The Ethical Imperative in Harry Potter - why Rowling talks about death

[tbernhard2000]

No: HPFGUIDX 154734

So, Jo has been talking about death again, and the fandom goes
banana-float. But why is she on this subject now? It's not like we
knew before who was going to die, or live, so the fact that she told
us she's altered some character's fates is, well, utterly and
fascinatingly meaningless.

What IS meaningful is exactly what the fandom too often forgets, or
ignores, overrun as it is by a kind of television gnosis. The fandom
forgets that Rowling is writing, in all cases and at all times, about
life and death.

There is no other subject, there is no other theme, there is never
anything else at stake in Rowling but life and death.

One of the first things Harry learns at Hogwarts, besides meeting
those who will be his best mates, is that a horrible death awaits
those who venture into the forbidden corridor, and that forest seems
dangerous too. In every book, it is death that threatens - a weak,
scheming teacher, a giant snake, a creepy sociopathic boy, dementors
and the grim, dragons and drowning and finally Voldemort himself, DE
henchmen....

Is this because Rowling has some odd fascination with death? Or is it,
as I hold, a sense that, in this world, almost every day, we are
making life and death decisions (but are generally careful not to face
the facts) - making decisions all the time, compromises, that keep us
from precisely the spot Harry is in, originally not by choice, but by
this point in the story, is there by conviction. Harry is at the
centre of things, and always on that razor edge.

The comfortable fandom, however, can only refer obliquely to a part of
themselves that identifies with Harry and would do as he does "if
compelled".

(I know that the personal automobile is the most destructive thing in
the world environmentally, and so I have never even wanted to own or
drive one. But all the time we hear car owners, even SUV owners,
talking about the environment, and still driving these things. How is
that possible? I*s there an automatic justification going on, that is
claimed by those with the money to own and drive such things? - no one
and nothing, in actual fact, compels people to buy what they don't
want to buy. What a strange concept - compelled to use and SUV! These
same people talk about poor people "choosing" their poverty.)

In other posts here and all over my fandom, I have said that Rowling
writes continuously about a kind of ethical imperative - one that is
not discrete, nor is it limited by methodological considerations - an
ethical imperative that operates within a facsimile of the difficult
and complex situations that obtain in our lives, written up as
fantasy. Rowling insists that in all things, there is an ethical
dimension (Dumbledore insisting on consulting with the judges at the
second task!) that, ultimately, is what matters, regardless of the
outcome. In fact, outcome-based motivation is practically anathema to
Rowling - this is a criticism of both Slytherin and Ravenclaw - of
ends justifies the means (sort of) and of knowledge for knowledge's
sake. The first can lead to simple opportunism (rather like the GOP to
the south, and that creepy little Nixon guy who turned it into the
anti-intellectual redneck organization it is today) or worse, a kind
of fascism. The second can lead to cultish behaviour like Luna's,
which is not dangerous, and a kind of traitor mentality (Edgecombe)
that looks only at the letter and not the spirit, which is much more
dangerous, and to which Rowling attaches a particularly nasty stigma,
no doubt a reference to collaborators.

There is a circle of people in the Harry Potter series who operate
within this ethical imperative - it is not based on anything as goofy
as common beliefs or traits - it is based solely on whether or not
people facing difficult times share courage, friendship, and love, or
become self-centred, nasty little pricks, who worry only about themselves.

That Rowling can be so clear about these things, and that the vast
majority of the fandom, including almost all of those over the age of
10, don't get it, is weird as felt bananas. Rowling is saying:

You know what's going on, don't pretend you don't know. If you act in
ways that exacerbate things because you kid yourself, you are not
operating within the ethical imperative, and you risk being a traitor,
a mindless follower of orders (like real world armies or terrorists,
where being a whole human being is anathema, cause whole human beings
don't blast other people to bits) or just really ugly and stupid, like
the Dursleys.

So Rowling writes about death because we live in a world that is shot
through with it. This is no Stephen King instruments of destruction
lame-ass stuff, this is our world. Hogwarts is almost a Breslan,
nascently. Without the trio and their accomplices, perhaps it would
have been a Breslan by now. Certainly without Dumbledore it would have
been. What if Draco had had explosives tied to him? That's the manner
of ethic he has! But on the tower, he had a way out - I don't know if
the bombers in the real world feel that they have a way out. Some
failed one's (who weren't shot in the head) have said no, they felt
there was no other way to go...

We pass a nastiness on the street - do we run away? Help without
endangering ouselves? Drive on? At any moment of the day, we can (and
sometimes are, whether we admit it or not) faced with choices that
could be really uncomfortable, but mostly we avoid it. Harry Potter
cannot. He inscribes himself with a tattoo of honesty, that, although
it came from that sad cow Umbridge, is the centre and circumference of
his ethic.

dan