Potter's Teacher's Edition / Plea for Canon (was:Re: DH as Christian Allegory...

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 175205

> >>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. 

Betsy Hp:
I must say the idea that there needs to be Teacher's Edition for DH 
is a bit funny.  It's not like there's a deep lesson in there.  The 
intended moral seems to be, "Nazis are bad" (thanks, Jo!).

The unintended moral which would never be included in authorized 
Teacher's Editions (but would, IMO, make for a very interesting class-
room experience) is that there are people who are worthy ("You, dear 
reader") and those who are not ("Anyone who angers you, dear 
reader").  It's the dark side of that "rules of the playground" that 
gets bandied about on the List every now and again.

Playground rules are incredibly basic.  Jack London called it the 
rule of tooth and claw: eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.  It's 
brutal and children, like dog packs, pick it up easily.  It's part of 
the reason conformity on the playground can be necessary.  JKR 
encourages children to conform, to not be the "other", and in fact to 
feel a rather self-righteous pleasure in not being the "other".

That JKR keeps the "other" rather than destroying them, shows that 
she does understand the rules of the pack.  There is a need for a 
scapegoat to be picked on when the pack is restless.  Slytherin needs 
to be there for Gryffindors to take their aggression out on.

> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
> 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? 
> <snip>
> 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.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Hamlet was a grown man trapped in circumstances. His play was less 
about Hamlet changing then it was about Hamlet dealing.  I *thought* 
Harry's story was about him growing, but I think (and I can't believe 
I'm actually about to compare Hamlet and Harry, but there you go <g>) 
Harry is a boy trapped in circumstances, too.  It's just, Shakespeare 
does a little better job showing us a puppet stuggling against his 
strings.

Frankly, I don't buy Harry's little speech about Snape in the 
Epilogue.  JKR doesn't sell it for me.  I mean, yes it's there so 
it's canon, but it doesn't fit.  I have to do too much jumping up and 
down and dancing around to make that speech make sense.  How does 
Harry go from "this man must die!" to "I shall name my beloved son 
after him!"?  Can it happen?  Sure!  I was totally expecting this 
sort of change before DH.  But for some reason, JKR didn't feel that 
writing such a change would be interesting.

On the flip side, Shakespeare did a very good job leading his 
audience up the great blood-bath at the end of his play.  Is there 
still a lot more to parse from Hamlet?  Sure.  That's part of the 
reason he's still read.  There are things he leaves to the reader's 
(or viewers) imaginations.  But Shakespeare does it deliberately.  
Personally, I think the stuff left out of the Potter series was just 
JKR being sloppy.

> >>Pippin:
> 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. 
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Yes, the WW as a whole is an ugly and brutal place that runs on might 
and vengeance and scoffs at reason and law.  In such a dark and 
horrible world the Gryffindors stand as kings of the hill, and the 
Slytherins are caught firmly under Gryffindors' boot.  Slytherins 
cannot fight for their world because they aren't really full members 
of their world.  They're tolerated but not integrated or accepted.

This is the world Harry enters, and this is the world Harry has fully 
embraced when we leave him.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/174494
> >>Carol:
> <snip>
> As for the final battle and the series as a whole, are you sure    
> that's not just your own preconception imposed on the books? 
> <snip>
> The book (and the series) does not boil down to Gryffindor vs.
> Slytherin. Many other things are going on. 
> <snip>
> I'm asking you, please, Betsy, as a long-time list friend, to try to
> see beyond Slytherin and Gryffindor, beyond your dashed hopes, to   
> the complex but flawed book (shades of Severus Snape?) that's      
> really hear. Please. A little canon. A little objectivity. A little 
> awareness that just because you don't see something on a first     
> reading doesn't mean it isn't there.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I think there probably *are* other things going on in the series.  
But the Gryffindor versus Slytherin stuff is so hard to ignore.  And 
it's what destroyed the series for me.  So it's kind of hard for me 
to put it on a back burner.

But I do understand your plea for canon.  I absolutely agree that 
these sort of conversations work best when everyone plays with the 
text.  The problem there isn't my preconceptions, it's my 
prerequisites.  I need to enjoy books I read.  I need to like and 
care for the protagonists and their goals.  I need to believe in the 
world I'm being asked to enter, and I need to be able to go along 
with the plot twists.

I'm not generally into children's literature so I didn't get into the 
Potter series in a general interest kind of way.  I read the first 
few books and I liked them.  That started to change with... I think 
OotP was where I started to dislike the Trio (specifically Hermione, 
but Harry was pushing the envelope at that point, too).  I ended up 
rereading HBP only once, which was weird.  I didn't like any of the 
Trio by that point (Ron was the closest, but he was awfully pathetic).

There were scenes though.  Really cool scenes that seemed to show 
such potential for the final book.  So I was cool to wait thinking 
that the things I was disliking would be solved.  And I was wrong.  
So incredibly wrong that even the cool scenes lost their power.  
Snape healing Draco became meaningless.  The Marauders picking on 
Snape became meaningless.

So not only did DH *not* deliver any scenes that I want to reread.  
It took away those scenes that I did enjoy.  It also put the final 
nail into Hermione's coffin, took Harry off life-support, and shot 
Ron in the chest.  I officially could care less about the Trio.

And obviously, I'm not thrilled with the plot (when you don't care 
about Harry, you're not too worked up about whether or not he beats 
his nemesis). 

Which means, I don't have all that much interest in diving back into 
the books and finding pages and passages to back up my theories.  
Which, if I were a dolphin means that at this point I'd be saying, so 
long and thanks for all the fish.

I'm a bit more waffely so I'll probably stick around for a bit 
longer.  Or not.  I don't know.  But I do know I have very little 
interest in taking deep looks at DH.  Life is too short for bad books.

Betsy Hp