OoP spoiler: How to look at death

M.Clifford valkyrievixen at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 25 03:35:18 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 63425

Ok. At great risk of a kazillion objections I would like to say that 
the fine distinction between witnessing a death and *seeing Death* 
needs to be addressed.
JK carefully adresses the mystery with two viewpoints. Hermione's 
and Luna's.
Obviously, we look into the two to see how it accurately portrays 
Harry. Not just the one.
Hermiones precise textbook statement is. "....seen Death"
Whereas Luna adds the subjected interpretation of "...seen someone 
die."

Using the characteristics of each girl as a clue to guide I am 
seeing that Hermiones pretext is spot on accurate to the letter and 
Luna's statement is insightful without being explanatory.

So if the actual Legend is *seen Death* and Luna understands it as a 
result of her witnessing the death of her mother. What I am 
extracting from it is this.

Seeing Death.... pertains to the subjective recognition of the party 
who died as having passed from your side to the other side.
It is what a person realises when the compound hurt of being in a 
presence that you recognise and distinguish and feeling the loss of 
that presence passing to a place where you can no longer reach them, 
in the instant of death. This particular instant must be recognised 
and comprehended, because the remaining party finds in this a part 
of themselves taken along to *see Death*, for a blinding moment, if 
it is.

Admittedly, at one year old, some level of this may have touched 
Harry when his mother was killed in front of him, but even so there 
are two points to remember her. 

1. He had no realisation of his mother being there and then not. Her 
presence was not in the instant distinguished and extinguished. 
Without this, without, a recognition, of this fact the vision of 
Death as it were could not have *sunk in*. As a baby, his lack of 
comprehension of the moment would have led to a certain innocence, 
so to speak, from Death.  

2.
Even if my above pretense is completely inconsequential, we must 
remember that Harry was AK'ed shortly after and we do not know what 
happened to him in that moment.

Anyone got something to add or some answers?

Valky





More information about the HPforGrownups archive