Ending

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 176092

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "nitalynx" <nitalynx at ...> wrote:
>
> Geoff wrote:
> 
> > I was thinking about this on the society level and was struck by a real 
> > world parallel.
> > 
> > The epilogue is set 19 years after the final showdown. It is just 18 
> > years since the amazing events of 1989 when we saw the Communist
> > bloc start to topple down like a house of cards.
> 
> 
> Nita:
> 
> But don't you think both the historical circumstances and the actual
> events are vastly different? In Potterverse, it's Takeover - Some
> Resistance - Final Showdown, all in a single year. The Soviet Union
> had existed for 70 years or so before it collapsed relatively
> peacefully (and it had been moving in that direction for years).
> 
> 
> > There was rejoicing and euphoria. We expected that the world would
> > enter a new era. Well, we did but if, 18 years on, you look around,
> > especially at many of the former Communist countries, there are still
> > serious problems which are slowly, oh so slowly, being tackled.

Geoff:
I think I may have expressed myself badly here because you have missed
 the main point of my parallel.

I quite agree that the circumstances may be somewhat different. What 
I was trying to say was after 18 years, there are lots of unresolved issues 
in the post-Communist countries both at individual and governmental 
level. 

Perhaps we expected that someone would wave a magic wand <g> and 
all would be utopian sweetness and light overnight. Attitudes which have 
been set for years have to be overcome and, as you rightly said, there is a 
lot of inertia from groups who benefitted from the old regime who are only 
accepting the changes unwillingly and with ill grace.

Therefore, remembering that we are talking about a fictional scenario, it is 
quite reasonable for JKR to envisage a post-Voldemort era in which 
problems at these levels are still only being tackled at a very slow rate. 
There is suspicion between the former protagonists, there are probably 
former Voldemort supporters who were not openly Death Eaters and, as 
group members have been suggesting, the rebuilding and improvement 
of inter-house relationships in the wake of the Battle of Hogwarts did not 
get the priority and high profile that it needed.

Hence, we have a similar (if not parallel) situation to that current in Eastern 
Europe.