ESE! JKR ?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154645

Ken wrote:
> 
> At times I wonder if JKR is trying to avoid the criticism that has
been leveled at Tolkien that he killed off too few of his main
characters. If so, she is overcompensating. I don't see where any of
the deaths that have happened to date are needed to move the plot
forward. We are not dealing with a war here in spite of how it is
described, we are dealing with a gangster and it is possible to bring
a gangster to heal without any deaths. <snip> For me the most telling
death in the book was the casual killing of the fox at Spinner's End.
Maybe it is just the canine lover in me but that one struck home for
me where the others just seem artificial. It almost seems like JKR
kills because she needs to, not because the plot needs to. <snip>

Carol responds:
I disagree. JKR has described Voldemort's first reign of terror as a
war and has said that the second war is beginning. For that statement
to appear valid, she must have deaths, most of them offstage and
reported in newspapers but a few of them involving characters close to
the hero and the reader (Cedrid, Black, Dumbledore). If the only
deaths were of people we have met only briefly (Emmeline Vance, Amelia
Bones) or relatives of minor characters (Hanah Abbott's mother) or
people we read about in newspapers (a five-year-old boy killed by
Fenrir Greyback), the war would not feel sufficiently real. The events
outside Hogwarts (the bridge, the "hurricane," the murders, the false
arrests) create the delusion that Hogwarts is a safe haven. At the
same time, the evil of Voldemort creeps nearer as we see a character
we know, Draco, actively working for Voldemort (and his mother's fears
for him, which parallel Molly's for her children and husband). JKR
must strike a balance between too many deaths, in which the book
becomes a bloodbath (like too many films and books and video games
these days) and too few deaths, which would detract from the realism,
or rather, the verisimilitude. We must believe that a war is really
happening and that it's getting worse, endangering our main
characters. We must believe that one or more of them may not survive
or there is no suspense. (Even the stupid Horcruxes must provide a
real danger, though we know that neither the cup nor the locket will
kill Harry.)

As for the fox--interesting that you should bring up that seemingly
insignificant detail. Unlike the fox in Fellowship of the Ring, which
 "never [finds] out any more about it" but returns to its normal life,
this one is casually killed. Why? Is this a pointless death? I think
it serves several purposes. First, it shows us exactly who we're
dealing with in Bellatrix Lestrange. Previously, we've seen her (in
the Pensieve) young and haughty and absolutely convinced that the Dark
Lord will return and reward her loyalty. We know that she and her male
followers are responsible for Crucioing the Longbottoms into insanity.
We know that she's a fanatic and a sadist. In OoP, she seems to be
insane herself, still fanatically loyal, still addicted to inflicting
pain, but almost beside herself in her mockery and curse casting, to
the point of forgetting their mission and having to be reprimanded by
her brother-in-law (who has the advantage at that point of not having
spent thirteen or fourteen years in Azkaban). In the fox scene, we see
Bella in the company of her sister, whom she surprisingly cares about,
but we also see her casually kill that fox. Why? There is no fanatical
gleam in her eye at this point, but she suspects that it might be an
Auror. We're reminded that Bella is at this point the most wanted
criminal in the WW aside from LV himself, an escapee from Azkaban
already under a life sentence and now wanted for a new crime, the MoM
invasion. Like her cousin Sirius before her, she's in hiding and must
watch every tree and bush for concealed pursuers. But to suspect a
fox? Is she literally insane? Surely she would know if any Aurors were
registered Animagi and no Auror would be unregistered. I think we're
expected to see that Bellatrix is simultaneously paranoid and a
cold-blooded, casual killer--a very dangerous person who nevertheless,
as we see later in the chapter, has personal loyalties both to the
Dark Lord (as we already knew) and to her family (though she's willing
to sacrifice her nephew and her fortunately imaginary sons to the
cause of Voldemort's victory).

We're seeing, briefly and perhaps for the only time in the books, the
war from the Death Eater's perspective. (Granted, we don't see inside
 Bellatrix's head, but she speaks her thoughts aloud and reveals her
emotions openly; how that woman could teach Draco even the most
rudimentary Occlumency is a mystery to me.) Bellatrix is a Woman
Warrior (the literal meaning of her name), a soldier in Voldemort's
(admittedly rather small) army, a fanatical terrorist who would do
anything to serve the cause. The casual murder of the fox/Auror (which
turns out to be just a fox), using a Killing Curse intended for humans
(and apparently delivered nonverbally, as if she casts the curse as
easily as Harry casts Levicorpus) shows us exactly who and what we're
dealing with--casual evil that does not recognize itself as evil,
murder perceived as a commonplace action comparable to swatting a fly.

Carol, who suspects that Bellatrix is right to mistrust Snape, who
clearly is not a Voldie fanatic