[HPforGrownups] Harry Potter and The Boys From Brazil (long)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 170398

Neri:

The power in the plot of TBFB is the thought experiment: if you
created a genetic clone of Hitler and further attempted to also
recreate his upbringing, would that clone have the Choice to become a
good person rather than an evil one? The weakness in TBFB is that it
does not attempt to address this question in any real way. We meet
only briefly with one of these boys and he indeed shows tendencies for
sadism, but we do not come to know him, and his fate (as that of the
other boys) is left open in the end. I think TBFB could have been much
more powerful if it was told from this boy's point of view, but that
would have taken some courage and ability, which the writers of TBFB
obviously didn't have. 

Magpie:
Just as an aside, TBFB was written by Ira Levin, who also wrote Rosemary's
Baby and the Stepford Wives (I've read all of them but remember very little
of TBFB). Looking at those three I'd think Levin was just more interested
in different things that this choice--all three of those books feature a
group of people working to create some "perfect" person or people for
themselves. In The Stepford Wives modern, real women are replaced by robots
who live to please their husbands and be perfect. Rosemary's Baby, of
course, creates another child who could grow up to be evil. "Just like his
father" a character says about the baby, the baby's father in this case
being the Devil. Faced with these children Levin seems more interested, if
anything, in the question of whether it's moral to love or kill them rather
than the child's choice to be good or evil--the fact that it's open-ended,
that these children *might* be genetically evil, is important to the story.
The boys and the baby are allowed to live because they might not be Hitler
or Satan.

My question I'd ask you about Harry in this case is how exactly you see
this playing out? Because in Harry's case, despite what Tom says, is there
ever any danger that Harry will be evil in the terms it's defined now? I
mean, obviously he can be tempted by Dark Magic and anger, but he himself
seems to make it a priority not to be that. He goes down that path in many
ways in HBP but is snapped out of it when he learns the HBP is Snape
because his hatred protects him from continuing to follow him. Dumbledore
points out that because Voldemort killed his parents he made Harry seek
revenge and not be tempted to be evil and get into the Dark Arts himself.
It's not completely unlike Gregory Peck's thought process in TBFB.  

That's Harry's choice, of course, but it's not exactly a choice between
good and evil if given the context. So how do you think she's going to show
him ultimately struggling and choosing good? Because right now I really
don't feel like Harry is in any way one of the Boys from Brazil with
Voldemort instead of Hitler. He's not a Tom Riddle clone, Tom seems more
like a Shadow (along with his other Slytherin adversaries).

-m