The Fundamental Message of the HP books? (was Re: Appeal of the story ...)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 175795

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Judy" <judy at ...> wrote:

> I love the Harry Potter series, and I enjoyed reading Book 7. But, I 
> have to agree that when I reached the end of the book, I was 
> disappointed by the moral message that JKR seemed to be pushing.  
> And, the more it gets discussed here, the more dismayed I feel, 
> because I'm starting to feel that the only way to get even a slightly 
> uplifting message out of the book is to really dig for it.  

Pippin:
I'm not sure the message for adults is supposed to be entirely uplifting.
Fairy tales almost always have different morals for adults and children. Is
the moral of LIttle Red Riding Hood  Don't Leave the Path and Don't Trust 
the Wolf? I thought so, when I was a kid. Now  I think it's: Kids will 
leave the path and trust the wolf, so you'd better make sure there's a 
woodcutter. <g>

The HP moral for kids is Evil can be defeated, hurrah.  IMO, the moral for
adults is Some evils can be defeated, hurrah, so you'd better not sit there 
reading books when you could be out there doing something. It does not do 
to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

But *how* to do it -- does JKR tell us that? I think so.

I think it's  a riddle. The end of the books, I mean, in which we aren't told
explicitly how  Harry changed so that he could name his son after
Severus and rate a curt nod from Draco Malfoy.  

As you say, we shouldn't have to dig to understand the answer. Like all 
riddles, the answer's not self-evident, but once you've done a
mental backflip and arrived at the solution, it should be glaringly, 
blindingly self-explanatory.

I think I've got it.

:drumroll::


What is the one thing that Dumbledore and others consistently asked
of Harry with regard to *Professor* Snape?

Exactly.

Harry was never asked to understand Snape or to trust him or 
admire him or pity him or reform him or pardon him -- all the
things we DDM!Snapers vainly hoped that we would see. Harry
was asked to  respect  him. When Harry tells his son that he's named
after the *headmaster* Snape, we see that Harry was finally able
to do what Dumbledore asked of him and more. 

Respect, in its Latin origin, meant "Gaze intensely, look back at."
This resonates with Snape's last words: "Look at me." By giving
Harry his memories of Lily, Snape enabled Harry to look at him
with Lily's eyes, with Lily's respect, rather than James's contempt.
And when he saw Snape's memories, Harry found that he could.

I *think* this comes across to the reader. It seems from the posts
I've read here that even those who wanted to have a higher opinion 
of Snape than it turned out he deserved, and feel cheated that they
didn't get that, did feel more respect for Snape as the kind of person
he turned out to be than they anticipated. Though I suppose there
will be some exceptions <g>. 


Harry has always been able to do more for others than they did for
him, and I think that is what JKR is asking us as adults to do in the
face of prejudice -- to show respect to others even if they're not
showing it to you. It's normal, it's human, it may feel necessary,
to want to make others feel as bad as they made you feel. And
dang! it feels good.  I don't think we can change that reality by
lying about it. Advising heaven to earth is useless. 

But Snape's memories show us how ultimately self-defeating revenge is. 
(That Hermione, at story's end, hasn't yet learned this is
perhaps one reason why Harry doesn't want her messing with the 
Elder Wand, and puts it  in a place where she specifically  said
she won't be tempted to retrieve it. But that's a bit beside my point.)

I think JKR is saying that before there can be unity, before there
can be any meeting of the minds, there has to be respect for 
difference, even, perhaps especially, differences that 
make us feel that the world is seriously out of whack. Slytherins 
have as much right to be stubbornly committed to bloodyminded, 
wrongheaded points of view as Gryffindors do. House elves  have as 
much right to  like doing housework without wages or pensions 
as Molly does.  

There *is* more respect for difference in the WW twenty years on.
Harry and Ron show respect for Muggle law by taking a drivers
test. Teddy, the son of a werewolf, does not have to hide his love
for Victoire. Harry cannot perhaps imagine why anyone would
want to be a Slytherin, but he will respect his son's preferences,
 as the Hat once respected his. 


Most importantly we do see, obliquely, that Harry has learned respect
for living Slytherins. Harry rates a curt nod from Draco. I thought this
might be mere Lucius-ness, the Slytherin at your feet or at your throat.
But that was *my* prejudice, shame on me. Because whatever you want
to say about Draco, unlike his father he's no suckup. He may be mistaken
about who deserves his respect, but he's never, ever been a phony.

>snipping section about Dumbledore because I agree with those who
said he was showing tough love and that he was never meant to be
an Aslan/Gandalf figure<

Judy: 
> Lily, who is presented as practically a saint, isn't much better.  
> I've wondered ever since Book 5 whether Snape ever apologized for 
> calling her a Mudblood. I never would have dreamed that he did 
> apologize and in response Lily slammed the door in his face, but 
> that's pretty much how it happened. 

Pippin:
It wasn't just about her. It was about him using Mudblood to others
of her blood. He didn't apologize for that or for lending his support to
others who did. His tragedy was that he didn't yet see why he should. 

And Lily is in the end shown as limited and human -- she could have
protected many more people than Harry with her sacrificial death, but
she thought only of her son.

I can see where Snape might have been coming from in his Voldemort-
ism. It wasn't much different than Dumbledore's father. He saw his
mother being abused by a Muggle on whom she was financially dependent,
knowing she'd be sent to Azkaban if she used magic to defend herself
from emotional abuse (which the WW clearly does not recognize as 
life-threatening) and he thought the problem was Muggles, not the 
way the WW regards emotional abuse. 

IIRC, Ron tells Harry that he should respect Voldemort (Voldemort!) and the
reason turns out to be, IMO,  that if you don't respect your enemies you will
surely underestimate them. 

Pippin
who would rather try to understand the ending JKR wrote than invent
another one