Deathly Hallows Reaction - Could do Better, Sorry

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 172272

> Betsy Hp:
> Wishful thinking I'm afraid.  No healing for the WW.  Where Anne 
> Frank was able to look at the world around her and think, "I know in 
> my heart that people are good" (or words to that effect), JKR 
> apparently looks at the world around her and thinks, "I know in my 
> heart that a quarter of the people out there are evil, half of them 
> are okay, and there's one quarter that's just unquestionably good."
> 
> It's an ugly view of the world in my opinion.  And it cumlminates in 
> a rather ugly book with a rather ugly message.  Yeah.  I'm pretty 
> much done with the series.

Magpie:
Yeah, I was surprised when people felt there was any better unity 
between the other Houses and Slytherin...as far as I can tell 
Slytherin seemed a lot worse than they had that first day Harry went 
to Hogwarts. Then they just seemed unsavory and I assumed it was his 
imagination. Their behavior in the battle hardly seemed to give anyone 
a reason to trust them more. All the Slytherins, to me, came across as 
essentially selfish and incapable of the kinds of choices Gryffindors 
could make--I wouldn't trust them. Snape was a Death Eater with a 
convenient obsession with Lily Potter, the Malfoys had the survival 
ability of cockroaches without any common sense about what was 
actually good for them. Regulus could be read as the one noble one, 
but frankly he seemed like he was working on his own private obsession 
and revenge as well. I guess Slughorn was the best--unsurprisingly 
given this is the guy who greeted Harry with "don't hold my house 
against me." What redemption those three had seemed strictly personal, 
and they still all seemed to be working at a lower level.

I've been going back to JKR's interview about Slytherin and why the 
don't get rid of either the students or the house. I'd never read it 
before, but she was true to her word there. They're the bad part of 
the school, there to be accepted as bad.

Oh well. I feel a bit like I just bumped my head on the ceiling 
unexpectedly. But crow's not bad when you get used to it--I may still 
not be able to enjoy the reading other people have had about the 
series all along, I fully admit that it was the reading the author 
probably was going for. The stuff I thought said otherwise turned out 
to just be plot points.

-m