Memory as a theme

[dcgmck]

No: HPFGUIDX 108946

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Kirsten" <RowanGF at a...> wrote:
> New day, new theory.
> 
> I have been thinking recently about the theme of  *memory* and how 
it plays out in these books. Brief examples:
> 
> Harry begins the story without any memories. He doesn't know 
anything about his parents or his history. The whole of PS/SS 
involves Harry discovering the past, concluding with the gift of a 
photo album. Here memories restore his identity.
> 
> The Tom Riddle of CoS is himself is a memory, in the end unable to 
> escape from a diary. 

[huge snip; sorry]

dcgmck:

Kirsten, I very much enjoyed reading your enumerations.  At the risk 
of sliding off-topic, I couldn't help noticing that your foregoing 
description of Harry and his memories parallels that which happens to 
the androids in Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric 
Sheep?", the basis for the movie, "Blade Runner."  Dick's entire 
oeuvre debates what constitutes reality and what constitutes 
being "human".  In Androids/BR, the mechanized constructs are given 
and collect photographs in order to provide themselves with 
believable backgrounds and families that match their implanted 
memories.  These memories can be modified as necessity requires.  
Curiously, the androids have a built-in failsafe: they are designed 
to break down/die at the end of a finite time period. Harry Potter 
and Tom Riddle seem to be headed for a similar fate:the former is 
provided memories, the latter is a memory.

If Rowling is echoing Dick's theme, (intentionally or otherwise,) is 
she questioning Riddle's and Potter's right or ability to be counted 
as true members of the wizarding community?  Each has been and 
continues to be an outsider seeking both admittance and recognition 
in this closed community.  Does either truly belong or are their 
respective memberships wishful thinking, a combination of memory and 
fantasy?

As with Dick's tales, Rowling's characters who implant and/or 
manipulate memories clearly lack boundaries or certain scruples.  
(Lockhart, Voldemort, the Ministry of Magic)  Where do Dumbledore and 
Snape fit into this picture?  Each has used a pensieve to examine 
memories.  Each has left those memories to be seen and interpreted by 
Harry.  Memories, of course, are untrustworthy.  (Dick demonstrated 
this in the short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," which 
became the movie "Total Recall.")  Can we as readers actually trust 
people who use memories for analysis and manipulation?

I'm getting very impatient waiting for the publication of book 6 and 
really hope JKR's writing 6 & 7 pretty much simultaneously.  (She did 
say they were two halves of a whole...)