What if Harry dies?

[tigerpatronus]

No: HPFGUIDX 85246

<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
> > Tonks:
> > > > <snippage> what if Harry were to die?
> <snip> 
> 
> Carol: (mas y mas snippage>
> Hardly anyone would buy the books once the word got out, 

I don't mean to take you to task because, doubtlessly, there must be 
some series/books where readership fell off because the / a main 
character died at the end, but I'm having a hard time coming up with 
any. And I'd buy it, of course. Maybe 2 copies to support literary 
courage. 

Indeed, it seems to me that many of the most enduring stories, and 
especially epics, have ended with either the death of the / a main 
character or, in the case of romantic entanglements, the two protags 
being separated. Now, I'm not talking about the "best" lit. (I read 
on another post that your PhD is in English. My fiction MFA is from 
Iowa. Now that we've sniffed each other's CVs, we can discuss Harry's 
fate.) I'm talking about the ones that most people have read and 
endure all out of proportion with their assumed lit value. 

LOTR                          Frodo gets on the elf ship to Valinor. 
                       (sorry about sp, haven't actually read those.)
Lion, Witch, Wardrobe, etc.   Aslan climbs on the alter.
Sherlock Holmes               Died (ACD wrote more anyway.) 
Tempest                       Prospero gives up his magic.
The Heart of the Matter       Main char. dies. (Suicide, done well.)
Love and other Demons         Main char. dies.  
Braveheart                    Wallace dies. 
All WS's tragedies            Everybody dies.
Romeo and Juliet              Parted by death, see above.
That awful Titanic movie      see above.
That awful Gladiator movie    Main char. dies.
Gone w the Wind               He didn't give a damn; she thought 
                                  about it tomorrow. 
The Glass Bead Game           Main char. dies just as he begins to 
                                  live his real life. 
Iliad                         Most die, Odysseus cursed to a sequel.
Oedipus trilogy               Oedipus, Antigone, and others die.  
Anything by Dostoevsky        Everybody good dies.
The Hours                     V Woolf dies.
Life of Pi                    Several char. die. The tiger runs off. 
The New Testament             Wouldn't want to spoil the end.

Anyway, my main point here is that ephemeral, genre, trendy lit is 
all about the happy ending and the boy and the girl getting married. 
Enduring, interesting lit, many times, ends with death because it is 
a reflection of life, and that's how life ends. 

To paraphrase Margaret Atwood in *Good Bones and Simple Murders,* 
everybody dies, everybody dies, everybody dies. 

To paraphrase Nearly Headless Nick in OotP, he was neither here nor 
there in his feeble imitation of life, and that is only what cowards 
choose. 

As Dumbledore said in PS/SS (p297, AmPB), "[I]t really is like going 
to bed after a very, *very* long day. After all, to the well-
organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." A lot was set 
up in Book 1 that is becoming apparent in the most recent book. 

Children's lit does not shy away from death the way adult feel-good 
lit does. Dumbledore's quote sounds like an excellent title for the 
last chapter of Book 7. 

> I don't
> think her publisher would allow her to do it. 

LOL. Her publisher wouldn't *allow* her to do it? I guess she'd have 
to find an agent who could simultaneously stand upright and pronounce 
the words, "Let the bidding begin." 

> And she cried when she
> killed off Sirius, who barely qualifies as a major character, and
> she's made it fairly clear that she won't kill off Hagrid or Ron, so
> she probably feels even more strongly about killing Harry. "There 
will
> be more deaths," she said in an interview (I can hunt up the 
reference
> if anyone wants it), 

She's also mentioned in interviews that you have to kill them anyway. 

<Snip and agreement that HP will survive Book 6.>

> I personally would consider killing Harry a copout, on
> the same level as "it was all a dream." Only an author who can't 
think
> of a way to weave all the loose ends into the fabric of the story
> kills off the protagonist and considers it a denouement.
>  Carol

Nah. Suicide is a copout. Sacrifice is heroic and messianic. 

There many reasons why Harry shouldn't die, but he might. I don't 
think a mere publisher could stopper up death if it's coming Harry's 
way. 

TK -- Tigerpatronus