On the perfection of moral virtues

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 168837

BetsyHP:

> Only not.  Because the very next year, Ron has the *exact* same 
> problem.  Why?  JKR forced the reader to go through pretty much 
the 
> exact same Quidditch adventure as the last book, only this one 
wasn't 
> as good.  It struck me as sloppy writing, loss of control on JKR's 
> part.  Why not let Gryffindor *lose* the big game last year if Ron 
> needed to keep the same problem into next year?  Or why not allow 
Ron 
> to be a good Quidditch player and only have his feelings of sexual 
> inferiority to deal with in HBP?

Magpie:
Yes, even with the explanations, I feel like we're talking about 
white vs. off-white here in Ron's stories.

> Betsy Hp:
> I think what Marion was talking about, and this is definitely why 
the 
> series has soured for me at the moment, is that there should be a 
> happy medium between "after school special" and "the adventure 
> continues".  Otherwise the children start to look a bit stupid 
and/or 
> stunted in some manner.

Magpie:
I don't know if I'm going to be able to put this into words but...I 
think sometimes the issue isn't that the kids don't change or learn, 
but that for some reason the books don't manage to inspire the kind 
of thought about this stuff that they should. And I don't know if 
that's necessarily the author's intention.

Take for instance something I keep harping on in the other thread, 
with bigotry. Bigotry, if a fictional type, is important enough to 
the author that she made it the defining belief of the bad guys. Yet 
this hasn't led, that I can see, to a series that leads the 
characters or the readers to be more sensitized to bigotry. On the 
contrary. I can't think of all that many discussions about why the 
bad guys are bigoted etc., what it means in the world and all that. 
They're just bad because they're bigoted and that's disgusting and 
they must be destroyed.

But then, neither do moments of possible bigotry get talked about on 
the good side much. Sometimes the bad guys are sort of a handy rug 
to sweep the whole subject under. I'm not here accusing everybody of 
not talking about what they should be talking about here, or of 
being insensitive to bigotry themselves or anything like that. I'm 
just saying that in my experience the books for some reason don't 
seem to inspire a lot of exploration of moral virtues, but rather a 
black and white view, often based on the characters. 

I don't see a lot is discussions as concepts of some of the things 
the books seem to lay out as bad. So the premise that LV is about 
bigotry *doesn't* lead to the idea that victory isn't just about 
wiping out the DEs but to the good side examining their own 
prejudices. Or the premise that LV is cruel and violent doesn't lead 
to the idea that the good side is necessarily going to examine their 
own possible cruelty and violence. It doesn't seem like a red flag 
when any character acts cruelly or bigoted. Does that make sense?

What I'm saying, I guess, is that although the book seems to be 
about good vs. evil it doesn't really seem to always encourage the 
close examination of evil in the bad guys or the good guys or 
ourselves. That's the only way I think it would really be resonant 
anyway, you know? It's not just about Harry saying, "Last year I 
trusted Moody and he turned out to be a DE, so I'm going to withold 
judgment on what I really saw with Snape." 

-m