Dementor's Kiss and WW beliefs (was: Will Harry lose his powers)

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 89370

> Carol:
> On the contrary, Lupin and others take pains to indicate that the Kiss
> is worse than death because the person who is kissed has lost his
> soul. Not only can he never live again, except as a soulless body
> without human emotion or memory, but his death when it happens won't
> be "the next great adventure." It will be the death of an empty body
> only. Nothingness, absence--no afterlife, no joining with loved ones,
>  not even cold or darkness. The soul is gone for ever, absorbed into
> the soulless being of the dementor. The body decomposes. Nothing is
> left. Nothing.
> 
> I didn't want that fate for Sirius even when I thought he was a
> murderer. I certainly don't want it for Harry. The only character for
> whom a Dementor's Kiss would be a fitting end is Voldemort.


Yes. Interesting thoughts.

Of course we don't really know what the WW as a whole believes happens after 
death. Dumbledore expresses his Peter Pan like faith in death as the next 
great adventure but we have no indication as to whether wizards as a whole believe 
in an afterlife (although I guess this is perhaps, though not necessarily, 
indicated by talk of the soul) or what should happen in that afterlife.

For instance if there is any belief in judgment, or of the soul getting what 
it deserves in the next life, then oblivion might be a better option 
particularly for someone like Voldemort. Many, many people in RL contentedly exist with 
the idea of death as oblivion. 

As far as punishment goes, I've always thought that in some ways to be kissed 
and fall into oblivion is more merciful than to be incarcerated in Azkaban 
for a lingering descent into madness and death. Unless there is hope of some 
redemption after that death, or life simply carries on in another dimension with 
as many opportunities for the wicked as for the virtuous as in this world.

On a different level, we know that the Dementors represent and grew out of 
JKR's own experience of depression. I suppose that the Dementor's Kiss 
represents that depth of depression where individuality and feeling is sucked from one, 
the point where death seems preferable to life. In a way, I think that the 
Kiss is the extension of a metaphor which possibly gives rise to a slight 
anomoly when we treat it as a "real" thing in the context of the story.

~Eloise


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