Disappointment and Responsibility (was Re: Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables)

[lizzyben04]

No: HPFGUIDX 174918

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lupinlore" <rdoliver30 at ...> 
wrote:
>
> > lizzyben:
> 
> > I've really struggled to figure out *what*, exactly, was the
> > theme of this series. What was JKR trying to say? Why did she
> > write 7 books about this? Based on the epilogue, it seems like
> > it was intended to have a simple message of good brave
> > Gryffindors beat the bad guys. Is that worth a series? These
> > novels do not seem Christian to me, in the sense of embracing
> > tolerance, forgiveness, non-judgment etc. There's a distinctly
> > Old Testament flavor to the books.
> 
> 
> Okay, this brings up a very good point.  I think, and I don't
> mean this as a criticism, that a lot of the problem is that over
> the years people have read all sorts of messages and meanings
> into the text JKR did not intend, and when she made some matters
> more clear in DH, it brought out a lot of disappointment. Now,
> this is inevitable in any book, but it was a special problem for
> the Potterverse due to a large number of factors.
> <snip>
Let's
> look at two instances in particular, just by way of example: the
> Christian nature of the books and the specific instance of Sirius'
> comment about the division of the world.

> <snip>
> To focus more on literature, the arguable Ethical Calvinism of
> Rowling is quite different from the Catholicism of Tolkien, the
> Broad Church Anglicanism of Lewis, the Symbolic Romanticism of
> Williams, the Narrative Romanticism of Lawhead, the Episcopalian
> Spiritualism of L'Engle, or the Fundamentalist Literalism of
> LeHaye.  It is therefore not surprising that when she talked
> about being a Christian people read all sorts of meanings into
> that she did not intend, and were therefore disappointed when
> her intent was more fully revealed.

lizzyben:

I never read a Christian message into the text, and am not a 
practicing Christian. I don't care if the books have a Christian, 
pagan, atheist or Hindu theme, as long as there is some type of 
coherent theme in the novels. And that's what I find lacking. So, 
I'm not disappointed by the lack of a Christian theme, but the lack 
of any coherent theme. 

L'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time" is one of my favorite novels, and is a 
good example of a children's novel w/a consistent overarching theme. 
Meg hates her faults & differences that make her a misfit - but by 
the end of the novel, she's learned about the dangers of total 
conformity (reprensented by Camazotz), and learned to appreciate the 
qualities that make her different & unique. I don't see a similar 
clear theme in the Harry Potter novels. What has Harry learned by 
the end of these novels? How is he a different person at the end? A 
protagonist is the character who profoundly *changes* as a result of 
the experiences he has had throughout the story - and I just don't 
see this w/Harry. He's a hero, not a protagonist. IMO, a good 
argument could be made that Neville Longbottom is the real 
protagonist of the novels - he's the only one who truly faces his 
weaknesses, realizes his strengths, and becomes a stronger better 
person at the end. 

So, what was the theme of the novels? You've explained what it was 
*not*, but not what the underlying theme of the novels actually was. 
What was the message of this 7-novel opus? Was it really just "some 
people suck & there's not much you can do about it?"

lupinlore:
> With regard to Sirius statement that the world is not divided into
> good people and Death Eaters, here the issue is even more complex.
> I understand and acknowledge that, even taking that statement at
> face value, there are problems with the way that JKR plays the
> theme out in the text, or fails to play it out as the case may be.
> I reiterate, I do not see JKR as having no responsbility in this
> matter.
> 
> However, it seems to me in this example that some people were
> wanting her to have said something very different than what, in
> fact, was literally put down in the text.  That is, they were
> wanting Sirius to have said "The world is not divided into people
> who are nice to you and people who hate you and mean you ill."
> They wanted this to play out particularly, to use loaded examples,
> with the Slytherins, particularly Snape and Draco.  
> They wanted,
> it seems, Snape to not REALLY hate and bear ill-will toward Harry
> -- his cruelty was to have been an act, or a legitimate teaching
> method designed to teach Harry what he had to know, or an artifact
> of Harry's skewed perceptions.  Draco's attitude likewise was to
> have been a result of petty, not-serious childhood rivalry and/or
> Harry's prejudice.  Draco was to have been revealed to have been
> a boy much like Harry who really just wanted to be friends.
> Well, the trouble is that ISN'T what JKR said.  Sirius DIDN'T say
> "The world isn't divided into people who are nice to you and people
> who hate you and bear you ill will."  Regardless of the merits of
> such a message, that just isn't what's there. Snape DID hate Harry
> and bear him ill-will, if not always in the way Harry believed (but
> usually in the way Harry believed).  Draco DID hate Harry and bear
> him ill-will, almost exactly in the way Harry believed.  In this
> regard, to say something controversial, JKR might be justified in
> answering the charge, "You lied to us!" with a rejoinder "Errr, no.
> You lied to yourself."
 
lizzyben:

Well, again, I feel you're sort of projecting expectations that I 
personally did not have. I never expected Snape's nastiness to be 
all a cover, or thought Draco was just a nice kid who wanted 
friends. However, based on the large amount of pages devoted to them 
in HBP, I did expect them to play a significant role in the final 
novel. If JKR characterized the two books as "two halves" of the 
same novel, it seems odd that the antagonists from the first half 
were mostly dropped in the second half. Odd, but not unforgiveable.

No, what really broke the novel for me wasn't the lack of Snapey-poo 
or Draco, but the lack of any example of a good, or even decent 
Slytherin - and the total acceptance of labels & stereotypes that 
this represents. I don't need to see a good Snape or Draco, but I 
really did need to see some example of a good Slyth; whether that's 
Pansy, Blaise Zabini, or even anonymous Slyths in the ROR, or 
unknown Slyths staying for the battle of Hogwarts. We didn't see any 
of that. I needed to see *some* indication that these children are 
not eternally damned by a singing hat at eleven years old. But that 
seemed to be the ultimate message - whether that's "ethical 
Calvinism" or dehumanization of the other is, I suppose, a matter of 
individual interpretation. 

But we *can*, in JKR's world, neatly divide people into 
the "good people" and the "Death Eater"/bad people based soley on 
what House they belong to. We can even neatly divide the 
saved & the damned w/the same label. So easy. So wrong. This goes 
totally against Sirius' statement, and the sorting hat's pleas. I 
don't believe readers were lying to themselves to think that maybe 
humanity could not be neatly sorted as good or bad based on what 
tribe they're in - this was what Sirius had said. But it's not, 
ultimately, what the books said.


lizzyben