Harry's emotional scars (was: In Defense of DD)

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 126756


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lupinlore" <bob.oliver at c...> wrote:
 
> To take this in a slightly different direction, I think the series is 
> on the edge of a series of revelations about JKR's view of these 
> things (i.e. emotional scarring).  We have hints we are going to learn 
> a lot more about Voldy in the next couple of books, and Snape as 
> well.  Some have postulated that the theme of emotional scarring will 
> be very big.  Others that emotional scarring will have no place as a 
> major theme in the narrative and that "free choice" will be the 
> deciding factor.  We have hints in both directions.  Dumbledore's 
> constant talk about "what's good over what's easy" points to free 
> will, but then the talk about how "some wounds run too deep for the 
> healing," points another way.  

You write as though the two themes are mutually exclusive.  Does Snape
seem like an automaton?  Lupin must be scarred -- does he still make
choices?  What about Draco, his mind poisoned by being raised by a
Death Eater; does he have free will?

Is the problem a tension between the ideas that our "scars" affect who
we are, and yet it's our choices that ought to make us who we are?  In
real life, it is some of each.  But Jo never said our choices make us
who we are, Dumbledore said they *show* who we are -- it's a
rephrasing of "by their fruits you shall know them." 

Dumbledore does not talk "constantly" about what's right over what's
easy. He seems to know quite well that what's good is sometimes very
very difficult.  It must be partly why he gives second chances.

A person, or a character, does not have a choice about what happens to
him.  What he has a choice about is what he does about it.  So Harry
finds himself, whether he likes it or not, born and then marked as the
person who must face Voldemort.  Theories are plentiful about what
he'll decide to do with that knowledge.

And if he lives through it, he cannot even choose to become an Auror.
 He can only choose to try.  Try, or try not.  There is no "do."

As Harry realises at the end of GoF, "what would come, would come [he
has no choice in the matter]...and he would have to meet it [in a
manner of his own choosing] when it did."  What role will past
troubled relationships play?  Details in book seven...

...

Or I could be completely off my rocker.  But I'm not worried - bring
on the next two books!

Annemehr