Importance of Audience (was Re: Dumbledore or Snape)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 141473

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
<SNIP>

> 
> I think the overall moral point being presented is not, "When is it
> okay to kill" which is not a choice most children face day to day,
> thank goodness, but the more general point that sometimes even 
> the right choice may have dreadful consequences, and you mustn't 
> let your fear of those  dissuade you from making it. We can see 
that in 
> Dumbledore's decision to leave Harry at the Dursleys, in his 
praise 
> of Harry's decision to save Peter from being lynched, and in his
> decision to keep what he heard from Mrs. Cole to himself.
> 

Hmmm.  Well, as far as the Dumbledore/Dursley decision, JKR backed 
away from that one like a scalded cat, even to the point of tacitly 
rewriting canon by giving Dumbledore another speech to replace the 
one from OOTP that she swept oh-so-swiftly-and-soundly under the 
rug.  As she doesn't strike me as someone who gives up on points she 
was trying very hard to make, I'd say that she wasn't trying to get 
across much of a moral lesson on that one, but had just created a 
problematic situation by failing to think through the implications 
of what she wrote -- particularly what she wrote in the midst of a 
difficult pregnancy and a rush to get OOTP done and off her desk.

As far as the decision of Harry to save Peter, I don't see any 
evidence that JKR sees it as having terrible consequences.  Oh, to 
be sure we readers see it as having utilitarian implications, but 
I'm not at all sure she's interested in those or wants to in any way 
emphasize them as part of any kind of "moral of the story."  Rather, 
lynching people is bad, even when they deserve it, and therefore 
Harry was right in heading off Remus and Sirius.  Here endeth the 
lesson.


Lupinlore