Suspension of disbelief - Being dependent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182482

Mike wrote:
> ,snip> I do think JKR tried to paint Voldemort as a very powerful
and demonic figure. What with all that "you-know-who" BS, we were
supposed to believe that everyone except Dumbledore was scared of him,
and even Dumbledore admits that Tom knows more vile, evil magic than
he does. 

> But, she failed and she failed in DH specifically because we got to
see sooo much more of him than we got in the other six books combined.
I stopped being scared of him (and I mean as a reader putting myself
in Harry's shoes) when I heard all the idiotic notions that seeped out
of his mouth. The Nagini-in-Bathilda was some scary and creepy magic,
but there wasn't enough of that compared to what had become the
mundane magic of a megalomaniac (say that 6 times fast).

Carol responds:

I'd say that she does more than that, with LV's ability to possess
people (SS/Ps and CoS), the magic that restores him first to fetal
form and then to snake-faced human form (GoF), the Inferi and that
horrible potion in HBP, his Legilimency (introduced in OoP and shown
to be really invasive and horrible--all that it's cracked up to be and
more--in DH--and, BTW, Snape's Occlumency is indeed "superb" to
withstand it); all the original Order members killed off or
disappearing (OoP); the duel with DD in OoP, which might have been a
stand-off if it hadn't been for the arrival of the Aurors and would
have resulted in disaster for Possessed!Harry had not his ability to
love been unendurable. And, of course, Horcruxes are pretty horrible
in themselves, and his early powers (telekinesis, control of animals,
making people feel pain without a wand) indicate that he really is
more than usually gifted, with the potential and the personality to
become evil and dangerous (HBP). The flying without a broom in DH is
interesting but not particularly dark; Snape can do it, too, but the
control of Nagini ("Dinner, Nagini!") is pretty horrifying and sets us
up for more confrontations with this most loathsome of Horcruxes.
(Bathilda!Nagini is perhaps the most horrifying bit of Dark magic in
the entire series.) I don't know about you, but I was also spellbound
by Ron's confrontation with the locket Horcrux, which shows Tom
Riddle's ability to read others' thoughts and psychologically
manipulate them (the diary redux). What I don't see, though, is any
spectacular magic (other than a cage for Nagini and Snape's death)
being performed by the Elder Wand. Voldemort relies on his old
stand-bys, AK and Crucio (which, perhaps, is part of the problem, as
is the Elder Wand itself, which takes LV's attention away from the
WW). Surely, he should become more formidable, not less, as we
approach the end of the series. (He's mostly lethal to his own DEs and
seems to have lost all self-control.) 

I don't think the problem is that we see so much of him in DH (I think
for example, that seeing Godric's Hollow from his perspective worked
nicely) as that, as you say, he's using mundane magic--the same old
Unforgiveable Curses we've seen so much of already (and even Harry is
now using two of them, which diminishes them considerably)--and he's
sidetracked, as in OoP, from world (or at least British/Western
European) domination by wands and Horcruxes. Like Sauron putting most
of the power that was native to him into the One Ring, he's created
the means for his own downfall. (Not that Sauron is anywhere near as
stupid as LV at the end of Dh!)
 
> Mike:
> <snip> If Good Guy 1 is DD, the reason DD couldn't stop him was
acceptable imo. DD was painted as the consumate "give em a second
chance" guy. And when Tom was on his second chance - at Hogwarts - he
charmed the pants off of every other teacher except DD. He was also
never caught openly committing anything. He tied DD's own hands with
his second chance.
> 
> Combine that with DD's idiotic penchant for secrecy - which was
nontheless sold extremely well throughout the series - and you have a
reasonable excuse for why Good Guy 1 failed to stop Bad Guy A early>
on, imo.

Carol responds:
DD never trusted Tom Riddle, so I don't think he was really giving him
a second chance. I don't know whether it would have done any good to
confide his suspicions (they weren't provable) to Horace Slughorn or
Armando Dippett. As you say, Tom was never caught openly committing
any acts of evil or mischief. DD couldn't open the CoS himself; all he
could do was make sure that the boy who'd been framed for Myrtle's
death, Rubeus Hagrid, had a place to stay and training as gamekeeper.
After that, he kept an eye on Tom Riddle, suspected him of killing his
father and grandparents, and again failed to prove that the person
he'd framed for the murders, Morfin, was innocent because Morfin died
before the matter could be investigated. Ditto for Hokey and the
murder of Hepzibah smith. All DD could do was, literally, hold onto
the memories he'd obtained from Morfin and Hokey and keep on
collecting memories related to Tom Riddle's past and his crimes.

I do agree that DD's penchant for secrecy contributed to the problem
of getting anyone else to work with him or believe him, but I'm not so
sure that it's idiotic. He had a traitor, Wormtail, leaking
information in VW1. Hagrid, though DD would trust him with his life,
could not keep a secret. Mundungus, too, is not particularly
trustworthy. I can see why Dumbledore didn't want Harry to know
everything before he was ready, and why he didn't want any of the kids
(HRH, the Twins, Ginny) hearing Snape's reports to the Order of the
Phoenix. (Unlike Alla, I'm on DD's side in that regard.)

And I still think that even if he'd confided more fully in Snape,
trusting both his loyalty and his Occlumency, he and Snape together
couldn't have destroyed all the Horcruxes without Harry's help. the
three of them would have made quite a team, but the last two books
would have been very different.

Mike: 

<snip> And I also agree with Magpie, that it wasn't the limited
omniscient narrator that kept us from seeing these French Resistance
type actions. We didn't see them because they weren't there in any
sufficient degree to make them worth noting.

Carol responds:

I disagree. The limited omniscient narrator prevents us readers from
knowing anything that Harry doesn't know. His sources of information
are extremely limited once he leaves 12 GP. He's isolated from both
the Muggle and Wizarding worlds, relying on an overheard conversation
(Cresswell, Tonks, Dean and the Goblins) to provide him with partially
inaccurate information about happenings at Hogwarts, supplemented by
Phineas Nigellus's sly contributions and a single, not particularly
informative, Pottercast (which does let him know that Fred, Lee
Jordan, Lupin, and Shacklebolt are alive and trying to boost WW morale
but also tells him that Cresswell, Ted Tonks, and the Goblin Gornuk
are dead). HRH have no access to the Daily Prophet, which would have
been useless, anyway, considering that it's all propaganda, and Xeno
Lovegood has stopped informing the WW of what's really happening (as
far as he knows) via the Quibbler once Luna is kidnapped.

Other than that, Harry has the scar link, which tells him what
Voldemort is up to; the incident with Xeno Lovegood, which informs him
that Luna has been captured; Ron's report that Voldemort's name has
been jinxed (which Harry brilliantly ignores); and encounters with
Snatchers and Death Eaters, which, ironically, enable him to guess the
whereabouts of the cup Horcrux (and see firsthand how unhappy Draco is
as a DE). No one he encounters--Dean, who's been on the run, or Luna
and Mr. Ollivander, who've been held in the Malfoys' secret room--can
tell Harry what's been going on in the WW.

*If* anything else is going on (Wizards protecting Muggle neighbors or
faking family trees for Muggle-borns or whatever), we don't hear of
it. (Neville does tell Harry later that Gran out-duelled Dawlish, whom
we know that *somebody* Confunded, but as I said, Harry's sources of
information are limited.) We do also know that the Order is protecting
Ollivander, Luna, Dean, the Dursleys, and, for awhile, Griphook, as
well as themselves, and, of course, a lot of people show up to fight
once LV actually begins the battle. (If you don't know where he is
because he's all over Europe searching for the Elder Wand, it's a bit
hard to confront him even if you have the courage and the skill.)

Mike:
> But Arthur Weasley, to me, is the embodiment of the whole WW problem
with fighting a tyrant like Voldemort. Back in GoF, Arthur oozed fear
of anything Voldemort in explaining the way it was in VW1. And 
Arthur, though typical of your average wizard, wasn't a resistance
fighter nor a soldier. He fell asleep on guard duty and it almost 
cost him his life. That's the kind of mentality that permeates the 
WW, with a few exceptions like Moody and Kingsley. They aren't
equipped with the mentality to fight the good fight, nor the 
soldiering acumen to know what's important.
> 
> Why aren't they equipped? Because they are intellectually lazy. They
have magic, they don't need to work hard at anything. <snip>

Carol:
Well, "oozed fear" is a bit unkind, and I think we can fairly compare
Sirius Black's and Lupin's descriptions of the pre-Godric's Hollow WW
with Arthur Weasley's. The freedom fighters (OoP), such as they were,
were largely untrained and outnumbered, and many of them were just out
of school (not to mention that one was a traitor). No one knew whom to
trust, and everyone feared coming home to a Dark Mark hovering over
their home. The Unforgiveable Curses were illegal and could not be
used by the good side as weapons (unless the caster wanted to end up
in Azkaban).

Mr. Crouch resorted to authorizing the Aurors to use Unforgiveables,
which resulted in the deaths of three DEs (Rosier, Wilkes, and one
other "dead in my service, according to LV in GoF) and the arrest and
imprisonment of at least ten more (the ten who escaped in OoP), all of
which seems to have happened after Godric's Hollow. I'm not sure that
the DEs could have been caught while LV was still powerful and the
various Imperius Curses were still in effect. And, of course, it
helped that those DEs who could passed themselves off as Imperius
victims and went back to their ordinary lives, which, again, wouldn't
have happened while LV was in power.

So, on the one hand, Voldie's side was powerful and using weapons that
the other side either wouldn't or couldn't use, not to mention that
the good side was demoralized by fear and distrust. But I don't think
that laziness and reliance on magic has much to do with it, any more
than having or not having a gun to deter burglars has anything to do
with willingness to fight if your country is invaded or your
government is taken over by a military coup.

Wizards all use the same instrument to cast spells, a wand. They vary
in their skill and their knowledge of spells, but they're all armed
(unless you're a Muggle-born who's had your wand taken away). But not
all wizards know or are willing to use Dark magic (with good reason,
if Vincent Crabbe is any indication). and, as Pippin (I think), has
pointed out, the DADA classes have been worse than useless since
Voldemort jinxed the position. It's possible for a motivated student
like Severus Snape to learn about werewolves, and Lupin does a nice
job teaching the kids about minor Dark creatures, but not until Snape
teaches DADA in Harry's sixth year do they finally get a teacher who
really knows what Dark magic is and how to fight it. And even he isn't
teaching anyone the countercurse to Sectumsempra or how to confine a
deadly curse to someone's hand or remove a curse from an object like
the ring Horcrux or the opal necklace.

And let's look at the WW itself. They have Aurors, roughly the
equivalent of an elite police force trained to capture Dark Wizards
(Scrimgeour, I think, must have worked with Mad-Eye to bring in some
of those DEs post VW1), and they have some sort of Magical Reversal
Squad (I'm probably getting the name wrong) to deal with things like
backfiring Muggle toilets in OoP, but they have no standing army or
reserve--nothing to defend themselves or their government from a
takeover by a powerful Dark Wizard. You'd think they would have
learned from Grindelwald. They can't always call in Dumbledore to
fight their battles for them.

Anyway, I'd say that it's a combination of a general population
untrained in DADA (and a scarcity of qualified teachers because of the
jinx; DD has good reason for not using Snape until the last possible
moment); the lack of any organized defensive force; the illegality of
AKs even to defend your home and family; and the success of LV's
propaganda and terror tactics in VW1. 

Had it not been for the Prophecy and the fourteen-year respite and the
Chosen One and all that, the WW would have been in serious trouble.

Mike:
> 
> I'm convinced that if Snape hadn't loved Lily, the evil side would 
have won this war in VW1. Snape was one of the few intellectuals that
could have swayed the balance of power into Voldemort's camp. <snip>

Carol:
Well, yes. Even without Snape's intellect, I think that Voldie would
have won. He wouldn't have been vaporized in the first place if it
hadn't been for Snape's love for Lily. But I agree; Snape as a
full-blown adult DE, using all his powers of intellect and invention,
would have been a formidable enemy (and much more interesting,
perhaps, than Tom Riddle and his Horcruxes).

> Mike:
> OK, so this is not a case where Harry has to recognize someone he 
hated was right and he was wrong. But in rushing off to the Ministry 
in OotP, Harry overrode Hermione's more reasoned thinking and was 
dead wrong. And he paid the ultimate price for it, the life of his 
Godfather. This hurts Harry clear to the bone, much worse than any
humiliation could possibly have.
>
Carol respnds:
Excellent example of Harry's being wrong, Mike. And, of course, he's
also wrong in shifting the blame to Snape. We see in HBP, when he
fears for the lives of Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna after
seeing the Dark Mark over Hogwarts, that he still blames himself for
leading them to what could have been their deaths at the MoM. that's
probably why he's reluctant to have Ron and Hermione accompany him on
the Horcrux hunt. (Another instance of his being wrong; had Hermione
not saved him from Nagini!Bathilda, who was summoning Voldemort, and
Ron not saved him from the Horcrux that was drowning him, he'd have
been dead, or as close to dead as Horcrux!Harry can get.)

Mike:
> I know that's not exactly what you're looking for Betsy, but it's
the best I can do. Mostly because I agree with you regarding the lack
of Bilding in this Bildingsroman. (thanks Carol, I can even spell it now) 


Carol:
Erm, well, close enough. It's Bildungsroman, with a "u."

Mike:
Luckily, my enjoyment of the series didn't hinge upon Harry's 
development in the intellectual or moral categories. I wanted magic,
and I got some pretty cool, if sometimes gruesome magic in DH. Simple
 things for simple minds, doncha know. ;-)
 
Carol:
I think that Harry's learning to trust others rather than doing
everything himself, his ceasing to judge by appearances, and, above
all, his ability to forgive and his willingness to sacrifice himself,
in contrast to seeking vengeance, more than qualifies as the growth to
maturity required by a Bildungsroman. YMMV. 

Mike:
<snip>
 
> Mike, who also expects a little backlash from the Snape-o-philes,
but had too much fun to care <vbeg>

Carol:
Sorry, Mike. I'm not going to argue against your Snape attack because
I can't make you like him any more than you can make me like caviar
(vile, horrible stuff!)--or, say, James Potter and Sirius Black in
SWM. I see him completely differently than you do, with grave faults,
certainly, but also great wit and courage and resourcefulness and
loyalty, and I only wish that he could have grown up in a world
without Voldemort, becoming, say, a researcher or a Healer of Dark
curses at St. Mungo's.

Carol, who half-agrees, half-disagrees with Mike's post and hopes that
she hasn't confused anybody by not taking a clearer stand for or
against Mike's position