RW, Muggle World, Witchwizard World (was Re: SHIP: Hr, GW, LL)

[dan]

No: HPFGUIDX 84810

Carol (who wishes she were less RW)

> Dan, you've said several times that you think Luna is the only RW
> character besides Harry. What do you base that on? She doesn't seem 
at
> all Real World to me. (She sees Thestrals, senses the significance 
of
> the veil, etc.) Do you mean that she's familiar with death or that
> she's ostracized for being different? Can you clarify your thinking
> for me?

To explain this, I guess a small description of what I percieve as 
the so-called Potterverse is required. And, in some measure because 
of the caricature being done in the series, or, as a current thread 
or two has it, stereotyping, the circumference of Potterverse has 
always seemed to me to be the RW, us, from the line-ups at midnight 
to the Great Patriotic War, from beach balls to batons, computer 
games to Krasnoyarsk. The reflection of that world, the hyperbolized 
RW, the magicless one, would be the muggle world, which affects and 
is affected by the witchwizard world. This last is Erised, in a way. 
I said a while ago that a naive reading of the books stares into 
Erised, while a more critical one just wants to. I have also 
previously, in ANOTHER HARRY, triangulated a third Harry (neither the 
RW boy upon whom the character is based nor the book Harry, but a 
Harry who will be liberated, as JKR is liberated, from the closet, a 
purely imaginary, for the most part philosophical Harry, the Harry 
that the RW Harry *might* have become), and in the same way the three 
components of Potterverse are a kind of triangulation. By presuming 
that Luna is another RW character for whom JKR has triangulated a 
possible future, I am responding to, not only what made me pose the 
two questions I asked a week or two ago, but a sense of internal 
necessity that I get from OOP in particular.

There are a couple things to mention regarding this. In some ways, I 
wondered why was Luna from Ravenclaw - is it only because JKR 
couldn't bring in a Gryff at this stage, or is it part of the 
evolving plot? These and other considerations always seemed less 
important, however, than the function Luna serves in the stories. For 
a long time on this list, there were discussions (of which I was a 
part) regarding Harry's lack of curiousity, or rather, the fact that 
he didn't seem to ask many questions, or "make moves", as it were. 
Partly, no doubt, because not asking questions was "the first rule" 
of living with the Dursleys. Luna's function, at the end of OOP, is 
as the object of Harry's curiousity - rather like, to use a RW 
example from my own life - the strange kid who bounced a ball against 
the wall of the public school I attended all recess and lunch hour, 
alone, every day for years, who I approached one day and started 
talking to. The conversation that ensued is not the point (though I 
can perhaps be convinced to go over it briefly, if anyone is 
interested). The point is, that it was relatively easy for me to talk 
to this ostracized person - it was a situation in which, on 
reflection, I had a rather unbalanced measure of so-called power. 
What stuck me at the end of OOP is the absence of the abuse of that 
power by Harry. He was talking to an equal, even if the pity he felt 
at the start of the encounter demonstrated, in some small way, the 
potential imbalance of power. But, even more striking, was the fact 
that, at that point, the internal necessity for a character like Luna 
suddenly came clear. The Quibbler was necessary in terms of plot, but 
somehow Luna herself was necessary to advance the psychological 
story - Sirius could only go so far(not very) and no further. In most 
cases, in fact in all cases, JKR has hidden the internal 
psychological Harry from us - perhaps from herself? At any rate, this 
is no longer entirely the case. And it is by this act, this scene, 
that JKR signals the RW Luna, I submit. As Harry acknowledges the 
other, the other exists in that acknowledgement. This has been hinted 
at with Neville and his folks, with the Weasley's and their apparent 
low-income status, and in other ways, but it has not broken free of 
Harry's closedness. When it does, in that late OOP scene, Harry is 
aware of - his own feelings, regarding Sirius, regarding Luna, 
regarding Luna's feelings, just as Luna is aware of hers and Harry's, 
even the initial pity, as it were. It is, I suggest, an encounter 
between Third Harry and Third Luna.

Does that help?

Dan