Suspension of disbelief -Idiots of War

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 182401

Carol:
However, there's no reason why he couldn't be a member of some sort 
of
resistance movement (as I think most of us originally imagined the
Order to be. He doesn't have to go with HRH (who as "adults" in the
WW's eyes don't really need an older companion any longer). I doubt
whether he'd have had any better success in finding Horcruxes than 
the
Trio did (or in obtaining the means of destroying them).

Magpie:
True, he doesn't have to be on the Horcrux hunt. There are plenty of 
things he could do other than that, if JKR had written that kind of 
part for the Order, but she didn't, really. Everything seems focused 
on Harry. Which seems to be what she wanted.

> > Magpie:
> > Pretty much just until Harry found a way--nobody was rallying
> anybody either. The DEs had a pretty free reign until Harry 
returned
> like  King Arthur and then everybody ran to fight in the one 
battle in
> one  building and become war heroes.
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> It looks from the emphasis on Harry's pov as if the adults  left 
the
> kids to fight the war, but that's not actually what happens. One 
may
> overlook that other people have been growing up too, and that 
Neville,
> and the majority of the DA  are  adults in their own and society's
> eyes by the time of the final battle. But the story makes that 
explicit. 

Magpie:
We've pretty much all been using the shorthand of "kids" to refer to 
Harry's generation and "adults" to mean those out of school. The 
same distinction that's been made throughout canon. 

Pippin:  
> I'm seeing  an unstated assumption that bothers me in some of the
> posts I've read -- as if  revolutions were spontaneous and success 
was
> the birthright of decent people. As if  no tyrant ever stayed in
> power five minutes before Che Guevera and the Rebel Alliance showed
> up to pull down statues in Tienamen Square. That's not even 
fictional
> reality. In RL as in fiction, revolutions can fail, some that 
succeed
> are no better than the regimes they supplanted, and some never 
begin
> at all.

Magpie:
I didn't assume that. I think the point that I, and I think Alla and 
Betsy, have made was not at all that everybody was guaranteed any 
sort of success. Just that it's not guaranteed that they couldn't 
have had any success against him, or that they couldn't have behaved 
any differently or tried anything else. Voldemort's revolution went 
very well, as it happens. We're just disagreeing that JKR set up a 
situation where everyone was powerless and paralyzed to do anything 
but wait for Harry. And that this was playing it like a realistic 
war story. 

Pippin: 
> In the Lord of the Rings, most of the hobbits were at the mercy of
> Sharky and his men till Frodo and his friends came back. Why didn't
> the hobbits fight back sooner?  Farmer Cotton explains that he 
wanted
> to, but folks wouldn't help and he had his wife and daughter to 
think
> of. We're shown why folks wouldn't help -- they didn't trust
> each other. And they had reason. Like all people in tyranny's 
grasp,
> they'd had to make compromises to survive. 

Magpie:
Tolkien puts more thought into the Scouring of the Shire, even while 
having the four hobbits who have seen the world come back to be 
leaders imo. The Wizarding World are in so many ways not the hobbits 
of the Shire. And the group of the Order of the Phoenix is supposed 
to have been preparing for this for a decade. They're walk around 
acting as if they're doing stuff in the book, they all of the air of 
someone grimly facing the enemy, but they aren't given anything to 
do, really. 

I don't think that's a case of LOTR putting the case gently while HP 
puts it in your face. There's nothing gentle about the Scouring of 
the Shire. I think Tolkien's situation is just more believable based 
on the history and characters he created while in HP the war just 
isn't as well thought out. Tolkien was interested in writing about 
war and JKR wasn't. So she wrote about a fight and added on some 
things that sounded like wartime without really thinking it all 
through. 

Which is all fine. Nobody's reading HP for Tolkien's kind of 
warfare. I just don't call it a book about war.


Pippin:

> "Imagine that Voldemort's powerful now. You don't know who his
> supporters are, you don't know who's working for him and who isn't;
> you know he can control people so that they do terrible things 
without
> being able to stop themselves. You're scared for yourself, and your
> family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, 
more
> disappearances, more torturing...the Ministry of Magic's in 
disarray,
> they don't know what to do, they're trying to keep everything 
hidden
> from the Muggles, but meanwhile Muggles are dying too. Terror
> everywhere...panic...confusion...that's how it used to be.
> 
> Well, times like that bring out the best in some people and the 
worst
> in others." --Sirius Black, GoF ch 27 
> 
> 
> Substitute "The Order" for "The Ministry" and his words speak   to 
the
> situation in DH. But Sirius oversimplified a bit, because what we
> learned in DH is that times like that bring out the best and the 
worst
> in each individual soul. > Perhaps the Order was in as much 
disarray as the Ministry was
> in VWI. But maybe not.

Magpie:
The Order wasn't in disarray at all. 

Pippin:> 
  We do know that the townspeople and the others
> showed up when they were summoned, ready, willing and able to 
fight.
> Either they didn't need to be organized, or they had been 
organizing
> in secret all along. 

Magpie:
Slughorn and Charlie showing up with a crowd for the crowd-pleasing 
ending doesn't read to me like anybody was organizing. It reads like 
we need a big battle and of course all the good people rally to 
Harry's side. As I said, it's fine, but I think it is what it is. 
It's all focused on Hogwarts. That's the place where the struggle is 
thought out and things are going on where Harry can't see them.

Pippin: 
> One of Voldemort's great weaknesses was his tendency to
> overconfidence. Did the Order play to that by letting him think he 
was
> having free rein until Harry was ready to confront him?   Harry, 
with
> his built-in connection to Voldemort, is the last person the Order
> would have wanted to know. 

Magpie:
That's a bit too creative to me--nobody needed to let Voldemort 
steamroller over them in order to get him overconfident. (Nor does 
anyone suggest they're doing that.) (Is this also why the Order 
seemed to politely give Voldemort a lot of time to get strong before 
they kicked into gear themselves?)

Pippin:
 But I don't
> see how we're forced to conclude that the Order should have been 
doing
> something they didn't do --  when it came time to fight, there were
> fighters available. They hadn't all been rounded up and thrown into
> Azkaban, or deprived of their wands, or forced into hiding in
> Australia. Who deserves credit for that if the Order doesn't? 

Magpie:
I haven't been concluding they should have been doing anything. I 
said that I disagreed that the Order could have done nothing 
differently--beginning with the idea that if Snape hadn't delivered 
the Prophecy there's absolutely no way at all a fatal blow against 
Voldemort could be struck given the things in this fictional world. 

The Order does exactly what they need to do for the plot, which is 
to give Harry information, act like everything is very serious and 
dire, and then step into the wings so the boy hero can complete his 
quest since that's what this story is about--not a complicated war 
waged by hundreds of Wizards on each side. But if you asked random 
readers: What would you have done if you were facing this situation 
and were leading the Order of the Phoenix? I would expect you'd get 
lots of creative answers that didn't match canon.

> > Magpie:
>  In DH they'd lost Dumbledore and Harry...and then there was 
Neville.
> Nobody has  this kind of force prepared until they need it.
> >
> 
> Pippin:
> What did Neville do that the Order didn't?

Magpie:
He seemed to have set up a far more sophisticated system of 
protecting people and getting them to safety at Hogwarts, actually, 
in different ways. And Neville is still a schoolboy standing up to 
mean teachers. One might have thought the Order was supposed to do a 
lot of things that Neville didn't. There's no indication that the 
Order is even the Neville of the World Outside Hogwarts.


Pippin:
> I can see where it seems stupid that if there were all these people
> willing to help they couldn't have helped Harry more directly. But 
how
> could he rally them to help when he himself wasn't sure he could 
trust
> Dumbledore, and yet the only credibility he had was Dumbledore's
> authority and a prophecy he didn't understand? 

Magpie:
I don't see why that was a problem when it came to Horcruxes.

Pippin: 
> Harry had Frodo's problem also -- those he didn't know, he couldn't
> trust, and those he could trust were too dear to him. He didn't 
want
> his friends to die to help him, and yet who else could he ask? As 
for
> Lupin, how could he possibly trust  Lupin, when it was clear as day
> that Lupin didn't even trust himself?

Magpie:
Of course he could have asked his friends to help him-he has his 
dearest with him the whole time. Or the Order--one might have 
expected Dumbledore to have asked them. He certainly could have 
trusted Lupin--Lupin "not trusting himself" sounds tragic and all, 
but it's not like hunting objects and destroying him would be beyond 
him. Another person might have had *Dumbledore* approach the Horcrux 
problem a different way. That's essentially what started the thread, 
I think. He's the general.

-m