Role of ESE in Hero's Quest (was:Re: Was HPB's ending BANG-y?...)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 147567

> >>Carol:
> > And in a bildungsroman, where the child protagonist has not
> > yet acquired wisdom, it's unlikely that the child is right. As   
> > for the heroic quest, I could be wrong, but I don't think that   
> > the hero's judgment of who is or is not a villain is an         
> > essential element of the genre. 

> >>Alla:
> It IS one of the essential elements of heroic quest as far as I 
> know - to know what are you looking for and who are your enemies   
> and I agree with Nora, book 7 IS very likely to have many features 
> of heroic quest. I mean, hero gets help along the way, but        
> certainly he has to know whom to trust. Of course book 7 is        
> unlikely to play ONLY by the rules of quest, so we shall see.

Betsy Hp:
This sounded wrong to me, so I did some fast and dirty web 
research.  The heroic quest (or the Hero's Journey) doesn't need a 
secretly evil, or "surprise" villain at all.  Heck, there's not 
really any need for an out and out villain in these sorts of tales, 
though of course they're handy.  The hero needs something to strive 
against, but nature can fill that role quite nicely.  
(Hemmingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" as an example.)

And if there is a villain, generally the hero knows exactly who they 
are from the get-go.  Dorothy met the Wicked Witch of the West 
pretty quickly after arriving in OZ; Luke Skywalker knew he was 
going up against Darth Vader and the Emperor even before he commited 
to his quest.  And Harry has known that Voldemort was his enemy 
since he learned who he himself was.

Actually, what's interesting is going back to the list of villains 
from each book in the series, Voldemort was behind every single one 
of them, to the point of eclipsing the book's ESE.  Ginny as villain 
in CoS is a perfect example of that.  So I think the whole ESE thing 
goes towards JKR's nod towards the mystery genre rather than the 
Hero's Journey.

I do think an element of discovery is essential to the Hero's 
Journey.  A truth must be either learned or at least glimpsed at.  
And I suppose that can take the form of a "surprise" villain.  But 
that's not what I see the ESE as fulfilling.  And I don't think 
that's the sort of journey JKR has set Harry on.  I mean, he's not a 
knight or a warrior really, is he?  Dumbledore doesn't train him in 
arcane magical fighting skills.  Instead, Dumbledore tries to show 
Harry the lost humanity of Voldemort.  And he implies that only by 
understanding Voldemort will Harry have a hope of finding the 
missing horcruxes.  

And so, huh.  I seem to have talked myself out of book 7 needing an 
ESE!character. (Though JKR really does like her mystery elements.)

[I tried to figure out a way to gracefully work Joseph 
Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" into this post, since I think Kurtz 
could qualify as a "surprise" villain (though by the time Marlow 
finds him, it's not really a surprise anymore), but I couldn't.  And 
yet, I didn't want to give it up! <g>]

Betsy Hp, not quite sure this post makes sense, but posting it 
anyway <g>