OOP: Re: Why Harry will die

[jenny_ravenclaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 65666

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Alon van Dam" 
<alanphoenix1 at h...> wrote:
 
> I have to add my voice to the crowd of people believing the Hero 
will die at the end of the seventh book. As I've said before, it just 
doesn't seem to make sense to end this series of epic scale with an 
'and they lived happily ever after'. I'm really expecting a mixed 
ending. Something like: Yes, the evil is destroyed and the world is 
saved, but the hero has to die to do it. Examples are aplenty. There's 
the father or all fantasy-books, "Lord of the Rings", there's some of 
JKR's favorite series: C.S. Lewis' "The Narnia Chronicles" and Philip 
Pullman's "His Dark Materials", both end in a mixed blessing: Though 
Narnia does, as said, end in a celebration of the next adventure that 
is the afterlife. I somehow doubt that Harry will willingly choose 
death over life (though the stepping through the veil seems like a 
tear-jerking ending), but I consider it very, very possible that he 
will die in the killing of Voldemort, which I don't /really/ doubt 
that he'll do.>

I hated _The Last Battle_ and found it a depressing and disturbing 
ending.  I hated that the Pevensies who believed in Narnia died.  I 
found nothing truly rewarding for them in that respect, even if they 
got to spend the rest of eternity in Narnia.  I'd feel the same way if 
Harry died.  I know many people disagree with me, but I don't see 
death as "the next great adventure".  I just see it as death.  Even if 
Harry dies saving his friends, school, and the WW in general, he 
won't get to enjoy a life after Voldemort.  Right now it seems to me 
that Harry is quite unhappy; if he dies destroying Voldemort, when 
will he ever get to be happy?  He'll be dead!  I don't care if giving 
his life is a noble, honorable thing to do - for him there will be no 
reward, and I think he deserves to be rewarded with life.  He deserves 
to live a life free of Voldemort's shadow always bringing darkness to 
him.  

Even Harry himself, as much as he yearns to know his parents, never 
ever contemplates dying in order to be with them.  Harry is The Boy 
Who Lived, and that is exactly who he should be when the series is 
over.  

--jenny from ravenclaw, who was also very very very very very happy 
when Buffy got to live at the end of the series finale 
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