DH as Christian Allegory/Victory for TEWWW EWWW

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 173393

> > >>Susan McGee:
> > Also, in answer to that commentary about how Harry doesn't 
struggle 
> > or his character doesn't change, etc. First, I don't agree, I 
think 
> > going to one's death willingly is an incredible struggle... <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Actually, I think if so many people close to you have died, and your 
> one constant mentor has told you it's a good idea, and the dead are 
> telling you to jump in the water's great, suicide is easy.  Times 
> like those, living is the hard part. 

Magpie:
My feeling about this issue--which is maybe an even more direct answer 
to, I think, Eggplant--is that the reason Harry's willingness to die 
is not a big change or development is because it isn't a big change or 
development for Harry at all. It's brave. It's not something he wants 
to do. I'm hardly one to dismiss it as if it's not a big sacrifice.

But it doesn't hit Harry in any of his blind spots about himself. It's 
not a humbling experience, it's not something that makes him come to 
different idea about his place in things--which I think is usually an 
important part of something like this--it's not anything new or 
surprising. If Voldemort were our hero, this would be a bigger deal, 
simply because Voldemort is all about fear of death and an arrogant 
immortality.

For Harry, he's not suicidal, but he's been willing to die over and 
over again (it's kind of a Gryffindor thing, actually). He's always 
been far more afraid of others dying for him than he has been of dying 
for others, which is one reason he can be counted on to rush to the 
MoM when he thinks Sirius is being held captive (though he doesn't 
ever fully process it that way). But even beyond that, how many times 
has Harry met death willingly in the series? He thinks he's dying with 
Quirrel in PS/SS. He starts to die from the basilisk poison in CoS and 
accepts it (I believe that's one of his first "not so bad" 
realizations). The TWT seems to consider the risk of death a plus--in 
that book Harry isn't dying, but he does take control of what he 
thinks is his impending death in the graveyard. In OotP again he's on 
the brink of death and begins to see it as attractive--he could stop 
the pain and be with Sirius.

I don't think this means Harry's suicidal, but he's been on the edge 
of death more than once and accepted it. He's had a lot of practice 
accepting his own death. It isn't a change for him to rather die 
himself than have others die for him, it's one of the basic parts of 
his character--not a development.

Lizzyben:

I'm just at a
> loss to understand the way JKR resolved the House system. Were fans
> really begging JKR to make Slytherin *more* evil & unredeemable? IMO,
> it seems like fans were begging for a good Slytherin, a redemption 
for
> the House. JKR never gave it - and her total condemnation of anything
> resembling Slytherin-ness is just, odd, to me. I don't get it. I 
don't
> get why she did it. It seems to be an internal need to cut off &
> destroy those qualities, instead of understanding them. So yeah, I
> think parts of Snape come from JKR, as do all of her
> characters. The problem is that JKR never managed to integrate the
> "shadow" House, the shadow figure into the overall narrative. And IMO
> the novel suffered for it.

Renee:
I don't see this need to destroy the qualities embodied by Slytherin
House in the books. It's is an integral part of Hogwarts - and didn't
JKR say in an interview it was a necessary part? In other words, the
Shadow has been given a place, not just in her world, but also in the
narrative; JKR doesn't deny its existence at all. But because it is
the Shadow, it's influence can't be benign.

Magpie:
I don't know...it doesn't seem like the kind of acknowledgement it 
gets is the healthy kind--which is I think why you could ask earlier 
if maybe this wasn't more about Christian sin than Jungian Shadow. It 
felt to me much more like Calvin than Jung to me, reading it. (Though 
God knows I'm not expert on either!) As you say here, "because it's 
the Shadow, its influence can't be benign." That's not true of the 
Shadow in Jung, afaik. The Shadow becomes bad when it's repressed and 
denied--which is much more the impression I get from DH in the way the 
house is viewed. The Shadow not only can be benign, it can be a source 
of strength and encapsulte good qualities. And confronting the Shadow 
truly is going to be difficult for the person--I don't think it can 
just be taken care of with the idea that they gradually lost their bad 
feelings about it.

I wouldn't, btw, quite say that all the qualities of Slytherin house 
are up for destruction either. The good ones seem to be praised in the 
good guys--in HBP it seemed like Dumbledore was encouraging Harry to 
be a bit Slytherin, and when he describes the Slytherin qualities 
Harry has in CoS they sound pretty sexy (and common to 
Gryffindors)...which is perhaps why the cooler qualities one might 
imagine went along with being a Slytherin almost never appear in 
actual Slytherins. They're left with the Shadow qualities of their own 
house.

Sherry:
Call me crazy or not insightful, but what I took out of the ending was 
that JKR was showing us how much the world does not really change 
after war. People still hang on to their prejudices and preconceived 
notions. I thought it was very realistic, though disappointing. I'm a 
fan of the main character, so didn't like some of the 
lytherin "baddies", but I actually did hope for house unity and wanted 
to see the four houses band together to defend Hogwarts. I was 
disappointed it didn't happen. and yet, after thinking about it, I 
thought, this ending is probably far more realistic, with not much 
really changing overnight. Maybe, if we were to see the world
in 30, 40, 50 years, things might have begun to change, but for now, 
it felt like something pretty typical after a war.

Magpie:
You know, I can see this view? But I don't really feel it's written in 
in the way you seem to be describing it. First, because this isn't the 
story of a realistic war--it's magic and there's plenty of this kind 
of--what's the word?--romanticism when it comes to the good guys. But 
also, because it's just not part of the story--as I said above, if we 
were talking about the Shadow, I don't think it's something that 
people just naturally get over without having to do that. It just 
seems like bringing in something new into the whole mix, like after 
the fact saying that the next day they started solving all the 
problems that weren't part of the ending. Yeah, they could, but...they 
could do anything. It has no attachment to the story to me. Harry and 
Draco's brief, distant encounter (in which Draco nodded to Harry, 
Harry did not nod to Draco and neither did anyone else afawk) does not 
seem to come out of any new feeling, but right out of the interaction 
between the two that happened in the story we saw. They might have 
never seen each other since that day and it would have played the same.

-m