Love and Vengeance (WAS: The Dursleys and Being Nice and Civil)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 145757

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "kchuplis" <kchuplis at a...> wrote:
>
<SNIP>

To be honest, *I'll* feel cheated 
> if it ends up a Revenge Tragedy where half the characters are killed 
and maybe even 
> the evil guy, but all those little tidbits that lead to this point 
were useless platitudes 
> because we don't want to appear to be preaching. I mean, where is 
the point in that?


Well, I suppose the point would be, NOT PREACHING.  I don't buy books 
to be preached at or sermonized to, but to read stories about 
characters I'm interested in doing things I can believe .  That is why 
I think DDM!Snape would be incredibly poor writing -- it's simply, 
totally, mind-numbingly unbelievable.  Grey!Snape, on the other hand, 
or LID!Snape, is believable, and would allow for getting across the 
same moral messages is DDM!Snape, but without the insipid sermonizing 
DDM!Snape might well entail.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting across moral messages, 
but there are ways of getting the moral point across without 
preaching.  JKR herself has acknowledged this distinction when she 
said she wanted to write moral books, not books with a moral.  But the 
way to do that is NOT to have such an extreme ending that people 
blink, shake their heads, blink again, and say "Oh, you've got to be 
#@!@#% kidding me!"

Tolkien very definitely had moral messages to get across.  But he did 
it in ways that maintained believability.  That is he got across the 
point of how forgiveness was important in the case of Gollum.  But he 
did not have Saint Frodo saying "Oh, love compels me to end the cycle 
of mutual recrimination and release you from vengeance!"  He got 
across the point of  Higher Justice when Frodo spared Saruman. But 
Frodo acted not out of "foregiveness" or "love," but in a very real 
way as a form of retribution and an acknowledgement that the scales of 
justice were so heavily weighted against this fallen angel that there 
was little a hobbit could do to make things any worse.

Thus, if in the end JKR has Harry realize that sparing Snape is, in 
effect, simply stepping aside and letting Higher 
Justice/Karma/whatever take its inevitable course -- that I could 
easily believe as being consistent with the needs of the story, 
Harry's character and his feelings for Snape, and getting across a 
certain moral message without sermonizing.  If she has him say, in 
effect, "Go forth, oh noble Slytherin, and no that I forgive the from 
the depths of love in my heart even as my mother didst take mercy on 
the long ago," I will doubtless give myself I hernia laughing in 
derision.

Similarly, if Harry destroys Voldemort by unthinkingly stepping 
forward to protect Wormtail with his own body, thus proving the power 
of self-sacrificial love while validating his decision to spare 
Wormtail in PoA, I will say "Extremely well done!"  The action is 
perfectly in keeping with Harry's character and established automatic 
reactions, gets across the moral messages of justice and self-
sacrificial love, and isn't preaching.  If, on the other hand, he 
says "I refuse to raise my wand against you, O Voldemort, for despite 
that you have tormented me I refuse to sink to thy contrivance," I 
honestly think I'll have to be rushed to the hospital for treatment of 
life-threatening nausea.

In other words, the difference is that moral messages are gotten 
across by characters acting in established and believable ways from 
motivations that are understandable and believable -- and thus which 
contain, inevitably, elements that are not entirely noble or 
unselfish -- which can, in fact, be downright unkind at times. I mean, 
who can read the end of LoTR and not feel that Frodo gets a rather 
large amount of satisfaction over, in effect, condescending to Saruman 
and telling him to go and live out his life as a beggar somewhere 
else?  Who thinks that Frodo, or anyone else, really mourns Gollums 
death as opposed to thinking that Bilbo's mercy was effectual in the 
end, but it's really best for everybody that the little sneak went 
into the magma?  And it is well to remember that in PoA, in taking the 
action the Dumbledore, for one, praised him for highly, Harry was not 
acting in an entirely noble or unselfish manner. Harry had no 
intention whatsoever of sparing Wormtail from punishment, but rather 
fully intended to hand Wormtail over to the Dementors while he went to 
live with Sirius.  In that, JKR was moral, but not preaching.

Preaching, on the other hand, involves sitting people up to do 
impossibly noble, unbelievably difficult, incredibly unselfish, and  
completely, unquestionably, inhumanly RIGHT things with the not-far-
under-the-surface-message "If you don't act/think/believe like this 
you are a naughty person."  Uh-huh.  Pass me the anti-nausea 
prescription, please.


Lupinlore