What would a successful AK mean?

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 142897

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

> The "is Snape a goodie or a baddie" theme has been a reliable 
> tension point for the entire series.  You would either tie it up in 
> the climax of the series proper, or you would tie it up well in 
> advance so you have time to introduce a new question. 

Well, except that we've had two of the major threads still open for 
the last book running the entire way.  What is Snape up to, but far 
more importantly: what *is* Voldemort and how are we going to get rid 
of him.  Some have postulated a scenario where these two things are 
intimately and completely connected, but there's any number of 
balances possible.

<snip>

> Soooo, she would just leave out the bit where Dumbledore realized 
> the guy he trusted so profoundly is Evil.  Right.  

Well, if you believe Harry, Dumbledore is 'pleading' at the end of 
the book.  Here's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't editor's 
class dilemma for you:

Some readers want to argue that Harry's perception is faulty because 
Dumbledore would *never* plead.  But the contra-argument is that it's 
precisely Dumbledore's exceptional pleading that makes the scene what 
it is.  So do we smooth it out to conform to an idea of the 
character, or do we let it stand in its spiky discomfort?

And yes, Dumbledore is not the center of the books, so his reaction 
is infinitely less interesting to her than Harry's.

> All it would have taken to remove all ambiguity from that scene is
> ONE LINE from Dumbledore, one closeup where he absorbs his 
> betrayal. JKR deliberately left it ambiguous.  Meaning Snape's 
> loyalties are still to be resolved.

Agree that it's deeply ambiguous.  However, worth thinking about is 
that she may well be interesting in making us *think* that it's 
ambiguous when it's really not going to be in the long run.  Hiding 
in plain sight, as it were.  It may be a case of "Snape's loyalties 
are still to be revealed for sure" rather than the more 
active "resolved".

>> 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.) 
> 
> ?  JKR is COMBINES genres, but she doesn't break them.

But as soon as you combine genres, things get messy.  Look at the 
tonal plans of symphonic tone poems if you don't believe me. :)  The 
demands of dramatic structure wreak havoc on normative tonal plans.

It's the combination of factors that complicates the guessing, I 
think.

> But Harry relying on his own judgement hasn't been a question mark. 
> He's been pretty alarmingly independent since book 1.  He never 
> said, like Lupin, Dumbledore trusts Snape and that's good enough 
> for me. There is no modulation there.  If anything, there's been a 
> theme of Harry not relying sufficiently on other people.

But it has been such a theme for others just to rely on Dumbledore, 
end of story.  As Darrin posted long ago, it begins to reek of "the 
lady doth protest too much".  Rowling deliberately put the second-
hand trust issue front and center in this book, even more than in 
OotP.  A healthy synthesis would be not to see others simply relying 
upon the authority figures, but demanding information and questioning 
and sharing.  Dumbledore *doesn't answer* Harry's questions and 
objections--and I think this is presented as A Bad Thing.  It makes 
sense to me, at least, that it's precisely the bad thing which leads 
to the tragic consequences of the end of the book.  Rowling could 
give us a solution which mitigates some of the tragedy, or not.  I 
have a personal preference for the not, but I can see it going either 
way.

<snip>

> Harry will die in some unusual/incomplete fashion, and come back to
> life.  A land-of-the-dead sequence is de-rigeur for this sort of 
> story.

That does violate Rowling's own comments about "dead is dead" in the 
Potterverse, but we'll have to see.  I'll put my bets against actual 
death.

> But that hasn't been what has been set up as the 'question mark' in
> that relationship.  The emphasis has never been on Harry wanting to
> punish Snape, which is what would be required for 'Harry forgives
> Snape' to be a resolution (Draco, maybe?).

But now it really is.  Harry's comments at the end, the whole "if I 
catch up with him so much the worse" speak to the vengeance theme 
coming to the forefront--as do Rowling's comments about how now it's 
really personal.  It's there, and I don't see why she should have to 
have a laser focus on the theme of the past books as opposed to 
focusing on something a lil' different.

> The unanswered question, which Harry has pointed asked and 
> tantilizingly gotten no answer, is 'Why does D-dore trust
> Snape'?  Trust is the key word that is used again and again, and 
> trust is what the resolution must involve.  The vengeance idea is 
> not, if I may use a musical metaphor, a note that belongs in this 
> chord.

Trust, trust.  It involves knowing the reasons for actions, to be 
able to trust someone--especially someone who's shown the 
orientations that Snape has.  But isn't trust also going to *have* to 
involve a forebearance from vengeance?  Especially given the depths 
of what Snape has been and done, it's going to have to involve more 
than a leap of faith based on hearsay, but some kind of deep 
emotional connection (probably more that than the kind of factual 
analysis this group revels in).

Of course, Snape may not be trustworthy at the present at all.  We 
have to also leave open the idea that he's shifted through the 
series.  Oh, it raises some problems, but it's a clean answer to 
others.

-Nora pulls out that fabulous Lohengrin pirate with Nicolai Gedda and 
grooves to the thirds-cycles