Debatable ethical issues in OotP and HBP

[lucianam73]

No: HPFGUIDX 143315

> redeyedwings wrote:
> > Besides, "left no depths of cunning," quote sounds to me a lot 
like
> > Master Yoda's: "Do. Or do not. There is no 'try.'"
> 
> Miles:
> It sounds to me like a quote of the Sorting Hat:
> 
<quotes snipped>
 
> "Cunning" is a characteristic of Slytherin and his House. The 
Sorting Hat
> considered to put Harry into Slytherin. Voldemort, a 
Slytherin, "marked him
> as his equal". And Dumbledore himself tends to "the end justifies 
the
> means", doesn't he - thinking of Marietta in his office after the 
revealing
> of the DA at OotP?
> So, this is the old antagonism ethics of conscience vs. ethics of
> responsibility - and this will be a major topic of the fights in 
book 7.
> 
> Miles
>

Lucianam:
I see a lot of people find DD's attittude justifiable, and Harry's 
Death Eaters speech okay, considering the Wizarding World is at war. 
I may find it justifiable in very specific situations (which were 
not written), but not okay, or admirable.

I can understand I'm a minority in this, but I do have a problem 
with the new Harry and Dumbledore. Why so eager to battle, why so 
ready to drop limits? It seems, at least to me, a lot different from 
the ethical messages the earlier books delivered. 

I'm confused, did JKR always intend her 'life is 
valuable', 'compassion is important' and similar messages to 
eventually be readdressed in a new light, when the Second War came? 
By new light I mean Harry and Dumbledore saying those concepts are 
relative, that as soldiers they're allowed to take life? If that's 
the case, I have to say JKR has done a very poor job in HBP, IMO. 
She wrote very short scenes and dialogue, left no room for other 
characters' opinions, showed no specific situation at all. 

I've read some posts in which people said Harry was simply saying 
that if he found himself attacked by Death Eaters and was going to 
die, he'd try to kill as many DEs as he could as he went down. That 
is a specific situation, an action situation, and I think would work 
much better in description mode, as it happened (like the MoM battle 
or the Hogwarts invasion), than as some sort of vengeance statement. 
I suppose it didn't sound like that to a lot of people, though.

I'm curious about how the 'War attittude' will be handled in B7. I 
thought HP was more of a idealistic tale, something with a goody-
goody side to it, and if Harry's and Dumbledore's developments in 
HBP are not flints or red herrings or mistakes on JKR's part, well, 
too bad for me! I've already read Narnia and LotR, I really really 
am not in the mood for another Holy War-Shiny Armor Guy saga. I had 
enough ork squashing in The Two Towers, thanks - I'd rather have my 
Death Eaters sent to Azkaban, not killed.

The 'power the Dark Lord knows not' idea was so good. Sadly HBP 
delivered this funny four-horcruxes-to-find-and-destroy mission and 
now it's all about the action. I hope it's a hoax, at least in the 
sense that the tiresome horcruxes may exist allright, but in the end 
their importance will be very small. And the real big deal will be, 
as it always has been since Book 1, with the exception of Book 6, 
doing the right thing. I hope Harry will defeat Voldemort not 
performing any silly magical tricks, but chosing 'right over easy', 
and if that happens without the need of magic, simply by doing the 
noble difficult sacrifice thing... Yeeeeeessss!!!!!!!! Cheesy I now 
but we have our ideas of our dream endings don't we???

Lucianam, pointing her accusatory finger at HBP and hoping it was 
all a bad dream (now I'm overreacting).