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

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 99223

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" 
> <gbannister10 at a...> wrote:
> > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" 
> <foxmoth at q...> 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > 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. 
> Unlike Tolkien or Star Wars <<
> 
> > Geoff:
> > I think that there are plenty of morally complex characters in 
> > Tolkien. <snip examples>. And, again, in the Narnia books, 
> what  about Edmund in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" 
> and Eustace  Scrubb in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"? Not 
> such well fleshed out  characters but both drawn towards the evil 
> side.<
> 
> I didn't explain that well. I don't mean that the  characters in 
> Tolkien, Lewis and Star Wars don't struggle with moral issues. 
> What I mean is that when Aragorn says, 'Good and ill have not 
> changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves 
> and Dwarves and another among Men,' nobody thinks he's 
> talking nonsense. And a similar sort of universal morality 
> prevails in the Star Wars movies: the Jedi have been upholding 
> one ideal of peace and freedom accepted across the galaxy for 
> thousands of years
> 
> But Rowling's world doesn't have that kind of unity. 
> 
> Pippin

Antosha:
This is an excellent point. I think this is why we're having arguments about ESE!Whomever, 
the Good Slytherin, whether Snape is a good guy or not, etc. These novels--unlike those 
of Tolkien and Lewis--are humanist. They approach questions of Good and Evil not as 
abstract absolutes, but as parts of the human equation. For all that she is a Christian--and 
I don't think a humanistic view is incompatible with that--JKR is interested in the 
characters working out their problems, not in having the mouths of the gods lay down the 
law. Even Dumbledore's end-of-book revelations aren't deus ex machina revelations of 
right and wrong; they're simply revelations of the unknown causes of much of what's 
happening. (I'm getting kind of tired of those, btw. If, as many surmise, DD bites the 
dust--thanks to the Illiad for that phrase--at the end of book six, this will be the one 
happy by-product.) 

Oh, and it seems to me that part of what sets the original Star Wars head-and-shoulders 
above the 'new' trilogy is the humanism in the aspect of Han Solo. He made that series--
you cared more about the rest of them, you believed in their struggles, because of his 
moral ambivalence. It's what makes all of the Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler 
mysteries so compelling. You knew you liked the hero, but you were never REALLY sure 
he'd do the right thing--or if he (or you) were entirely certain what the right thing was.