Compassionate hero (WAS Re: Appeal of the story to the reader)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 176008


Nora:
<BIG SNIP>
> I was actually somewhat cheered to see the lack of the usual
epilogue
> to epic fantasy, where you find out that elves are no longer so
> snobbish, women are now free, and mages no longer persecuted.

Alla:
Yeah, I think JKR is being much more realistic to end the story on
the uncertain note IMO, while giving happy ending on the personal
level.
Yes, not everything is healed, YES Slytherin is around and yeah, new
Dark lord may appear, who says not?
But we have people who defeated him last time, we have their kids, so
there is a hope that there are people who will stand against new dark
lord.

We have IMO glimpses of changes in WW, what Pippin remarked. Teddy
does not have to hide his love for Victoire, Draco Malfoy curtly
acknowledging the Trio, etc, etc.

Magpie:
Well, yeah, an uncertain note is fine. I just don't think we get to
have it both ways, with any significant steps towards healing a major
rift being unrealistic yet also saying we've got signs of steps
because Teddy Lupin doesn't have to hide his love for Victoire (btw,
I have no idea why this is a step--why would Teddy not have done
that?) and Draco Malfoy nods to the Trio (but still couldn't have any
more positive relationship with them). I might have preferred more
progress, but I'm not protesting the lack of it here, just noting
what I see and don't see.

I do disagree that it's *unrealistic* to have any different ending. I
mean, it's not like the only other alternative is hearts and flowers.
I don't believe it would be by definition unrealistic for JKR to have
actually wanted to tackle the rift with Slytherin. She didn't have
to, but it's not like it's completely crazy. And it's not
unreasonable to think it might happen since she defines her bad guys
as the ones who are bigoted.

This is especially strange to me when it comes to Slytherin--it's
really that hard for a single school to not have a big rift with 1/4
of the students? That seems a bit silly. There's no healing of the
rift because Slytherin is the house of bullies and they're bad, which
is consistant with JKR's world--an aspect of the world that's more
stylized than realistic. In canon there's also far less world beyond
Hogwarts than what I would call realistic, so realism isn't the word
I think of when I think of the adult part of the world.

I'm also suspicious of the "usual" epilogue idea since I don't know
exactly what epilogues refered to. It makes it seem like every other
fantasy or children's writer was writing pablum until JKR introduced
the idea of an ambiguous ending, when a) plenty of other writers have
had endings that allowed that evil could still return and b) I don't
know that JKR necessarily considers this ending ambiguous. Maybe she
just fixed all the problems she thought needed to be fixed. It reads
to me like a happy ending, not an ambiguous one.

Alla:
So, maybe, just maybe those are the signs that as you said Nora,
trauma of two WW wars was enough for people to wake up and start
making those changes.

Magpie:
I don't know if I'd call them world wars. The very words seem to
again beg us to take real world things and apply them. Our guys were
already fine the way they were--any changes any other
characters might make I make up myself. It's just me saying, "Hey,
maybe the second rising of Voldemort was enough to make people wake
up and start making those changes in ways that apparently the first
rising of Voldemort wasn't--it's just not written in the story."
Since I already accepted the whole society fell to the DEs as easily
as it did in DH, I don't even really begin to imagine it.


> Magpie:
>
> <SNIP of the whole post>
> So in the end the canon
> really doesn't seem to be using fantasy to explore racism, but using
> racism to fill out a fantasy world.
>
>
> Alla:
> Oh, oh and since Pippin's post was mentioned can I confess my love
> for Pippin's posts too? Can I?

Magpie:
I'm not sure which post of Pippin's you mean--there are lots of great 
posts that give great ways of looking at the characters in canon. 
It's just I think usually that's the direction it goes in when it 
comes to the big issues. Like, I recognize that Voldemort is a 
Fascist and that the DEs are really really like Nazis.
That's what I meant by real world issues illuminating the world
rather than illuminating real life issues through the world. The
Fascism post illuminates Voldemort, Voldemort does not illuminate
Fascism. He follows the blueprint, but he seems to be just doing
that, following the blueprint. 


-m