[HPforGrownups] Re: This moment

[Christine Maupin]

No: HPFGUIDX 175344

> Potioncat:
 
 > Is there a moment in DH where you really identify with a character, 
 > or the character's situation? It doesn't even have to be a character
 > you generally identify with---just a moment that particularly speaks
 > to you.

 Eggplant Gellert Grindelwald:
>As I've said before my moment of Epiphany came when I read near the
>bottom of page 687 "From the tip of his [Snape's] wand burst the
>silver doe". I wasn't expecting that, I wasn't expecting that at all,
 >and I couldn't even finish reading the rest of the sentence; I had to
>put the book down stand up and walk away for a while. She's going to
>do it I thought, she's really going to do it, JKR is going to murder
 >Harry Potter! For years I'd been saying that's exactly what she should
>do, but now when I actually saw JKR with a gun pointed at Harry's head
>just a moment before she's going to pull the trigger, well, all I can
>say is it took me some time to work up the courage to continue reading.
 
My reaction to the bottom of page 686 ("So the boy ... the boy must die?" asked Snape quite calmly.  "And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus.  That is essential.") was very similar to Eggplant's reaction to the bottom of page 687.  However, I had never really considered that Harry would die.  (I assumed he was called the Boy Who Lived for more than one reason -- that the title of the very first chapter of the very first book was the ultimate in foreshadowing.)  The exchange between Snape and Dumbledore shocked me.  And I felt so betrayed by and so angry at Dumbledore -- all this time he knew; and Snape knew ...  I too had to walk away for a moment.

And, that revelation leads us to Chapter 34, The Forest Again.  I think it is JKR's best work -- its beautifully written and so emotional.  I've often said that JKR is a good, not great, writer; but she's a great storyteller.  In chapter 34 she is both.  While I always liked Harry (although he has made me very angry at times), I started to love him in chapter 34.  Despite his fear, despite his desire to live, he would do what he had to do.  I couldn't help thinking back to a passage in HBP:

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him.  It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death, and walking into the arena with your head held hight.  Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew -- *and so do I*, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, *and so did my parents* -- that there was all the difference in the world.
(HBP, p. 512)

He didn't walk into the arena to face a *battle* to the death, he walked in to face death itself.  It a wonderful reading experience.

Christy

       
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