Did JKR cheat with the prophecy?

[Jon Loux]

No: HPFGUIDX 124981


Lupinlore: 
> > > It seems to me that a strong case can be made that JKR has 
cheated
> > > rather badly by introducing the prophecy as worded in OOTP.  I 
> > > don't mean that she has done something immoral or even 
something 
> > > uninteresting from a literary point of view.  However, she has 
> > > tried to emphasize, time and again, the power of personal 
choice.  
> > > Then she introduces a prophecy that, by its very nature, so 
strongly 
> > > restricts the scope of personal choice as to make it 
meaningless, or
> > > nearly so, in some contexts.


This brings up another ancient dilemma.  Free will vs. 
Predestination.  Someone mentioned Oedipus.  Did Oedipus have any 
choice in his actions?  Here's an even better question: Would 
Oedipus have killed his father and married Jocasta had Tiresius just 
kept his damn mount shut and there had been no prophecy?  Prophecies 
have a nasty habit of causing the thing they foretell.

In the Mahabharata, Kristna, who is the incarnation of the eternal 
God, tells Arjuna that everything happening on earth (which happens 
to include a global war and the destruction of the known world) is 
preordained.  All of the kings on earth are incarnations of gods and 
demons and this current war is a spill over from a war in heaven.

It's the exact same question posed in the Nature vs. Nurture 
argument.  Does our environment shape us?  Our genes? Do we have any 
choice at all?  Works that include prophecy seem to rule out any 
choice.  Tolkien uses the same motif in The Silmarillion where all 
of history is played out by an angelic choir before the creation of 
the world.  When all of the choices are made and the conflicts 
resolved, it is replayed, redundantly, in time and space.  
Prophecies can be worded just ambiguously enough so you can't be 
sure what they mean (Macbeth, for instance.)  But in the end you 
discover what it really referred to (Birnham Wood?  Not of woman 
born?  Pretty clever, but weren't the witches playing with Macbeth 
and propelling him to his destruction by providing him with 
misleading prophecies?)

You can look at it as just a story.  After all, every story has an 
ultimate authority predetermining all of the actions of the players 
and weaving their fates: The author.  She is the demiurge of the 
Potter universe.  She is the one singing the songs outside of time, 
and then redundantly replaying them on paper.  Nice work if you can 
get it.

On Voldemort, the Evil Overlord.  I just hope when he is finally 
defeated he has the decency to say: "Curses.  Foiled again!"

Jon.


Admin team note:
This post asks some interesting questions, but we would ask that only answers directly relevant to the Harry Potter series are posted to the main list.