The Deathly Hallows: Morality of Mythical Objects

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 177399

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "prep0strus" <prep0strus at ...> 
wrote:
> I just don' understand the moral I am supposed to learn from the
> story of the three brothers, or the story of the hallows in the
> world of the books.

[everything else snipped]

va32h:

I would say the moral is - don't make a deal with the devil (or 
Death, as he is called in the Three Brothers tale). 

It's the age-old adage, "be careful what you wish for".  Like the 
Twilight Zone episode where the guy is the last person on earth and 
he gets to live in the library but he breaks his glassses?  Or one of 
Aesop's fables...is it the one with the crow and the grapes?  I 
forget.

Anyway, it's an old, old theme.  As it's used here, I'd say that the 
idea is that you really can't cheat Death.  Death will always come 
for you, no matter how cleverly you think you've avoided him and 
death will always win in the end.  You can act recklessly - as if you 
are above death (the brother with the wand), or you can wallow in 
mourning for someone who's already gone (the brother with the stone) 
or you can accept that Death will be out there somewhere, sometime 
and live your own life to the fullest, until you have to meet him. 

Voldemort is very much like the first brother - he made his Horcruxes 
and thought he was above Death, and acted foolishly and arrogantly 
and in the end that killed him.  Snape is the second brother - he is 
hopelessly lost to the past, devoting his entire life to someone who 
is dead and as a result not really living himself.  Harry is the 
third brother - even at age 11, Harry freely acknowledged that death 
was inevitable at some point, even likely to strike him soon, and yet 
not the worst thing that could happen to him. 

Harry has always known and accepted his own eventual death...he has 
risked his life willingly pretty much every year since he arrived at 
Hogwarts.  Perhaps it is this courage that "shields" him from Death's 
clutches (a la the Cloak) even though he is not at all invisible in 
his actions. 

There's a long tradition of mystical people granting mortals wishes 
with loopholes...I think this just fits into that with the tweaking 
that is necessary to make it all about DEATH, and DYING, and DEATH 
DEATH DEATH, were ALL going to DIE - which was JKR's apparent 
obsession. 

She's sort of second brother-esque really, IMO.  It's one thing to 
accept that Death is inevitable, it's another to create a 7 book 
series as an homage to the fact that we're all going to DIE DIE DIE - 
I just felt hammered over the head by that particular motif.   

va32h