Dumbledore's Plan/Deaths in DH/Catharsis

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 177552

> lizzyben:
> 
> Pippin, I really like your interpretation & I wish I could believe
> that that's the lesson we're supposed to take. But if that's the case,
> why does Harry feel *less* awareness of the child's agony the longer
> he talks to DD? 

Pippin:

I think it symbolizes the choice Harry is making. He can  die
content with what he's done, and go on with his questions 
answered and his heart at rest,  leaving the fate of Voldemort and 
the WW to the hands of others, or he can live and try to save
Voldemort and others from the fate he sees in store for them. 
The child comes back into his awareness as he ponders the
choice to return. 

Everything Harry wishes for appears instantly except a way
to help Voldemort. I think he is not in a place where 'trying'
is possible. He's repulsed by Voldemort, I think, because
that's the way *Voldemort* wants it. And there is no way to
overpower Voldemort's sovereign soul and make him want
something different.

Lizzyben:
Why are kids still sorted into a House that
> indoctrinates them with a bad ideology? I just feel like there's no
> connection made between the way children are treated & who they later
> become - eg Harry is neglected & turns out OK. Snape is neglected &
> becomes a Death Eater. Why? Well, maybe because Harry is simply a good
> person & nothing will change that. It goes back to this sensation that
> people are basically born good or bad in the Potterverse, regardless
> of circumstances.

Pippin:
Harry is innately strong and Riddle innately weak (not wicked,
IMO.) Harry needs very little support from his environment and would
do well under almost any circumstances. Riddle needed far more
support than the Muggle orphanage could give him, but would
probably have been a challenge even if Wizard-raised, though
we'll never know.  That doesn't mean that nothing could have
been done for him, but obviously his troubles go back to his
mother, who should never have been left without support after 
her family was imprisoned. 

Snape is the one who is affected most by environment. The
boy we see in the Pensieve before Hogwarts is quick-tempered, 
cunning and greedy, but not cruel. From all we see, his Slytherin 
companions were kind to him. I'm going to catch flack for this, 
but I  think we have clear canon that Snape learned his cruelty 
from James and co, not from the Slytherins, cruel as some of 
them were to others. 

> lizzyben:
> 
> My impression was that we shouldn't pity the dead because they're in a
> "better place," etc. I like your interpretation better - but if JKR is
> in these good causes, why wouldn't she want people to pity or care
> about the fate of her Slytherin kids? Why would she imply that they're
> all just irredeemable & bad

Pippin:
But she also implies that they are redeemable and human.

I think what JKR wants us to see is that despite our pop
culture infatuation with  freedom-loving good guys vs 
quasi-Fascist bad guys, that  formula just does not mesh 
at all with the ideals of choice, freedom and human rights. 

In order to raise our consciousness about this, she's made it 
so a critical thinker can't  take a consistent view of her world 
without abandoning one or the other.

You can ignore or explain away everything that makes the Slytherins
not look irredeemable and bad, and ignore or explain away everything 
that makes the good guys seem less than pure. What you'll have 
left is what many people seem to be enjoying as a rousing adventure 
story, with villains who can be hated without guilt and heroes that never 
have to compromise. You won't have to think they would look down 
on anyone who doesn't deserve it.  

But you'll be aware that this represents a world where unity is a only a 
dream, and there is no real choice or freedom for anyone, only eternal 
war. 

Or you can take a more realistic view and see that for all their
goodness, Harry Ron and Hermione are flawed, and they live
in a world with other flawed people where compromises have
to be made. Theirs are not the only choices that matter. If
the Headmaster was given the power to decide that some 
ideologies should not be  taught, do we think that power would be 
used wisely?  JKR gave us the answer in three words: Dolores
Jane Umbridge.

If liberal ideologies truly contribute more to human happiness and
well-being than racist ones, and if people are, as liberalism 
contends, capable of choosing what will bring them happines
and well-being, then liberal ideas should win out if people
are left free to choose them. 

The problem is that children aren't free, and can't survive in
freedom any better than House Elves could. So progress may
have to come slowly, so as not to throw the baby of  familial
love out with the bathwater of familial misguidance.

> 
> lizzyben:
> 
> If it's just an imprint, & their souls are happy in heaven, why the
> connection to fearing death? Why does he say he chose to remain
> behind? Can a ghost ever be released?

Pippin:
Myrtle says she felt herself drifting away, and then she came back.
It seems you can make the choice to come back, but what comes
back in that case is not really your soul but a pale copy of it. So,
from NHN's point-of-view he stayed behind, but from his soul's
point of view, it left a copy of its frightened self and went on. 
None of the ghosts we've met seem to want to go to rest. 
Nick seems as though he's still afraid. 

There seem to be ways to control ghosts, because Myrtle is made 
to stay in her toilet after she's caught stalking Olive Hornby. But
I don't know if there's a way to vanish them.

Canon tells us Nick can't die again, so I guess unless they
run into a basilisk and get Petrified, they remain as they are
till Judgement Day, if there is one. JKR does like her cautionary
tales. But not to worry, we Muggles can't become ghosts.  

Lizzyben:
> HBP makes clear that Voldemort was born with significant mental
> impairments; that he was unable to show emotion as a baby, and that he
> was already psychopathic at a very young age.

Pippin:
Hmm...I'm not sure science recognizes pyschopaths at a young age.
I think the most they would say on record is he was showing 
tendencies. But in any case, canon shows that his killings are 
conscious decisions. 

Regardless of having few emotions that would inhibit him from killing,
he still feels that he has a choice to kill or not. 

DD is not surprised that Riddle  is violent, but he does not
know from his first meeting that Riddle is going to be evil. He
warns him that there will be bad consequences if Riddle violates
wizarding law. AFAIK, there are psychopaths who don't become
murderers because they see that there will be bad consequences
to themselves. 

There are socially acceptable outlets for violence in the
WW  -- Macnair is an executioner for the MoM, Moody is an Auror.
Although Riddle would not value social acceptance for its own
sake, we see that he courts it for what it can get him. So I don't
buy that he had no choice but to follow his violent instincts and
become a murderer. But even if that were not the case, he can't
possibly have made horcruxes by instinct. That was a conscious
decision except in the one case where he had already made his
soul unstable by choice. 

> lizzyben:
> 
> The prison, as I see it, is this. JKR creates a universe in which the
> only way to repair a torn/damned soul is by showing remorse. She also
> creates LV as a psychopath almost since birth, and psychopaths are
> *unable* to feel remorse. Logically, therefore, LV is predestined to
> damnation in the universe she has created. JKR chose to write it that
> way - LV didn't have a chance. 

Pippin:
Except that LV is a wizard, and gets  choices that non-wizards 
don't have, like the remorse-causing potion Dumbledore drank in the
cave, and his other chance, Harry's blood. Looking at what 
happened with Grindelwald, it seems that if Voldemort had been
willing to try for remorse, he might magically have become
capable of it. 

I admit there's not much emphasis on Riddle's choices, which makes
sense to me. JKR is not addressing herself to potential psychopaths
IMO, and is more concerned with showing us how to recognize and
avoid them. 

> 
> lizzyben:
> 
> Being forgotten is a comfort? I dunno, if there was ever a time that
> LV'd be willing to listen, that would seem to be the moment.

Pippin:
I think he wasn't willing to listen and that's why Harry felt repulsed.

Voldemort's soul would continue to deteriorate if he kept killing,
which he had every intention of doing, so I can't see how he will
be better off if he's allowed to go on killing people. I don't think
anyone knows enough magic to keep him confined. He got into
Grindelwald's prison easily enough.

On Merope, I thought Dumbledore's point was that Harry shouldn't
judge her as loving her child less than Lily loved him, but that she
didn't have the courage or strength to survive. Since JKR has a
link to an organization for single parents on her site, it's clear
to me that the propaganda here is to support single parents.

Harry is wrong, wrong, wrong to think that there is shame in
turning to others for help, as he finally admits when he enlists
Neville to kill Nagini for him. And of course it ought to be 
clear to anybody that we are not supposed to agree with Vernon
that people without jobs are layabouts who deserve whatever
happens to them.

JKR wants to show us what happens when people don't get the
help they need, IMO of course.  

Pippin
thanking Lizzyben for her patience