What would a successful AK mean?

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 142883

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sydney" <sydpad at y...> wrote:

> If this is the Big Betrayal, even assuming that a by-the-book 
> plotter like JKR would place it so extremely oddly at the 
> transition into the 'third act', as it were, it is simply 
> inconceivable that she would fail to show Dumbldore undergoing the 
> transition from trust to betrayal.  Especially a writer so 
> enamoured of melodrama as Rowling! 

Why not?  It's the big BANG at the end of the book, setting up the 
Secunda Parte.  Anyways, she's not as interested in showing this re: 
Dumbledore, but far more interested in showing it re: Harry--being as 
she's interested in showing everything re: Harry.

> It's like music, right? 

Ooh, musical analogies.  My speciality...

> Let's say you're listening to a symphony (as it's Rowling, let's say
> it's a Mozart symphony) in a major key.  It will shift at various
> points into the minor key, especially right around going into the 
> big end bit, which creates a sort of anxiety.  Then it goes back to 
> the major key-- it might do it in a surprising way, but it certainly
> always returns to the key it established at the beginning.  The 
> ending is expected, the satisfaction comes in how it gets there and 
> overcomes the complications.  For the series to end with 
> Dumbldore's trust being mistaken, and Harry's hatred to be correct, 
> it would have to have established a 'minor-key' from the beginning, 
> by having a dark, noirish feeling and a cynical message.  I'm not 
> against dark writing at all, but HP is decidedly a major-key work.

I don't think Mozart is the best analogy for Rowling, because Mozart 
is not a genre bender in the symphony (while Rowling is at least 
playing with the combinations of genre, enough to scramble our 
expectations.)  Many of the large-scale expectations in Mozart are 
absolutely normative--and this is what you're arguing with the key 
structure.  *Of course* in the classical period you're going to end a 
work in the same key which you begin, and there's a malleable set of 
schematics something can follow.  (Key structure is not normative, 
but there's a set of possibilities.)

I don't buy the association of Dumbledore's trust with the major-key 
ending.  In fact, let me offer a counter-association in terms of key 
structure.  Harry's ultimate victory, and his realization that he can 
and must rely upon his *own* judgement as opposed to being 
Dumbledore's parrot ("I believe in DD and don't need to hear reasons 
for myself") brings us back not to the key of the first movement, but 
a breakthrough modulation--we end not where we begin, but we have 
reached a distant key via an interesting path.

Our prediction records speak pretty bluntly against the idea that 
Rowling is going to end in the same key that she began in, after 
all.  With a few scattered exceptions, most of us are guessing 
details quite badly.  And who knows whether Harry will live or die?

> As Harry is the protagonist, it is necessary for him to CHANGE, 
> though.

'Change' and 'being wrong about Snape' are not necessary correlates.  
Harry could well be absolutely right about Snape--but have to not go 
for the vengeance he currently has his mind set on.  If Harry gets 
the moment of grace at the end of the opera (wait, I don't care for 
that reading of the Countess at all...), then he's changed--but he's 
still right.

-Nora thinks of Rowling as a little closer to Bruckner: love those 
breakthrough modulations, but not always the best hand with tight 
clean structure