Harry Agonistes (was Re: Ever so evil ? was Dumbledore's role in Sirius' death

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 99163

> Neri:
> I know this is your interpretation of this scene, but my
> interpretation is different. This is a classic scene, used
(usually
> many times) in any good-against-evil novel, of the good hero
> instinctively recognizing evil and opposing it.

Pippin:
Harry instinctively recognizes evil? If this is supposed to be an
instinct, it's a pretty weak one. Harry doesn't recognize Quirrell,
Tom Riddle, Scabbers, or Fake!Moody as evil. He doesn't even
recognize when Voldemort is putting lies into his head.

Neri:
I did a poor job of explaining myself. HP would have been a very 
boring story if Harry could always tell good from evil. This is 
certainly not what I meant. In the specific scene Kneasy and I were 
discussing, it is actually not difficult at all to tell that the 
clueless Ron is the good kid and the conceited Draco is the bad kid. 
What I meant is that when Draco offered his hand and Harry didn't 
take it, Harry was making a fateful choice. He is going to be a 
Gryphindor, not a Slytherin. He is going to be Harry Potter and not 
another Tom. This choice is going to affect all his years in Hogwarts 
and the future of the whole WW. The inherent quality of the good hero 
is to recognize these critical moments of choice. This is what makes 
him the good hero. It is not a plot device. It is in a deeper level. 
In the level of the plot all Harry is aware of is that (as Kneasy 
wrote) he likes Ron and dislikes Draco.

Perhaps the reason I find it so difficult to explain is that this is 
so obvious. This is the first time I bothered to try putting it in 
words. I believe most readers just take it for granted. I'm not even 
sure that JKR is fully aware of this. Maybe she just writes 
what "feels right" to her.    

Pippin:
Besides, if Harry has the inherent ability to recognize and reject
the path of evil, then why should we care that he chose
Gryffindor? He should have gone into Slytherin and led all the
other Slythies back to the light. 

Neri:
Perhaps this is how you would have written the story, but this is not 
how JKR chose to write it. I identify with all those who want to 
redeem Draco or find another "good slytherin", but after five out of 
seven books we still haven't found him. If you don't like it you can 
write your own version of HP, but in JKR's version, Harry choosing 
Slytherin and shunning the Weasleys and Hagrid (Draco practically 
stated this as his condition) would have made him a second Tom.

But I wonder why JKR wrote it this way. Perhaps she is telling us 
that even when you are only 11 years old, you already have to make 
your choices between right and wrong.

Pippin:
IMO, the major theme of the books is that people, including
readers, should not trust their subjective sense of good and evil
very far. Pace Star Wars, you really shouldn't trust your
feelings--even Dumbledore cannot. To paraphrase OOP, he
should have known he was doing the wrong thing because he
felt so good about it.

Neri:
I certainly agree that a major lesson of HP, and also what makes it 
so much fun, is that things are frequently not what they're seem to 
be. A bad man might masquerade as a good man. Something that feels 
good might turn out to be wrong. But there are limits to this. You 
can fool some people some of the time, but you can't fool all the 
people all the time. A character like Lupin, who is so obviously 
brave, kind, troubled and flawed, can't turn out to be pretending the 
whole time. A complex character like Snape, no matter how "deeply 
horrible" he is, is almost sure to redeem himself in the end. Harry 
rushing to the MoM to save Sirius was a terrible mistake in the level 
of the plot, but in a deeper level, Sirius' death made Harry 
stronger. The good characters often mistake the wrong for the right 
or the right for the wrong, but that's not an excuse to say that 
there's actually no difference between right and wrong.  

Pippin:
I think JKR has made a great leap forward in good-vs-evil novels.
She has dared to make the good side morally complex. 

Neri:
Well, many authors before had morally complex characters, but then 
their novels were not classic good-vs-evil. Yes, I agree that what 
makes HP especially interesting is this apparent contradiction 
between the good-evil duality and the complexity of many of the 
characters.    

Pippin:
Unlike
Tolkien or Star Wars, everyone in the Potterverse does not draw
the line between good and evil in the same place. The
characters may not draw the line where Dumbledore would, but,
JKR seems to be saying, as long as they draw it somewhere,
and refuse to cross it, Dumbledore is on their side.

Neri:
I agree, but again there is a limit to this. You can't draw the line 
anywhere you want. Some things are just plainly wrong.

Neri