Choice and Essentialism/Understanding Snape)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 154024

Pippin:
> And we do have a character who is just such a cold fish, who
> speaks of love in terms of power rather than feeling, who seems to
> understand the need for emotional support only intellectually, and yet
> is regarded  as a good man, indeed the best of them. Albus Dumbledore. 
> > 
> Steven1965aaa:
> 
> A cold fish?  Sorry Pippin, I don't see where you get that, at all.

Pippin:
I don't expect this to be a popular theory -- it takes what we would
like to be a mysterious but loveable character and makes him remote 
and difficult. But if JKR really wants to show us that it's our choices, 
not our (dis)abilities that make/show what we are, then she has to 
show us a character with the same disability as Voldemort who made 
different choices.

 I think Dumbledore's the one. JKR certainly emphasized in her interviews
that he is detached, that he has no partner or confidante. In that he is
very like Voldemort.  He did act for love of Harry in OOP 
but that was after 150 years of detachment in which, he says, he
never thought he would have someone like Harry on his hands.  
That Dumbledore was able to feel love at last, I think, was because 
of Harry's extraordinary power -- a miracle, if you like.

Pippin