Christmas / World Building And The Potterverse

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 167327

> Betsy Hp:
> The more magical and fantastical your premise, the more rooted in 
> logic you need to be if you've a hope of creating a viable, 
> believable world for me.  JKR wants us to believe that the WW is a 
> real place.  I don't.  And yes, it kills some of the magic for me.  I 
> don't really care about Voldemort's effect on the WW because I don't 
> buy that the WW exists.

Pippin:
I'm not sure she does want us (ie adult readers) to believe the WW
is a real place. I think she honestly feels that if you're old enough
that it matters to you whether the numbers add up or the economy 
works, you're old enough not need to believe in magical wonderlands
in order to appreciate their uses. 

As Harry slowly comes to realize that the WW isn't any refuge 
from the problems of the Muggle world, the reader realizes
that JKR is using her fantasy landscape to explore some ethical
thought problems, and to create a fable about adolescence,
both of which entail a certain lack of realism.

In real life, if a runaway train were heading towards a platform
with twenty people on it, and you could save them by throwing
a switch which sent the train towards a platform with one person,
the pressing question for society at large would not be whether
it's moral to throw the switch but how such a horrible situation
came to pass in the first place. Studies would be commissioned on the
safety of railroads and the protection of passengers, not the
ethics of throwing that switch. It'd all be a question of math
and physics, and in a fictionalization of that scenario, we'd
want the math and the physics to work. 

But in the Potterverse, we're expected to accept JKR's
limited alternatives as given. Harry can be safe and miserable
at the Dursleys or happy and short-lived anywhere else, because
JKR wants to explore that dilemma. That in the real world 
people would want to know why Child Protection Services
wasn't doing their job is irrelevant.

Harry has to compete in the tournament and nevermind what
the 'or else' is, because that's the situation JKR wants him  in --
if we're old enough to be bothered by the fact that she never
quite explains why it's so, we're also old enough to realize that
the emotions Harry experiences as he's caught in the cogs 
are real even if the situation is  fanciful.

I'm sure in JKR's mind the logistics of Charley Weasley's Quidditch
career have no effect on the danger Harry is in from Voldemort. 
Voldemort is hard to take seriously -- but he's underestimated 
within the wizarding world as well. Lots of real life maniacs
have succeeded because no one took  their grandiose
plans seriously until they were put into effect.

Pippin