DD: an appreciation (Was Re: Snape, A Murderer?)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 95673

Kneasy wrote:
Morals - what a morass that can turn into.

Neri answers: 
Yes, I wanted to avoid this too, but it seems impossible. Perhaps 
because HP is a story in the good-against-evil genera, and good-and-
evil implies, unfortunately, moral.

Kneasy:
Moral codes vary according to time and place, no matter how much
people wish (or pretend) that they don't. The only morals that matter
are the ones personal to yourself, the ones that you (or I) have to
live with. To decry someone who has injured you or yours by not
complying with your own personal code, even when they've never
claimed that they share it, is a pretty depressing and pointless 
exercise.
I know - I've been there.

Neri: 
I agree, but you'll find that arguing the position of a moral 
relativist is no less difficult, especially if you keep using words 
like good and bad, justice and injustice.

Kneasy:
HP provides 'moral' guidelines even based on my devious 
interpretation:

Good must always resist evil, even when the cost is enormous,

Neri:
Yes, but which side is Good and which side is Evil? How do you tell 
the difference? Is it just that the good guys wear white and the bad 
guys wear black? I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'd really 
like to know how do you define the difference. It is a critical issue 
here, because any good-against-evil story (unless it has the depth of 
a tea spoon) invariably gets into the question of what defines the 
good guys from the bad guys.

Kneasy:
Easy choices are not usually the best option,

Neri:
Sure, but why is it so? Is it just to make the plot more interesting, 
or is there a deeper reason why the heroes of the good side always 
get stuck with those difficult choices? Does it have something to do, 
by any chance, with the M word?

Kneasy:
Injustice should be exposed and if possible punished,

Neri:
Definitely. But how do you define injustice? 

Kneasy:
Those are important, I think, and the first two cover DD's dilemma.

Neri:
You forget an important forth one. It is:

"If, in order to destroy evil, the good side must become evil itself, 
then the whole business was pointless"

Lesson 1 from LOTR, but any good-against-evil story worth its salt 
must hit this one sooner or later. We've already seen it in HP when 
DD didn't want anything to do with the dementors, although they 
supposedly were on his side, or when Harry refused to kill Wormtail, 
a *choice* that Harry made *himself* and DD had later approved.

I suspect that the Unforgivables in HP play a similar role to the 
ring in LOTR. They both represent the temptation to fight Evil by 
evil means. Harry trying to crucio Bella in the MoM was equivalent to 
Frodo slipping the ring on his finger. Remember what happened to 
Frodo when he did it? Then observe: five minutes after Harry throws 
that "crucio!" at Bella, a dark lord tries to possess him. Curious 
indeed, how these things happen.

Kneasy:
Does the idea that James and Lily died because they were betrayed by
a so-called friend who succumbed to pressure seem more moral?
If so, please explain how.

Neri:
Not at all. This is why Pettigrew is definitely a bad guy and a 
traitor. The question is, if DD knew (as you speculate) that 
Pettigrew is going to betray James and Lily to their death, but 
didn't warn them, how is he different from Pettigrew?

If DD had a very good reason to think that the whole fate of the WW 
depends on James and Lily dying by the hand of LV, he should have 
presented this reason to them and ask them to volunteer. They would 
have probably done so. After all, they did sacrifice their lives for 
Harry alone, so why not for Harry *and* the whole WW? Perhaps this is 
indeed what happened, but IMO DD did not have any way to predict what 
would happen in Godric's Hollow with any reasonable degree of 
certainty, and therefore he did not let James and Lily die on 
purpose. This does not exclude the possibility that he taught 
the "ancient magic" charm to Lily as an optional last resort.   

Kneasy:
No, Harry should not be trusted with critical choices, not when he's
ignorant of their context and of the possible disasterous 
consequences.
Much more is at stake than what Harry thinks he wants, a whole society
is at hazard and Harry might be the key to saving it. Or perhaps your
view is that whatever Harry wants is fine; bugger everybody else?
Somebody has to organise the resistance, utilise whatever assets
are available, expose enemy weaknesses, plan and where necessary
accept casualties. DD is it. He's the only one who can do it.

Neri:
Was it De Gaulle who said something about the cemeteries full of 
irreplaceable people? The only person we know to be irreplaceable in 
the battle against LV is Harry. Again, same as in LOTR, only little 
Frodo can be the ring bearer. JJR and JKR are trying to tell you 
something in this. They're trying to say that it is the uninformed 
small privet in the trenches, and his moral strength, that are 
irreplaceable. 

Personally, I'm not a great fan of old "wise" well-informed leaders. 
As history (and JKR in OotP) tell us, they are just as likely to 
bungle it as the 18 yrs old boys they send to die on the front. If DD 
is indeed a man of so incredible foresight that he could have 
predicted, with a very high degree of certainty, what would be the 
results of this fateful night in Godric's Hollow, then he is indeed a 
class of his own, practically an intellectual super human, and 
perhaps he should be allowed different moral standards. But I don't 
think such ability is realistic. DD strikes me more as a different 
kind of a wise man. Like Socrates, he is wise because he knows that 
he does not know (while the fools around him, especially Voldy, don't 
know even that). In PoA, Harry lets Pettigrew live, a critical choice 
that is based purely on moral judgment and results in Pettigrew's 
escape and Voldy's resurrection. I don't see any way how could DD 
orchestrate this decision of Harry, yet when Harry tells him he 
approves of it and says that predicting the future consequences of 
our actions is almost impossible. Hardly a manipulator and a puppet 
master.

Kneasy:
The Lord of the Rings is about Sauron, is it? Not by any means.
HP is the tale of the fight against Voldy as seen through the eyes of 
a
boy caught up in it through no fault of his own. He is the catalyst.
But Voldy and DD existed before he was born, were fighting before
he was born. He is an episode in an on-going battle and we have
been told that DD has a plan and he's had it for a long time. Harry
is part of that plan. So though Harry is the main character in the
books he is also a only one melody in a greater symphony.
Otherwise the whole story becomes meaningless.

Neri:
The main character of the story does not need to be the most 
important figure in the events described in the story. In fact he may 
be relatively insignificant to them. But he *is* the main character 
of the story. This means that the critical choices he makes are 
indeed his own choices, not made for him by somebody else, or there 
is no point in telling his story.

Kneasy:
IMO it's not a case of 'let them', it's more a case of having no 
option.
I agree that it would be clearer if DD did the whole thing himself, 
but
then there'd be no story to dissect. 

Neri:
Why, it could have been a great story, only it would have been DD's 
story, not Harry's story, and it would have been told from DD's point 
of view, or from the point of view of a close companion (like Dr. 
Watson telling Sherlock Holmes' story). 

Kneasy:
Enormous conspiracy? That'd be nice, but not really - just one person
playing his cards close to his chest and having information we have
been denied so far. Plus a few helpers, witting and unwitting.

Neri:
All the more amazing, then. A single person fighting the war and 
saving the whole WW almost by himself, manipulating his soldiers and 
enemies alike just by the power of is wits. Incredible. The best show 
in town, I'd say, and we poor readers can't get to the front seats. 
In fact we hardly get to peek through the windows. But we do get 
direct broadcast from the mind of this annoying teenager Harry 
Potter, detailing at great length all his petty bickering with his 
equally annoying teenage friends, his stupid crushes on whiny teenage 
airheads and his irrelevant quarrels with his teachers. Don't you 
find it frustrating sometimes?

Neri