DH as Christian Allegory (was Classical & Biblical Quotations)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 174868


> > >>Monica:
> > Radical change occurs primarily within people themselves, rather    
> > than on an outward level. Perhaps this is what happened in the case 
> > of Harry.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> If it did it all happened off-page.  Which means (since this is the 
> end of the series) that it didn't happen.  Harry doesn't change after 
> his fight with Voldemort.  He's pretty much the same boy as ever.  
> Which, again, reflects the lack of epic, IMO.  And makes it hard to 
> link with the Christ story.

Pippin:
You know, I've seen hundreds of copies of DH by now, and none of 
them are marked "Teacher's Edition." There's no answer key in the back
of the book, IOW. I'm amazed that this is considered some kind of flaw. 

Hamlet begs Horatio to "report me and my cause aright to the 
unsatisfied" -- but we never get to hear that report. The meaning 
of the "carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, 
casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fall'n on the inventors heads"
is left to the audience's imagination, not to mention the analysis
of centuries, and people are still arguing about it.

Are we to conclude that Hamlet never changed, because Shakespeare
doesn't neatly sum up how a callow princeling fell into a death spiral of murder 
and revenge? And aren't we left to decide for ourselves how much of
Hamlet's madness was feigned and how much was genuine? Would
you call that a cop out on the part of the Bard?

We *know* that Harry changed. He went from saying he would never
forgive Snape, never, to saying that Snape was the bravest man he 
ever knew. We don't know how he got there, *except* that as in Hamlet,
we saw what Harry had to do. We saw him learn what it takes to 
live in hiding and constant fear as a *choice* not because someone
was making him to do it.  We saw him discover the beauty and
tenderness of the doe, and then we saw him  realize that his own 
patronus, the stag, was and always had been part of his own heart.


I don't really get where you insist that Slytherin is shown as forever
unclean. They were wrong about the pureblood thing, and some of
them are still wrong about it, but considering the way the WW as a whole
treats Giants, werewolves, etc the other Houses have nothing to boast of
there. 

It's true that we don't see any Slytherins joining Harry in the battle of
Hogwarts, but then, unlike Dumbledore, Harry didn't ask them to stand
and be counted. That was his, Harry's, mistake, IMO, one of several. 
(Of course it would take some persuasion for Slytherins to do this,
just as it took persuasion to convince Harry not to rush hotheaded
into battle.) We *saw* that  it takes just as much courage to fight
Slytherin fashion, from the shadows, as it does to fight as a Gyffindor.

Hero or not, Harry has to make mistakes,  terrible ones, otherwise how 
are we to understand why he can't take up the Elder Wand and use it to right 
all the wrongs of the WW? We see that he can't because like Dumbledore 
before him, Harry found that the resolve to use no more force than is 
necessary was the first casualty of battle. We are shown this -- do we need
to be told as well?

Really, does anyone think that Amnesty International is going to be
upset if most people who read the book conclude that Harry did wrong to
use a torture curse and somebody should have said so??? 

Pippin