OOP: Questions for JKR

[m.steinberger]

No: HPFGUIDX 65931

Thanks to all who sent me offlist copies of their replies. Now to reply to the replies in the order of my having gotten them.

Heather wrote: As for inspiration in OoP, I think that all of Dumbledore's talk of heart will do that for you.  Also, Dumbledore's nobility in leaving the school and Fred and George putting her in her place.  The DA is quite a group also.    

TAS: None of this does it for me, because Dumbledore is not, in this book, the kind of person I would wish to be. In the other books he was. Yes, in OoP he has some nice ideas about heart and love, but he doesn't seem to put them into practice. His nobility in leaving school was nice, but not enough to make me want to emulate him overall. After all, he had to keep Harry in school to eventually use him against Voldemort, so his quitting to keep Harry in school was as much pragmatic strategy as nobility. As for the DA, yes, they work hard, but that's just part of basic life. It's admirable, but not inspiring.

Lee wrote: [Harry] starts out at the age of 
10, where he has been told all his life that he's nothing, that he is 
responsible for all that goes wrong and that he has to be invisible. 
As a ten year old, you buy into such things.
Then he arrived at Hogwarts and for the first time got some sense of 
self value. He grew up realizing that he has worth, that he's not as 
useless as his aunt and uncle tell him. He learns that he's wanted. 
Best evidence for that is the things he hurls into Rons and 
Hermoine's faces about what he had done.
 
TAS: This is exactly the kind of anti-inspiration that I can't stand about OoP. If being told you're nothing makes you a nice person, and thinking you have some worth makes you obnoxious, then the self-esteem movement can keep itself far away from me. What's the use of "feeling good about yourself" if it makes you angry and hostile?
 
Grey Wolf wrote something similar, the crux of which was: He is now an 
adolescent, and is developing a big independent streak coupled with a 
puffed-up sense of his own importance... like all adolescents. He 
hasn't turned sour, just impacient and short tempered. I.e. a normal, 
healthy 15 year old.

TAS: This is a terrible thing to say about fifteen year olds. And it's not true either. Most fifteen year olds are not as messed up as Harry and James are portrayed to be. Proof, if needed, is that none of the other Hogwarts fifth years are anything like this. And don't tell me that Harry had more on his plate. Some people deal with challenges by becoming stronger and better tempered. And some turn on everyone they know. Shame on the latter, in my opinion.
 
Lee also wrote: [Harry's] blind trust that adults do the right things and know what's right 
for him is shattered. 
 
TAS: Actually, Harry entered Hogwarts with zero trust in adults, and has been building it ever since. At the end of CoS, he finally dared ask Dumbledore a few personal questions. In PoA, he asked Lupin even more personal questions. Then he started trusting Sirius and writing him for advice. Now in OoP he's even learning to trust Snape a bit. This has nothing to do with the subject you were responding to, it's just an aside.
 
Lee again: Why would it have helped Harry to know why he was kept in the dark? 
Because he would have known that he wasn't avoided by Dumbledore for 
something he did (remember his guilt trip about DD being expelled 
from various wizard organizations? How he thought that DD would not 
talk to him because of that?), he would've been able to keep Voldie 
out of his brain because he'd actually tried... He would've kept his 
trust intact. There would've been no reason to become so angry, 
because he would've understood why he was sent back to the Dursley 
hell. Knowledge makes a lot of things more bearable, you know? 
There's nothing worse than feeling you are not wanted, that you are 
tossed out even though you asked to stay. There are a lot of things 
you can do about HArry's situation and Dumbledore plain and simply 
failed.

TAS: You are misreading my question. If Harry were a real person, perhaps Dumbledore acting differently would have made a difference. But Harry is a construct whom JKR decided to write as an angry teenager. Given that JKR wants Harry angry for his sixteenth year, given that she feels it is necessary for his development for him to go through an angry year, he can only be supposed as the kind of kid who is going to be angry no matter what happens to him - there are kids like that. Without knowledge of the prophecy, Harry was angry at Dumbledore. With knowledge, he would have been angry at fate, or whatever. In any case, my question was not what good being told the prophecy might have done Harry. I want to know what the *author* wants of *parents and authority figures* (as expressed through Dumbeldore's regret) given that she feels that anger is a good thing for a teenager's development. If anger is a worthwhile given, in her book, then what does she want of Dumbledore?
 
Lee also wrote a lot of doubts regarding Dumbledore's interpretation of the prophecy. All I can say is I agree.
 
Ersatz Harry wrote: I liked your list of questions for JKR and have one of my own to add
to the list.  It concerns Mrs. Figg and the old crowd.  How would a
squib have become friendly enough with wizards to be considered part
of the old crowd, especially when she could not do anything magical?
 
TAS: This is one of the things I liked best in the book. It's nice to know that a Squib can have such a happy relationship with wizards.
 
Grey Wolf: How do you know Dumbledore was afraid [of Voldemort getting the prophecy]?
It could've been misdirection, 
the weapon being something else. Or bait, to make Voldemort reveal 
himself to the MoM. Or there might be more to the prophecy than it is 
immediately obvious. Like, Voldemort would know not to fear Dumbledore. 
Or that Harry has a power that Voldemort knows not about.

TAS: Good points. Thank you.
 
Grey Wolf answering: "6. Why was it safe for Dumbledore to talk to Harry at the end of the 
> book? Wasn't Voldemort still spying through Harry's scar?" His answer: 
In a war of spies, there are two sorts of information: the real one and 
the missinformation. Maybe Harry is being used to pass the wrong sort 
to Voldemort.

TAS: I like this. Personally, I figure that at that moment, half an hour after Voldemort's escape from the MoM, the Dark Lord was too washed out to attack Dumbledore through his eye contact with Harry. And I didn't get the impression that Voldemort could collect information from Harry's mind, just share Harry's immediate experiences and insert ideas of his own.
 
Grey Wolf: Let's see: James torments a fellow fifth year. Snape torments the 
children he is suposed to teach. To me, Snape is still the biggest 
bully. Not to mention that James was 15 and Snape is 30. Maturity 
hasn't brought Snape wisdom, it seems.

TAS: We don't know what James was really like until his died; however, Sirius doesn't seem any better than Snape. In the aborted duel in 12 Grimmauld's kitchen, Sirius and Snape were acting equally immature. I don't see anything in Sirius's adult character to prevent him from bullying kids he doesn't like. I suppose he might be just as bad to Draco as Snape is to Harry.
 
Grey Wolf: while you're picking 
on the *worst* thing James ever did, the DEs have killed people by the 
score, tormented people into insanity and attempted to take over the 
world. Compared to that, the prank and bullying is hardly relevant.

TAS: Not all DEs necessarily. We have no such information about Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle Srs. From what we know, what is worse about them than what we know about Snape, who is an Order member? And I would like to differ with you about the Prank and the bullying. I don't see them as so very far from crucioing people. Condoning such behavior is as sick as doing it, to my mind.
 
Grey Wolf, interpreting the prophecy: Harry cannot live his life properly while 
Voldemort is around trying to take over the world and kill Harry while 
he is at it. By that definition, neither will really live until the 
matters between them are solved.

TAS: This interpretation, which is the most common one, I believe, really scares me. Harry is expected to murder Voldemort so that he can "live his life properly"? This is morality? Murder is OK and necessary in order to have a decent life? Don't most people believe that killing another is only acceptable if the other person is actually trying to murder you? Now, Voldemort is trying to kill Harry, so Harry can morally kill Voldemort in self-defense. But that's not what it says in the prophecy. The prophecy says that "one must die at the hand of the other because neither can live while the other survives," not "one may kill the other because the other is trying to kill the first." So the prophecy is either false, or is advocating murder for other than self-defense.
 
Grey Wolf recapped the GoF portkey mystery resolution.
 
TAS: You've misread my question. I'm not interested in why Crouch Jr waited till the end of the year, nor am I asking about how the Triwizard cup worked. I'm asking about JKR's writing. All the explanations you've given (which I am aware of) are reasons that *fans* have *extrapolated* for how the Triwizard cup-portkey must have worked, and why Crouch Jr. must have waited. They are NOT canon. *Canon* has an enormous plothole in it - as evidenced by the enormous amount of bandwidth that has gone into discussing these issues. I'd like to know how a brilliant writer like JKR managed to leave such a giant hole in her book. By what mental and technical processes did this hole get created and left in? I find her writing processes much more interesting than her story, and most of my questions to this list are ultimately related to how her mind works, rather than how her story is going to turn out.
 
Grey Wolf responded to: "Did she really think 50 million readers (counting a few readers per 
> book) all needed such a negative experience to appreciate her story? 
> Or has she lost it?" with this comment: Maybe it's you that has missed it? "It unscrews the other way" indeed.
 
TAS: Maybe. Certainly, most posters seem to have liked the book. It has given me such a nauseous headache that I can no longer read any of the earlier HP. Just looking at them makes me sick. I violently disagree with the idea that horrid behavior needs its day in the sun. Maybe it's because I'm coming from a community that successfully lives and raises its children very, very differently from the typical. Our moral education begins so young that none of our kids ever act anything at all like James, Harry, or Malfoy, even the delinquents among us. The first three HPs displayed behavior that matched the average, or slightly below average, behavior of our much younger, less educated kids. HP4 was borderline tolerable. I hoped the change was due to JKR's impossible deadline. But HP5 has gone way over the deep end for me, and I'm sorry to see that the wide world out there can relate to it.
 
Sue wrote: Hi. It was SO good to read your post and find that someone else was thinking exactly the same things [being disappointed and turned off by the book]. (I'm sure you've had hundreds of replies saying exactly the same thing, though, so apologies if this mail is repeating the same allm over again).
 
TAS: No, I haven't had any such posts but yours, though I haven't checked the list for replies, and am only responding to those who posted me copies offlist. I agree with everything in your post - and recommend that others go back and read it, because it's got nice ideas, not just complaints. My only twist is that I don't consider Hagrid to have been a father figure, but rather a big brother figure.
 
Having taken a quick peek at the first three books, to reconfirm, I'd like others to tell me if they didn't prefer the narratorial tongue-in-cheek voice that JKR took there? It was adorable! And she gave Harry such wit. When Harry was faced with his Stonewall High uniform, and said, "I didn't know it had to be so wet" or such like - that was sophisticated humor. You can keep your unscrewed light bulbs. As far as I can see, JKR's sophistication in language, style, wit, and characterization have gone down as her drama and supposed realism have gone up. I preferred her language to her drama, and I suppose I always will.

 - And before someone complains that the characters are more multidimensional now - yes, they are; but in the first books, their more limited dimensions were much more finely drawn. Meeting Snape, Dumbledore, Hagrid and all in PS, you got a very clear feel for their (one-sided) personalities. Anyone meeting them for the first time in OoP would not get such a nuanced depiction of the characters at all.
 
Again requesting that anyone replying please send me a copy offlist. I can't get to the site too often, and digests are unworkable in the current flood. Thank you,
 
The Admiring (Sigh) Skeptic

 


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