Harry as Frodo or not?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 176745

> Magpie:
> I would agree that Harry and Frodo have little in common, though I 
> don't see much in common between Harry and Sam either. I have trouble 
> with the whole "Sam never fails" idea, because while it's certainly 
> true that he never fails, Sam *would* have failed if he carried the 
> ring as well, because the task itself was impossible. It's not like 
> killing Voldemort where you just have to do the right thing, it's that 
> you *can't* do it unless you are literally God, which Sam was not.

Pippin:
As far as the plot goes, killing Voldemort was much more like 
destroying the Lord of the Nazgul, who was originally human, owed his
unnatural and soulless remnant of  life to evil magic and who thought 
he was protected by a prophecy. 

His death seems to be a matter of chance, but is actually tied to
his destruction of a beloved father figure, his attack on a beautiful,
desperate and fearless woman,  and his hubris in overlooking
the hidden enemy who wields the one weapon which could render
him killable.  

There are of course elements of all this in Voldemort's demise.
Voldemort, though he has become a monster,  is of human origin.
He has destroyed Harry's father and the threat to his mother woke the 
"slow-kindled courage" that was buried in Snape's Slytherin  heart
(She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not
die alone, unaided. <g>) Voldemort, like the Nazgul, recognizes that
the enemy who stands before him may fulfill the prophecy but chooses
to ignore it. And he thinks no more of his hidden enemy than of a
worm in the mud.

Indeed, Harry's journey is much more like that of the young Hobbits,
Merry and Pippin. They rescue some good guys, and destroy some
bad guys, but unlike Frodo and Sam, they don't face any serious 
moral challenge. Their real quest is for wisdom, which they learn
by facing death.  

zeldaricdeau:
(who thinks the most obvious and rather annoying Tolkien 
reference was the whole wearing the locket/carrying the Ring makes 
you bad bit: why on Earth did they have to WEAR it anyway?)

Pippin:
Oh yes! But there was a point to it, IMO. No doubt you've noticed 
that the Hallows echo the properties of the One Ring?

The cloak makes you invisible, the wand gives you power of 
command, the stone gives you access to the shadow world,
and together they offer a dubious immortality. 
Sounds familiar, no?

 But the Hallows do not corrupt. They can tempt people to great 
folly, and terrible mistakes, but they can't make them *want* to
do evil. 

Only the horcruxes, which feed on the deepest fears, can do
that. 

This suggests that JKR's moral system seems murky because
we are trying to make it accord with the conventional morality
of LOTR and Star Wars in which the desire for power is the root
of all evil. JKR, I humbly submit, has a different agenda. In her
universe, *fear* is the root of all evil. 

The Hallows are good when they are used wisely.

The ability  to deceive (as the I-cloak does) is not evil when  
deception is used to protect others. 

To have power is not evil when the power one has is love.

To seek to live is not evil, but neither is it evil to recognize
death when the time to die is at hand.

We are all marching towards death, every moment, as surely as 
Harry  in the forest, though most of us can't see it coming. The 
I-cloak is a lovely metaphor. Every moment of life is a gift from Death.
 "Use it wisely." 

The Hallows, misused or misunderstood, can be ruinous.
But in canon anyone can make a mistake. That suggests that mistakes
are not evil. To trust the wrong person, or indeed the wrong ideology, 
is not evil.   It is folly: ruinous, terrible folly, but in JKR's world 
it is not evil, IMO. It is only evil to cling to folly when the truth has
been revealed because one is too much of a coward to change.

Like Merry and Pippin, Harry  at first fundamentally misunderstands 
the nature of the world he has fallen into and the task he and his
companions will have to complete. 

If he had understood at first what  was before him, he, like
the young Hobbits, would have thought it mad and cruel. He would
have tried to stop it. 

Also like Pippin, Harry overlooks evil when it is hidden in what is
obviously supposed to be good. He sometimes acts wrongly
and foolishly, and he tells himself so, though he does not listen.

In his folly,  Harry sees Slytherin as the path of moral deterioration 
and Gryffindor as the path of moral progress. 

But funnily enough all the character arcs of Slytherin are stories of
progress: Draco, Snape, Slughorn and Regulus all end as better
people than they began -- even Voldemort finds that Harry's
blood has given him an unwanted chance to restore his humanity.
("Why, he says in GoF, "I'm becoming quite sentimental" and 
then he can't repress a moment of connection with his Death
Eaters: "My true family returns!" ) He actually seems put out 
to realize that the DE's have come back out of fear rather than 
loyalty. But it passes.

 Voldie prefers his old ways.  He is the magical equivalent of a 
psychopath, and yet his doom falls, IMO,  not because he cannot feel 
any connection with humanity, but because he fears and denies  
humanity any connection with him. 

He does not value Bella's love, or Snape's seemingly faithful service. 
He does not even want his connection with Slytherin House, except
to deny all that it stands for. He attempts to destroy the Sorting 
Hat in which the brain of his supposedly honored ancestor still 
resides, and then he puts forward the notion which would have
horrified old Salazar, that *anyone* with magical blood is good
enough for his house, never mind whether they're cunning or
even pure. He puts himself beyond the care of other humans 
and ends as what he  would have been if he had never received 
any -- a dead child.

Gryffindor character arcs, OTOH, flirt with deterioration. Wormtail,
Percy, Dumbledore, Lupin, Sirius, Ron and Hermione, James, Ginny and of
course Harry himself-- unlike the Slytherins they start out with excellent
moral philosophy, but too often they take their adherence to it for 
granted.

"Just because a wizard doesn't use Dark Magic," says Binns, "doesn't
mean he *can't*." Yet the Gryffindors too often assume  that their 
choices can't be wrong,  and pay a price for it.  James dies because
he can't believe any of his friends could go so wrong. Hermione and Ron
know intellectually that might does not make right, but emotionally
they can't help believing it just a little.  At any rate, Harry does not 
trust them or himself with the Elder Wand. 

(I'm a bit bewildered by the assertion that no karmic justice falls on 
Fred and George for Montague. Last I looked, Fred was dead and 
George was never going to be the same.)

Harry's journey is indeed not a moral progress but a journey from
folly to wisdom, to understanding the true nature of Gryffindor and
Slytherin, and their hidden unity. You cannot, after all, use any
means to achieve your ends unless you're willing to take risks. You
cannot chivalrously defend the weak without the power to do it.
James's gesture of drawing an imaginary sword is most telling.

Daring, nerve and chivalry do *not* set Gryffindors apart -- that
part of Gryffindor's founding myth is as false as Salazar's belief in
pureblood superiority, and potentially just as damaging. 

Pippin