Who do you think will die in the last book?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168247

Eggplant wrote:
> > 
> > I realize almost everybody on this list wants Harry to live, but
they also want book 7 to be as good as it's possible to be. I believe
these two wishes are incompatible. A good work or art should tie your
> emotions into a knot and Harry's death would do exactly that.

Alla responded:
<snip>
> Whether Harry lives or dies , I think is just personal preference, 
> nothing more than that.
> 
> But when argument is made that **unless** Harry dies, Rowling's work
just cannot be a good literature, well, I would like more support for
that.

Carol notes:
To be fair, Eggplant isn't saying that Harry must die for the last
book to qualify as a good work of art. He's saying that a good work of
art must tie the reader's emotions into a knot and that Harry's death
would do that. Of course, the whole tying emotions into a knot
criterion is subjective, but I must admit that it's what I also want
and expect. (But I certainly want to be able to laugh as well as cry;
one thing that I love about JKR's book is the unexpected bits of humor
that keep popping up.)

But, certainly, there are other ways to bring the reader to tears (or
as near to tears as they'll allow themselves to go) than Harry's
death. For me, one of the most emotional moments in HBP is the sudden
understanding between Fleur and Molly (Molly's realization that
Fleur's love for Bill is genuine, which amounts to an acceptance of
Fleur as a daughter-in-law, and Fleur's recognition and
acknowledgement of that acceptance, none of which Harry comprehends).
No death is involved, though Bill has come close to death. What's
involved is an understanding between rivals for Bill's affection who
understand that there's room for both, but the love of the future wife
must to some degree supersede the love of the mother, who must let her
son go, must let him live his own life and find his own happiness.

Obviously, what happens to Harry in DH will be different from that
moment in many respects. All I'm saying is that if a good book
requires our emotions to be tied in knots (and that in itself is, to
use Alla's words, a matter of personal preference), that knot of
emotion need not be caused by Harry's death. There will be deaths, of
course, and if we're not moved by the death itself, we will be moved
(I assume and hope) by the pain of the surviving characters, not only
Harry but, for example, Mrs. Weasley, whose Boggart and clock seem to
foreshadow death for some member of the Weasley family (not Ron,
please). But an understanding between Snape and Harry could also be
emotionally charged, whether or ot one of them dies. (And, no, I'm not
talking about a Snape who suddenly becomes kind and sweet-natured!)
Harry's pain at having to kill someone, even Voldemort, could be
emotionally charged. He's going to feel a sense of loss, and so is the
reader, no matter what happens.

At any rate, a good work of art (make that literature) does not
require the protagonist to die, or all novels with first-person
narrators (with one exception I can think of, where the author cheats
by changing to an impersonal narrator) are by definition bad art. Of
course, a tragedy in which the protagonist didn't die wouldn't be a
tragedy, the HP books are not "Oedipus Rex" or "Macbeth" or "Othello."
No reader that I know of is expecting Harry's character flaw(s) to
bring about his doom. And the protagonist of a Bildungsroman doesn't
die; he grows up and lives to enjoy his newly acquired maturity. 

Harry isn't James, who lives just long enough to show that a bully can
become a hero. I predict that Harry will learn from the mistakes of
the previous generation, and his own mistakes, and live. But his
suffering along the way, and his encounters with other characters,
will provide all the emotional knots we need to be satisfied with DH
if that is our criterion for a good work of art or literature.

Carol, who will, of course, not dismiss DH as "a good work of
literature" if Harry dies but will judge it by other criteria (appeal
to the emotions being one of them)