The perils of immortality (Was: Harry's Protection)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 119273


Snow wrote:
> <snip>
> A force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death

> to live forever! To live forever would be wonderful until everyone 
> you have known has died. <snip>
> 
>> The one thing that each of these statements maintain is the
wonderful and terrible consequence. They are also something akin to
what Dumbledore was speaking of in the end of the first book:
> 
> SS- "
You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As 
> much money and life as you could want! The two things most human 
> beings would choose above all- the trouble is, humans do have a
knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them."
> 
> The Stone and all it had to offer was not such a wonderful thing 
> because it had its terrible side also. 
<snip>

> The force that is contained in that same room must have to deal with 
> immortality, given the previous quote from Dumbledore about the
Stone not being such a wonderful thing etc. 
> 
> In the end my suspicions would be that immortality is the force that 
> can be more wonderful and terrible and the power is `pure' self-
> sacrificing protection. 

Carol responds:
I don't think immortality is the power behind the locked door, but I
think you're onto something important in thinkint that it's not as
wonderful as Voldemort thinks it is, especially if immortality means
an *earthly* life without the possibility of death. Death in the HP
books seems to be a form of release from earthly cares, "the next
great adventure" in which the dead can meet lost loved ones beyond the
Veil. I get the sense that Nearly Headless Nick has somehow made the
wrong choice, that he is missing something by having forfeited the
chance to find out what lies beyond. And the most terrible fate
possible in the WW is to have your soul sucked by a Dementor and to
fall into nothingness with no chance *ever* to enter into whatever
death offers to those like Sirius and the Potters who choose not to
become ghosts.

Evidently Nicholas Flamel and his wife, who denied themselves the
chance to die for over six hundred years, evidently saw the error of
their ways and gave up earthly existence for something better. (All
this sounds vaguely Christian, of course, but JKR is a Christian,
though not a fundamentalist, and clearly the soul and the life of the
soul are important to her and to the book. that being the case,
*earthly* immortality would not be a good thing. It would eliminate
the possibility of ever passing beyond the Veil and entering "the next
great adventure."

I *think* this fits in with the line in the Prophecy, "Neither can
live while the other *survives.*" The implication, for me, is that
neither Harry nor Voldy is now fully alive; both are merely surviving.
When one (presumably Voldy) ceases to "survive"--that is, when he ends
his earthly existence and is permanently destroyed--the other
(presumably Harry) can finally fully live. (This is at least what I
hope is meant, but of course there are other readings.)

Following this line of thought, Dumbledore's line about there being
worse things than death may mean, in part, that the *inability to die*
is the worst possible fate. Imagine, for example, that Voldemort, like
 Tithonus in the Greek myth, has eternal life but not eternal youth
and withers away to a weak, toothless, hopelessly degenerate old man
who is powerless and helpless but unable to die? There's also the
legend of the Wandering Jew (popular in the nineteenth century but
maybe forgotten now) who was punished for mocking Christ by being made
to wander the earth forever, unable to find rest in death. Maybe
others on the lis can think of better examples. (I don't want to bring
in Tolkien's Elves because they could die in battle and had more or
less eternal youth, so it's not the same thing.)

I don't know how any of this fits with the power behind the locked
door, but I think there's a difference between the immortality
(eternal *earthly* life) symbolized by Voldemort's yew wand and the
eternal *spiritual* life or resurrection symbolized by Harry's holly
wand. Yew trees are planted by graveyards; holly is associated with
Christmas and the ancient Druid festival of Yule.

I'm not trying to turn HP into an overtly Christian allegory (as
indicated, there are Greek and Druid elements as well), but does
anyone see what I'm driving at, that the pursuit of immortality is
unwise and even possibly evil in itself and Voldemort is in a sense
dooming *himself* by his pursuit of it?

Carol, who is not trying to present a coherent argument but only
tossing out an idea in the hope that it will receive thoughtful responses