Books moral messages WAS: Re: The Trio's Morality

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 162529

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Kathryn Lambert <anigrrrl2 at ...>
wrote:
>
> Well, I've gotten in some hot water for posting this opinion
before, but I'm going to do it again, since we're all talking about
it again.
>
>   I know that many people feel that the Trio has acting out of line
on many occasions, that they have sunk to the level of Draco and his
cronies, that JKR will (or should) show us in the end that that kind
of behavior is unacceptable.
>
>   I completely disagree.
>
>   First - It's fiction. Fiction has different rules than real >life, and I think that the kids who read these books are >intelligent enough
>to realize that. I personally, get a little thrill of "Ha, ha!" >when the Cronies are turned into slugs in GOF and JKR describes the >Trio and the Twins stepping over them. They deserve it. They're >crappy people, who on a continuing basis do nasty and violent >things to people. They're bullies, and they deserve to get bullied >back once in a while. Again - fiction. It's exaggerated, over-the->top. That's ok in a novel, I think. that's what makes it fun. And >real life is obviously different.

Lupinlore:
Well, that's true.  But that isn't what all this is about.  Not, I
think, at the ultimate root.

Like it or not, fiction does send messages.  Sometimes the messages
are very clear.  Sometimes they aren't.  But they are always there.
Like it or not, writers of fiction are trying to sell messages.
Sometimes they are making their sales pitch quite consciously.  Other
times they are making it at more basic levels.  But once again, the
sales pitch is always there.

The messages are most powerful when they are moral messages.  That is
also when they are the most problematic.  It behooves authors to be
extremely careful in the moral messages they try to sell, and to be
sure they have thought of the implications of those messages.
Because when it comes to basic matters of right and wrong, you are
going to find that lots of people aren't going to let you get away
with waving your hands and saying "it's only a story."

And that, I think, is what all this is about.  There are, like it or
not, enormous moral problems with the books (problems here meaning
issues that seem to many to be inconsistent, insidious, and downright
wrong-headed and wrong-hearted).  Those problems manifest in any
number of places.  They come up with DD's policies toward Harry from
the minute he leaves him with an abusive family and acquiesces to
abuse from that family and further abuse from Harry's teachers.  They
come up in regard to the Trio and there relationship with other
characters.  They come up with regard to the Wizarding World and its
relationships to Muggles, Elves, and others.  They come up any number
of other places.  True, not everyone sees all the problems in the
same light, nor even recognizes some of them as problems.  But the
phenomenon is incredibly widespread, involving Snape-lovers and Snape-
haters, Harry-lovers and Harry-haters, Hermione-lovers and Hermione-
haters, DD-lovers and DD-haters.  In short, it is so widespread that
it is pretty much impossible to dismiss it as just the creation of
difficult people trying to spoil everybody's fun.

Now, people will take any number of tacks in trying to deal with
these problems.  Some say that JKR has a grand plan that will satisfy
most of these issues if we just give her a chance.  Others say that
JKR is simply a cruel woman with a death neurosis.  Others (and this
is the tack I tend to take) hold that most of it is just bad writing -
- JKR doesn't mean to raise most of these issues, and lets herself
get trapped in them because she has the bad habit of just not
thinking things through before she puts them in writing or says them
in public.

Regardless, the problems remain very real.  And they can't be
dismissed by waving one's hands and saying "it's fiction" or "they're
just kids."  That it's fiction doesn't mean that messages aren't
being sent.  And that they are kids is one of the facts that rests at
the heart of many of the problems in the first place.


Lupinlore