Harry's Fate

[ClareWashbrook at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 152767

 
In a message dated 23/05/2006 20:56:04 GMT Standard Time,  
wdcaroline at yahoo.ca writes:

These  are 
not fairy tales after all,
<SNIP>

Clare:
In my opinion they are reflective of a great many classic british tales,  
from Masefield's "Box of Delights" to Lewis' "Narnia".  Every time I read  one of 
her books I am reminded of at least five others.  The children never  die in 
these British classics, the mentor usually does but not always.  
 
Fairy Tales, the unfiltered ones, the real ones are horrific -  Roald  Dahl 
was closer to the originals than the prissy hokum we are fed  nowadays.  
Cinderella's abusive sisters chopped chunks off their own feet  to fit into the 
glass slipper, Red Riding Hood's grandma was thoroughly digested  and Rapunzel's 
prince was blinded as she stumbled pregnant, unmarried and shorn  of all hair 
through the forest, Goldilocks was originally a fox called  Scrapefoot who 
narrowly avoided being hung or drowned but was swung, battered  and thrown from 
the tower of the castle.  Fairy Tales are terrifying and  hail from a time when 
there was no such thing as childhood as we know it,  childhood was a brief 
preparation for entering a world where a girl would be  married at 12 or 14 and 
quickly pregnant (although the working classes  would be pregnant first and 
married after as per the tradition of testing  reproductivity that has been 
squashed in memory by those wonderfully  hypocritical Victorians) as she would most 
likely die before she was  40.  Where boys worked from the age of 8 if they 
were not amongst the  extreme minority of the wealthy.
 
It isn't a fairy tale, it is an amalgam British Classic and I believe that  
she will stick with the tradition of having the kid alive and kicking at the  
end.  It's just an opinion but one informed by a post-grad specialisation  in 
Children's Literature.
 
She'd never get away with killing him anyway, he's too well loved and she's  
ripped out the hearts of the nation twice already.  She has already stated  
that she will only write 7 and she can ensure that by wrapping up the story;  I 
have no doubt that she is capable of that.  She doesn't need to  kill the 
character, that is a television tradition and in literature it doesn't  stand, one 
needs a more legitimate out.  Conan Doyle didn't end Holmes  story, so he had 
to bring him back from the depths - killing them off is the  cheat's way out 
and I think better of JKR than that.  Besides which, such  an ending who screw 
up several subtexts, including the abused and lonely  reaching for a better 
life.  How can the light of Harry's abused child take  a dominant position over 
Tom's abused child if they both die - it suggests a  hopelessness that has 
been absent from JKR's writing so far.
 
smiles,
Clare xx