Philosophy of Dumbledore (was:Moody's death...)

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 179628

> Mus:
> Someone on another board has suggested that a problem with the books
> is that whereas fantasy literature uses the fantasy world to tell us
> things about our own world, JKR uses our world to tell us things about
> the WW.  

a_svirn:
Yes, I think it is an interesting point. Sort of escapist fantasy par
excellence – the world where one can indulge all one's guilty
pleasures without feeling in the least guilty. 

> Mus:
By doing so, she imports much more than she intends to, I
> think.  For example, when she tells us that goblins have different
> ideas about ownership than wizards do, she evokes the notion of many
> native peoples' different ideas of ownership in our world, and once
> she has done so, the reader (or this one at least) thinks "Hang on -
> the goblins have a *point*".  Having raised the idea, though, she just
> blows through it as if there weren't a moral issue there at all, but
> there is, because she evoked it.  Nothing, I think, would have changed
> materially if the goblins had just been (understandably) distrustful
> of wizards and so wanted to keep as many objects as possible, but she
> went to the trouble of showing us a coherent goblin view of ownership
> only to treat it with contempt.  

a_svirn:
I for one was mildly disturbed by this Goblin business. Rowling
obviously drew on the medieval anti-Jewish stereotypes when she
invented her Goblins. I wouldn't mind that exactly, if only I could
see the point of the allusion. But that's just what I can't do! It's
just the same as with elves' slavery business, as you say, she rises
the point (though this time more slyly), and then not only offers no
resolution, but sort of implies that the whole thing is a natural
order of things. Which, in case of Goblins, defies not only ethical
norms, but also those of logic. I mean, who would entrust their
treasure to someone with a vastly different concept of property?
Goblins would have lost all their wizarding custom, if there had been
any truth in those accusations.