I *love* tragic endings ! (Was : Re: What if Harry dies?)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 85513

Iris wrote:
> Harry
 Dead or alive at the end of the story? 
> On one hand, I would try to accept it if he died, though I would be 
> sad .He makes me cry when he's in a hard situation, for example at 
> the end of OotP; I don't think I will laugh if he doesn't survive. 
> In order to have "a well prepared mind" concerning his potential 
> death, I use to think that if Harry died, he would join some other 
> characters that I love (Hamlet, Don Juan, Don Quijote, Frodo
), and 
> he would share with them the respect we tend to owe to dead heroes. 
> I would keep on reading the series, just the same way I keep on 
> reading Shakespeare, Tirso de Molina or Molière's plays, Cervantes 
> and Tolkien's novels: because they are much more than combinations 
> of stories and characters. There's also the way the artists wrote 
> them, there's what we could call "the work of art miracle", that 
> repeats indefinitely. Thanks to this "miracle", we know that we can 
> leave Frodo, Don Juan, Don Quijote or Hamlet go, just because we 
> also know that we'll meet them again. True heroes never vanish 
> completely; we can bring them back every time we need them. We know 
> we can shut the books; we can open them another time and the magic 
> of verb will go on. It will be the same with Harry, who already 
> belongs to legend.
> 
> On the other hand, I would be glad if I could shut the book 
> saying "He did it, he survived".
> However, I'm not sure this ending would be as satisfying to him as 
> we could imagine. 
> First, as Joseph Campbell wrote, it's difficult to a hero to find 
> his own place in the world he saved. Actually, he is not in the same 
> world anymore, because the initiation he went through put him in 
> another dimension. When Harry defeats Voldemort, he will be 
> definitely different from his friends and from the other wizards. 
> How will he live among people who will treat him like a phenomenon? 
> Who will always demand perfection from him? His closest friends (if 
> they survive
) will certainly treat him "normally", but the others 
> won't. He will have very few rights ( right to weakness, to 
> mistake
) and a lot of duties. Any example? Look at what happens in 
> the first book when he makes Gryffindor loose points: his mates from 
> the Quidditch Team don' call him by his name anymore. He's only "the 
> seeker", just as if he didn't deserve the name "Harry Potter" 
> anymore. He doesn't fit with the representation the others had of 
> him, he is not as he must be, and he has to cope with their grief. 
> The Wizarding World doesn't want Harry to betray his own legend 
> while he's only a child. It will be worse when he manages to defeat 
> completely Voldemort. He will have to be a model, or a symbol; he 
> will not be allowed to be "just Harry". That's for the first option.
> 
> And there's another option that makes me wonder whether he will be 
> happy in the world he will have saved: it's a world with a very 
> short memory. Look at what happens to Dumbledore: he's not as 
> popular as he should be. He defeated Grindelwald. He's "the only one 
> Voldemort ever feared". Do wizards treat him well for all that? Not 
> precisely. Some say he's a nutter, some say he's too old, or think 
> he would be able to take the power. They don't trust him; it appears 
> clearly in the fifth book. At the end of OotP, of course, he's given 
> back his credit, but only because the others fear Voldemort. Now 
> they want him to save the day and are ready to treat him 
> obsequiously. I bet that they will do the same with Harry after 
> Voldemort's defeat. He will only have the right to help them if they 
> need him, and shut up the rest of the time.
>  <snip>

I probably haven't snipped enough of this post since I really want to
deal only with the possible parallel between Harry and Frodo. To begin
with, Frodo doesn't die: He leaves Middle Earth for the Uttermost West
(where he will not become immortal like the Elves, but will at least
be healed in body and spirit and have time to live the remaining years
of his natural lifespan, another fifty or so at lest given the
lifespans of hobbits) in a peaceful, unchanging land very different
from Middle Earth. You're right that he saves Middle Earth,
particularly his beloved Shire, but can no longer find happiness in it.

But there's a huge difference here. The Middle Earth Frodo can no
longer live in is in some sense diminished. The Elves (except the
Silvan Elves of Greenwood the Great, formerly Mirkwood) are gone; the
time of Men has come. It's our world, the RW, in the making. Though
the Hobbits and Dwarves are still there, they, too, will fade away
(Durin the Seventh. . . and Last). But Harry's world, which is already
in some respects our modern Muggle world with a "secondary world"
(Tolkien's term), the WW, within it. Since JKR's story takes place in
the 1990s--Harry's present and future but our past--we *know* that VW2
can't have much impact on the Muggle world. He isn't Sauron in the
distant (and imaginary) past, who poses an almost incomprehensible
threat and whose defeat ironically brings change almost as great as
his victory would have. The changes Voldemort brought to the WW in VW1
will happen again--people will die or disappear or be corrupted or be
driven insane by Cruciatus curses, but the WW will survive just as it
did after the defeat of Grindelwald--probably more or less intact and
more or less as it has always done. There may even be improvements and
modernizations that Hermione will approve of, such as freedom for
House Elves or tolerance for werewolves. None of these things will
directly affect Harry.

Think about what Harry's world has been up till now. His parents
killed when he was fifteen months old, ten years of living in the
cupboard under the stairs. Hogwarts was his refuge for his first few
years, but there were still the miserable summers with the Dursleys
and the death of Sirius and too many other problems to mention.  now
he has a new burden that he can't share with his friends, the secret
of the prophecy. In other words, Harry's world is about as different
as possible from Frodo's Shire, and so is his relationship to it. The
young Frodo was happy and carefree in a seemingly perfect rural world
of trees and hills and little rivers (to paraphrase Bilbo). Harry has
seldom been happy and never carefree in his world of Muggle suburbia
and boarding school and the Forbidden Forest. Harry, like any
adolescent, has no choice but to leave school behind and enter the
adult world. No tragedy there, just inescapable mundane fact. We know
that Hogwarts won't be destroyed because one of Harry's friends
(probably Neville) will become a teacher there, but even if it were
destroyed it wouldn't affect Harry directly because he has to leave
anyway. It's not a question of being unable to live in the world he
saved. He can't live in Hogwarts, anyway, and the world he saves can
only be a better place to live after he saves it (with the help of his
friends). I realize that lives will be lost and many people will be in
mourning, but that happens in any war. The enemy, whoever he is,
cannot be defeated without loss and destruction but the world that
emerges after the battle can find joy and beauty again. The WW can
learn from its mistakes and try again. Think of England after World
War II. Think of Fawkes the Phoenix dying and rising from his ashes.
The price of peace is sacrifice, but the sacrifice need not be Harry. 

You say that the WW has a short memory and I agree, but I think for
Harry, that will be a good thing. Why would he want to return to the
miserable world of his childhood? Why not live happily in the better
one he's helped to bring about? Why not celebrate the release from his
burden and share the short-lived glory with the other heroes (he won't
be the only one) and when the fickle WW forgets him, why not be "Just
Harry"?

Harry isn't Frodo and JKR isn't Joseph Campbell. There's no reason for
Harry not to find a place in the world he saved.

Carol