybe just a glimpse, maybe a boy who 
talked about magic, and whose parents were abusive, a sense of 
pathos, as it were, and on the train from Manchester to London, 
her "vision" of the whole story was an enactment of her own way out - 
that is, writing books - with the inspiration of the boy she had seen 
or knew, a way to free him. The RW Harry, the closet boy, first 
Harry, second, her Harry, Harry Potter, and the Third Harry, the 
triangulated, freed, liberated Harry, her imagining the boy freed 
from the closet, as it were, her own liberation projected there, and 
even, if some of the debates on this list are to be believed, the 
liberation of all of us. That train from manchester to london was the 
Hogwart's Express of her imagination.
This theory, this parallel reading of the text, as I have called it, 
doesn't suppose ANY specific ending, nor does it preclude any ending. 
Unlike plot driven speculations, it is a way of reading the books, of 
understanding why so many people feel that even just reading the 
books is a measure of participation in Harry's liberation, and of 
why, incidently, the debased question of morality becomes the 
stickiest points of debate, when, from canon, Rowling has absolutely 
no interest in morality, but is completely taken up with questions of 
ethics. Not, is SS bad, but in what way are his ethics assailable? 
Rowling has consistently avoided explaining characters motivations. 
But much of the list is just that, imposed explanations of characters 
motivations, and of their so-called morality. That kind of debate is 
absolutely no different than cheering for The Undertaker instead of 
The Rock, or whoever. It turns Rowling into a form of wrestling, of 
the WWF. This is, frankly, silly.

Rowling's work is a trap, in a way, for certain kinds of moralistic 
thinking. Never, anywhere in the 5 books, has moralistic thinking 
been anything but useless and destructive.

dan