[HPforGrownups] re: chapter summary / greatest fear / morality / Hermione / Percy / TMR

[Vivamus]

No: HPFGUIDX 121575

In Catlady's wonderful collection of comments:

> Vivamus signed off his excellent post
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/121052 with:
> 
> << Vivamus, who agrees with Hub McCann that honor, virtue, 
> and courage mean everything; that money and power mean 
> nothing; that good always triumphs over evil, and that true 
> love never dies. >>
> 
> Whether good always triumphs over evil has a lot to do with 
> the definition of 'triumph' (or of 'good' or of 'always'). 
> Did he mean in the Afterlife (Heaven and Hell)?
> 
> Has true love died (or been re-defined as not 'true') when 
> the lover and the beloved and their descendents for ten 
> generations and their language and their culture and all 
> their artifacts have died and turned to dust and been 
> forgotten by the living long ago? How about when the old 
> couple who were married for seventy years and stood by each 
> othr through thick and thin no longer remember each other (or 
> their children and grandchildren) because of Alzheimer's disease?

Vivamus:
That was a quote from the recent, outstanding movie, "Secondhand Lions".
The character also says about those things that it doesn't matter whether
they are true or not; a man (much of the movie is about understanding
manhood from a boy's perspective) believes them because they are worth
believing.   Without going too far OT on this, I think the implication was
that those are beliefs that are worth holding onto, despite evidence to the
contrary that we might see every day of our lives, because believing them is
PART of what gives us the strength hold the line against evil and finally
triumph in a hopeless cause.  

The cases you mention are good examples that seem to defeat the logic of
those statements.  If, however, you have lived with the terrible pain of
having a loved one with Alzheimer's, you (hopefully) know that believing
that love lasts forever is sometimes the *only* thing that will get you
through the day.  

I disagree with the character that it doesn't matter whether those things
are true or not, but I think that those core beliefs manifestly are the
basis for a society desirable to live in.  One might even argue that they
are necessary beliefs for a satisfied life, but that would be WAY off-topic.

Getting back to Potterverse, it would be interesting to look to the
characters in the books so far, and see if clinging to foolish, desperate
hope is more a cause of victory (as in Harry going into the CoS, where he
*knows* there is a basilisk, to look for Ginny), or defeat (as when he goes
to the DoM in OOtP.)  (Actually, I guess the DoM has to be considered a
victory, doesn't it?  Even with Harry's foolishness and the loss of Sirius.
LV was revealed at last, the prophecy is finally beyond LV's grasp, and that
whole group of DEs were arrested.)  More specifically, does JKR's writing
imply that clinging to "foolish" hopes empowers the characters in a good
way, or does success come more as a result of more "rational" thinking that
suppresses impossible hopes?

Anyone want to take a swing at that?

Vivamus