Re: Dumbledore's "“peaceful expression”? (was: Dumbledore's pleading)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 141824

> Carol responds:
<snip>
> Once again, the quote that you so kindly supplied:
> 
> "Dumbledore's eyes were closed; but for the strange angle of his arms
> and legs, he might have been sleeping. Harry reached out, straightened
> the half-moon spectacles upon the crooked nose, and wiped a trickle of
> blood from the mouth with his own sleeve. Then he gazed down at the
> wise old face and tried to absorb the enormous and incomprehensible
> truth: that never again would Dumbledore speak to him, never again
> could he help..."
> 
> Once again, Dumbledore looks as if he's asleep (if Harry ignores his
> position and looks only at his face). Harry straightens Dumbledore's
> spectacles and gazes into his "wise old face." (Fact, right, with no
> interpretation or speculation?)
> 
> I interpret this evidence to mean that Dumbledore looks like
> Dumbledore with no notable change in his "wise old face" except that
> his eyes are closed, in marked contrast to Cedric, whose "open gray
> eyes [were] blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted
> house" (GoF Am. ed. 638). Imagine Harry gazing into DD's face if the
> once twinkling blue eyes stared back at him, expressionless and empty
> rather than closed, with their presumed blankness concealed. Surely he
> would react as he did with Cedric, feeling only horror, not the gentle
> impulse to straighten DD's glasses. Dumbledore does not look either
> surprised (like Cedric) or terrified (like the Riddles), all of whom
> died instantly and none of whom had time to close their eyes. (That's
> the way an Avada Kedavra works, from what we've seen.)
> 

Neri:
I agree with all of that. I never said Dumbledore's eyes were open and
expressionless. It *is* canon that they were closed.

A main difference between canon and interpretation is that the
interpretation depends on our (frequently tacit) assumption as to the
message or the point that the author was trying to make. Here, for
example, you assume that the message was Dumbledore's expression and
other "clues" regarding his body, because this would fit with your
theory, and therefore you are trying to solve these clues and decode
Dumbledore's expression from JKR's words. But it is a possibility that
the author's message here was actually different, and that
Dumbledore's exact expression wasn't even very relevant to it. If you
read this whole paragraph again, you'll see that it talks about Harry
trying "to absorb the enormous and incomprehensible truth: that never
again would Dumbledore speak to him, never again could he help...". If
the real message of the paragraph is Harry trying to absorb the
terrible reality of Dumbledore's death, then Dumbledore looking as if
he's asleep, or the blood trickling from his mouth, or the strange
angle of his arms and legs, his skewed spectacles, are all mentioned
*not* because they are clues in a mystery, but because they give Harry
and the reader conflicting and wrenching impressions as to Dumbledore
being dead or alive. For this it would be important that his eyes are
closed and he appears asleep, and his "wise old face" would be
important to recall his personality and his emotional significance to
Harry, but it wouldn't actually of much importance if his expression
is peaceful or not, and this is why it isn't described. IOW, maybe
this whole paragraph is about Harry, not about Dumbledore. The
advantage of keeping the canon handy is that you don't discard such
alternative possibilities without even noticing.

> Carol:
> I think we can at least say without contradiction that DD's "wise old
> face" is *composed*, especially if paired with the *canonical*
> peaceful expression in the portrait, which is also sleeping, and
> contrasted with those of the known AK victims.
> 

Neri:
Pairing the real Dumbledore's expression with the expression of his
portrait might be very misleading. JKR told us in the Edinburgh interview
http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2004/0804-ebf.htm
that magical portraits aren't the real people and they aren't even
ghosts. They retain the general "aura" of the person and they "repeat
catchphrases", but they apparently don't remember the last moments of
their lives, which is why Dumbledore's portrait would be "peaceful and
untroubled". He may be sleeping just because the headmasters'
portraits are usually asleep (or pretending to be) when you enter this
room, and probably because a talk with Dumbledore's portrait simply
wasn't on JKR's menu for the present book.

> Carol:
> It is reasonable to examine the evidence and hypothesize on the basis
> of it. That, I believe, is what we do on this list. (I, for one,
> haven't forgotten that Narcissa's tears canonically splashing onto
> Snape's chest led to ACID POPS. :-) )
> 

Neri:
Of course this is what we do in this list, which is *precisely* why it
is important to protect our evidence from being contaminated by the
hypotheses. And I thank you for demonstrating how I try to do it in my
own posts. ACID POPS is indeed a theory, an interpretation, a
collection of hypotheses, and I was never shy about this. But
Narcissa's tears splashing on Snape's chest *is* most definitely
canon. I find the adverb "canonically" useful in communicating the
difference between canon and interpretation in my posts.

> Carol, who considers the "peaceful expression" *semi*canonical, but
> will try to remember to say "DD's apparently composed expression" in
> future
>

Neri:
Why not simply use "DD appearing asleep"? It's shorter, and it's canon. 

Neri