Ghosts

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 89938

> > > Rob wrote:
> > > > What purpose do ghosts serve at Hogwarts? Each house has 
> > > > one. Peeves seems to be just a troublemaker. So i keep 
> > > > wondering why are they there.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > In PoA they help searching the castle for Black... Maybe they 
> > > help in tight situations or give advice. They could be some 
kind 
> > > of "pets", and make Hogwarts a more cosy place ;)
> > > 
> > > - GartZen
> > 
> > <snip>  I think the ghosts play and will play a larger role in 
the 
> > septology and that their presence does have meaning.  Could they 
be 
> > part of what is protecting Hogwarts?
> > 
> > Julie
> 
> Carol:
> <snip>. They do provide
> atmosphere for us as readers and some of them have served as minor
> plot devices, e.g., Peeves attacking Umbridge, Myrtle helping Harry
> with the Second Task, and Sir Nick being petrified. (I still wonder 
if
> he's a Muggle-born ghost. Anybody?) But I agree with Julie that
> they'll have a larger role to play in later books. <snip>

Now Neri <taking a different tack>:
I think that, while JKR doesn't work a lot in the metaphoric level, 
the ghosts are one of the important metaphors in HP. They are there 
to remind us that Hogwarts is indeed "haunted" and "full of ghosts".  
Nothing is just what it seems to be. Everything has a long, often 
painful history. Things that happened 20 years ago, 50 years ago and 
even 1000 years ago often have a crucial importance in your life.

I believe a main source of the power and attraction of the HP books 
is that they show us how children are hostages and often victims of 
events, rules, conventions and traditions that were formed many years 
before they were born. In the real world we usually fail to notice 
it, because those conventions and traditions are so ingrained in us 
that we don't even see them. They are transparent like ghosts. We 
can't imagine things could be different. But the conventions and 
traditions of the WW are tantalizingly different-yet-similar to those 
of our real world, and so we are able to see for the first time how 
arbitrary they are, and that all children must grow into a world that 
is severely haunted by the "ghosts of the past". 

Neri, sincerely apologizing for his sudden philosophical mood