JKR is a Death Eater? (was:Re: Hobbsian worlds; Crime & Punishment)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 145887

BetsyHp <horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:
<SNIP>
> The very fact that JKR sets up as her worst villains people 
> espousing bias and prejudice, the very fact that her main good 
> guy actively works against the bias and prejudice of his world 
> suggests to me that I'm not merrily wandering down a garden 
> path.  Book 7 will be the deciding factor of course.  But I for
> one will be shocked if JKR turns out to be ESE.
 

Depends on what JKR sees as bias and prejudice.  One person's 
prejudice is another's realism, one person's bias is another's 
ability to clearly see human nature.  Also depends on what you 
define as ESE.

I'll have to say that if JKR really wanted to show us a 
classical "liberal"  scenario, she missed a golden opportunity 
with Voldy's backstory.  Do we find great moral struggles, human 
emotion, and sympathetic portrayal in the Fall of Tom Riddle?  
Nope.  Kid was born evil, strange even as a baby, snake in the 
bosom of Hogwarts, DD never trusted him, yada, yada, yada.  

I think that JKR actually gives less thought to these issues 
than people believe.  I think she's concerned by her story, 
with philosophical and religious issues mostly serving as the 
unstated foundation.  That is why people find these things 
contradictory and unclear in the Potterverse.  People's basic 
outlooks on life and morality often are unclear and 
contradictory.  I think JKR probably laughed out loud when she 
wrote the ferret sequence and the ten-ton-tongue scene.  She 
probably also felt genuine sympathy with Dudley when faced with 
dementors and for Draco in the bathroom scene.

Such contradictory messages often aren't even very subtle in 
canon or even in JKR's interviews.  We have a headmaster who 
loudly proclaims his care for his students yet seems willing to 
let Draco go on with his bumbling activities that almost kill 
two of said beloved students.  We have an emphasis on choice 
and a villain who was born evil, the product of a degenerate 
and poisoned bloodline.  We have denunciation of race-prejudice 
and important and ancient magic that validates, in a way, the 
emphasis the DEs place on ancestry and blood ties.  And we have 
a writer who seemed shocked and surprised when asked why 
Slytherin House still exists but who has persistantly shown 
Slytherin House as being the nerve center and home of Voldemort's 
supporters at Hogwarts.  Or was I the only one who read that 
statement about how the DEs would have supporters in all houses 
and how Draco and his gang are only a small portion of Slytherin 
and thought: "Okay, it would have been nice to show us that 
before now, you know, instead of having to tell us at the 
eleventh hour in an interview.  Now if you do show us any of that 
it will have the inevitable feel of box-checking."

It all comes back to the fact that JKR is, I think, sometimes 
rather naive about the messages she sends precisely BECAUSE she's 
usually focused on the story and doesn't consider as much as she 
maybe should the "wider" implications of some of her plot points.  
All of which is to say I don't think we'll have a clear and 
unconflicted statement on these issues in Book VII -- if only 
because it's very late in the day to go into the complexities of 
all this.  We may very well see some nod at House Unity or Good 
Slytherins, but a nod is about all we have time for.  Check the 
box and move on to the Great Horcrux Hunt.


Lupinlore