Black and white and read all over.

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 116850


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "arrowsmithbt" 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
> 
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Renee" <R.Vink2 at c...> wrote:
> > 
> > Well, what I'm mostly interested in are the things that will 
> > continue to provide food for thought and debate once I've read 
Book 
> > 7: Character, ethics, morals & principles, symbolism, narrative 
> > techniques, what kind of statement the author is making with her 
> > books. Speculating about the plot is of minor interest to me. 
<snip>
> > The plot is a vessel; it's not what the Harry Potter books 
> > are about and after Book 7, it will be about as thrilling as 
> > yesterday's newspaper. But unless JKR is going to dissapoint her 
> > grownup readers quite badly, the other aspects will still be 
> > worth tackling.
 
Kneasy:
> Dear, oh dear. 
> Sounds as if there's someone else with fairly limited expectations.

Renee:
So if people are not particularly interested in speculating about 
the plot, their expectations must be limited? That's a non sequitur, 
if you ask me. I fully expect the last two books to be entertaining, 
enjoyable, exciting and bursting with surprises, with a big showdown 
at the end. 

That still doesn't mean I'm going to spend a lot of time speculating 
about all the possible twists and turns. I do have a few minor 
ideas - it's impossible not to get any while reading - and I've 
picked up a few additional ones from forums and lists like this one. 
I'm eager to read on. But saying that I can't wait to find out if 
any of those ideas are correct would be exaggerating. To my mind, 
spotting medieval symbolism, or discovering how characters' past 
sins tend to catch up with them, or subtracting Harry's bias from 
the text and see what's left - to name a few examples - is more 
exiting than trying to figure out what will happen next knowing that 
most of it isn't going to happen anyway. 

I read The Lord of the Rings more than 30 years ago, and today I 
still love to discuss it with other Tolkien fans, even though 
nothing has been added to the plot since before I was born.  

Kneasy:
> All depends on what you expect of plot, I  suppose.
> If it's "Harry crunches Voldy, runs off with Ginny to farm 
Billywigs"
> then it would be pretty sterile, facile and any number of other -
iles.
> Me, I'm hoping for more.
> I want it to go along a different path that will cause readers to 
think,
> discuss, argue long after the books have been published. But it can
> only reach that point if JKR guides the plot arc away from the 
trite 
> and mundane. I've posted before that I'd be happy for Jo to come up
> with something entirely different - even to not come to a clear
> conclusion, to leave it all in the mind of the reader, for him/her 
to
> decide or determine what it was all about.

Renee: 
Though I can't say I disagree with most of what you say here, I 
don't see what it has to do with wanting to speculate about plot 
developments or not. 

The one thing I don't quite understand is, why it would take an open 
ending or a vague conclusion for the reader to get to decide what it 
was all about. Even if the conclusion is wholly unambiguous, there 
will be enough questions left to ask and answer concerning symbolism 
and message and meaning and whatnot - precisely because plot isn't 
what literature is all about. I suspect we're either reading these 
books in vastly different ways, or we don't mean the same when we 
say 'plot'. (Or both.)   

 
> And when you consider it, that's the case with morals, ethics and 
such.
> To mean anything they must be personal - and they change with time
> and place. An imposed morality is no morality at all - morality is 
> developed according to personality and experiences - it comes from
> within, it's part of one's belief system, philosophy, whatever.
> Behaviour can be enforced, morality is much, much more. And Jo has
> said that she hopes she's writing a story from which morals can be
> drawn - again a matter of readers personal interpretations, rather 
than
> a morality tale - here's the author's beliefs, take it or leave it.

Renee:
Did I leave the impression I wanted a story with a moral of 
universal validity and applicability? That wasn't my intention. I 
merely said I like to discuss/read about the moral aspects of the 
books, among other things. And I can subscribe to everything you say 
here.  

Renee