HP and Moral Choices

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 176132

Sharon wrote:
<snip>
> 
> To my mind it is really Snape who is the hero in DH. Snape attracts
the hatred of everyone he is trying to help, he does the right thing,
even when it makes him look very bad. That seems to be the mark of a
true hero. 

Carol responds:
No argument there. Harry himself says that Snape was probably the
bravest man he ever knew. I would drop the "probably." Just thinking
about all the things Snape did, with little praise from DD and no
credit from anyone else, his former colleagues thinking him a murderer
when he's really working for DD and protecting Harry, gives me
shivers. Will someone award this man a posthumous Order of Merlin
First Class, please!

Sharon:
> Harry is also a hero for giving himself up unarmed to Voldie, again,
he does the right thing. But I wonder if Harry would have done it so
easily (well of course it wasn't easy but you know what I mean) if his
parents, Sirius and Lupin hadn't died. He was going to join them, and
 that was a comfort to him. I am not trying to take anything away from
Harry sacrifice, but when I think of it, I realise that it was his
close connection with death that allowed him to make the sacrifice.

Carol:
Well, yes. I think that was the point of the Resurrection Stone, not
to tempt Harry to bring his loved ones back (the temptation DD
succumbed to) but to give him the courage to join them, to realize
that death really was the next great adventure and not something to
fear). As I said in message 174479:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/174479

"With three Horcruxes destroyed, maybe four (if R and H have destroyed
the cup), Harry is still capable of vengeance, even sadism, enjoying
torturing the despicable Amycus Carrow. He enters the Shrieking Shack
hating Snape, watches him die, doesn't know what to feel, enters the
memory and leaves it understanding Snape and no longer wanting
vengeance on him but still feeling betrayed by Dumbledore. He has to
choose to die, setting aside any desire for vengeance, any desire to
kill Voldemort, <snip> an act of love and self-sacrifice very like his
mother's. He opens the Snitch with the words, "I am about to die." His
loved ones give him strength to sacrifice himself, overcoming any
remaining evil influence in the soul bit. And the act of love destroys
the soul bit, killing it instead of himself. After that, his soul is
his own and whole, and there is no more temptation to seek vengeance.
A little taunting of Voldemort, but Voldemort has to be given a
choice, remorse or murder. And Harry defeats him using Expelliarmus,
the spell that marked his compassion for Stan Shunpike, who knew not
what he did."

What I meant here, in case it's not clear, is that Harry has spent
most of the book not only intending to seek vengeance on Snape but to
kill Voldemort, thinking, as he did in OoP, that he must either murder
or be murdered. He is tempted, as LV is, by the Elder Wand, or rather
(as LV is not but DD was) by the combination of the Three Hallows,
which will make him the Master of Death. Until he sees Snape's
memories and understands that he has to sacrifice himself, he has
anticipated that he and Voldemort will each kill the other, or attempt
to do so. 

Sharon:
> 
> So I guess I have changed my mind -- Harry is a hero in the 
traditional sense, but better, becuase he doesn't try to kill off the
baddies. He doesn't even use the Killing Curse on Voldie at the end -
-is that becuase he knew he only ahd to disarm him to win the Elder
wand -- or is it as I earlier suspected, that he couldn't bring
himself to use the Avada Kadavra. Maybe a little of both?

Carol responds:
I'm quite sure that from the time he heard the Prophecy at the end of
OoP till the time he received Snape's message in "The Prince's Tale,"
he expected to cast a Killing Curse, which perhaps explains his
willingness to use the other Unforgiveables as well. (I think the
presence of the soul bit may have been a factor as well, but I'm not
arguing that here.)

Snape's message tells him that he must do no such thing; he must
sacrifice himself as his mother did, wandless, allowing LV to "kill"
him. And after talking to Dead!DD at King's Cross (in his mind, but no
less real for that), he understands that he still need not kill LV.
The Elder Wand will not kill its master. All he needs is a well-timed
Expelliarmus like the one in the graveyard, and the AK will backfire.
(Of course, it's a bit more complex than that, but Harry neither wants
nor needs to kill LV at this point. LV will do the job himself.) At
any rate, Harry understands that he does not have to "murder"
Voldemort, and he no longer has any such desire that I can see.

We see the change most profoundly, I think, in "The Forest Again."
After seeing Snape's memories, particularly the one about the soul bit
that Snape was desperate for him to see, he understands that he must
"walk calmly into Death's welcoming arms" without raising a wand to
defend himself (DH Am. ed. 691). Realizing that he's not supposed to
survive (so he and Snape think) and that his self-sacrifice is
necessary to destroy the last soul bit puts a new light on his
mission, which he previously thought was to fight and kill Voldemort,
perhaps being killed in the process. What's required now, IMO, is
Snape-like courage, walking calmly into mortal peril, rather than the
Gryffindor-style courage of fighting a heroic battle, David against
Goliath. 

Instead, Harry is terrified. "He felt his heart pounding fiercely in
his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the
harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and
soon. . . . Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that
funeral drum pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die?" (692)

As I said in an earlier post (174845), "it doesn't occur to him to try
to escape, which would be futile. He knows it has to end and only he
can end it. But that doesn't make the walk through the forest, the
willing self-sacrifice, any easier: 'He envied his parents' deaths
now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a
different kind of bravery.' He feels, ironically, more alive than
ever, more aware of the miracle of human existence. He understands
what he is sacrificing, but of course, he doesn't yet understand
Dumbledore's plan, which looks like a betrayal. <snip>

"Having reconciled himself to the (supposed) inevitability of his
death and to DD's 'betrayal,' he faces fears of his own inadequacy.
'Dumbledore had overestimated him. He had failed. The snake survived'
(695). His only comfort is that Ron and Hermione also know about the
Nagini Horcrux and will, he thinks, destroy it. 'Like rain on a cold
window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of the
incontrovertible truth, that he must die. *I must die.* It must end'
(693). Ron and Hermione seem far away. He makes his last arrangement
to have Neville as a back-up to kill Nagini, unable to finish his last
sentence because of a 'suffocating feeling' (696). 'Ripples of cold
undulate... over his skin' as he passes Ginny. He has his moment of
empathy with the now-dead Snape and Tom Riddle, those other 'abandoned
boys,' as he looks at Hogwarts, the only home any of them had ever
known, for what he thinks is the last time (697).

"Dementors approach and he has no strength to cast a Patronus: 'He
could not control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to
die' (697).

"And then the Snitch. 'I open at the close.' Harry understands at last
what the words mean, and opens it with the words, 'I am about to die'
(698). The Resurrection Stone doesn't save him from death, but it
gives him the hope and the courage to overcome his despair."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/174845

Carol again, resuming new thoughts:
Once his loved ones appear, they give him the comfort and courage he
needs to face death without defending himself, "act[ing] like
Patronuses" to protect him against the Dementors. The dead, whom he
thinks he's about to join, are much more real to him than the living
(700-01). He pulls off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffs it and the
hawthorn wand wand into his robes, not wanting to be tempted to fight.
The Resurrection Stone drops from his fingers, but it doesn't matter.
 He finds the courage to stand and receive the AK to his chest,
without betraying fear (703-04).

After King's Cross, with his questions answered (wish mine were!), he
no longer feels fear. He has seen what death is like for DD, for LV,
for his loved ones, perhaps for himself. Nothing but the next great
adventure (unless you're the unrepentant Voldemort). It's "warm and
light and peaceful" in King's Cross, but he has to return to "ensure
that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families . . . torn apart" (722).

So Harry feigns death until his final confrontation with Voldemort.
Understanding the effects of his sacrifice, he is no longer afraid.
After a lot of exposition (and a public vindication of Snape,
hurray!), Harry sets up the moment of confrontation by in essence
informing the Elder Wand that he is its master. He and Voldemort "yell
. . . [their] best hope to the heavens," LV's being the Killing Curse,
Harry's being Expelliarmus (743), his signature spell, taught him by
Snape, which is established early in the book (via its use on Stan
Shunpike) as a symbol of Harry's unwillingness to kill if he doesn't
have to. "I won't blast people out of my way because they're ther," he
tells Lupin, who is urging him to fight to kill. "That's Voldemort's
job" (71).

Carol, who thinks that Harry grows tremendously in this book, more so
than any other, and who forgives him his Crucio because of his heroism
at the end, his rescue of Draco, and his forgiveness and understanding
of Snape