Suspension of disbelief - Being dependent

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182547

> 
> Betsy Hp:
> It's doesn't count as the "how" for me because I see it more as 
> the "what".  The MoM fell to Voldemort and the DE's, yes.  But I see 
> no reason for it to have fallen so easily.  (Far more easily, IMO, 
> than any similiar RL event JKR may have meant to evoke.)

Pippin:
Why did Harry succumb so easily to Umbridge? He'd fought the Dark Lord
wand to wand only a few months before, and yet he let a dumpy little
witch in a pink sweater make him carve graffiti into his hand?

It's not that Umbridge was an adult and Harry a child -- he'd fought
and defeated adults before. It's not that Umbridge was a mighty witch
-- she wasn't. She wasn't  intellectually or physically imposing either.

But canon shows us how helpless Harry felt with the whole ministry
arrayed against him --  simultaneously the victim of a smear campaign
and an assault on his rights and his person. The Ministry could take
everything he values: his wand, his freedom and his reputation, even
his favorite sport, and they didn't even need a wand to do it, just a
stroke of the quill. They can do the same to anyone who tries to help
him. His friends suggest that Harry go to Dumbledore or McGonagall,
but Harry isn't sure they can or will do anything, and he can't bring
himself to try  -- asking for help would only make him feel more
helpless. This is canon, not wanking, quotes on request.

DH is a dark landscape illuminated by lightening flashes, but we can
guess what's out there because we've been over this ground before.
JKR's not uninterested in the process of a silent coup, IMO, she's so
interested that she devoted an entire volume to it. 


If JKR could have put everything we needed to understand what's
happening in DH *in* DH, she wouldn't have needed to write the other
books. DH is the last installment in a seven volume serial -- it's as
dependent on what goes before as the last chapters of The Three
Musketeers. If you started that book at the end, you'd have no idea
whether to believe all the accusations against Milady.  I've read a
parody with just that premise, where Milady is a proto-feminist
avenger and the Musketeers are oafs.<g> 

JKR  doesn't tell us *how* to apply what we've read previously. She
leaves that to us. And why not? Textbooks contain problems for the
reader to solve as well as examples all worked out; why shouldn't
novels with something to teach  do the same? Would we still be
discussing all this almost a year later if she hadn't left us things
to figure out?

Betsy HP: 
> For example: Fred (or George) may beat up a younger boy for giving 
> him cheek.  And it doesn't have a bearing on Fred's innate morality.  
> We're not meant to judge Fred for it.

Pippin:
If we're talking about Montague, I don't believe we have any canon on
whether he's younger than the Twins. The Lexicon guesses that he's
older than Draco, since Draco hadn't made Quidditch captain by his
fifth year. Hermione wonders whether someone should be told what
happened to Montague, which implicitly raises the question of whether
the Twins went too far -- usually the question of snitching doesn't
even arise. 

If we're talking about ganging up on Draco, McGonagall certainly
judges the Twins for that, so I don't see how you can say we're not
meant to. Arthur judges them for their attack on Dudley. 

In all these examples we can see two moral systems at work. 
The Twins  want to do what is correct, IMO, but they live in a world
of two moral cultures: that of the students and that of the adults.
The rewards of the student culture are more immediate, so they
generally do what the students would approve of, and never mind what
McGonagall or Molly thinks. But they wouldn't dream of doing anything
immoral by student standards: snitching, for example, or setting up
another student to take the fall for something that they did.

Their choices show what they are: children, not adults, despite their
ages.

I do think that by the end we're supposed to see Dudley as innately
moral, in the sense that he wants to behave correctly. His parents,
who refused to acknowledge his bullying, allowed him to  perceive his
behavior as correct. But he knew dimly that there was something not
right about this, as his overeating and constant destruction of his
own possessions show. He was a deeply unhappy child all along -- it
just took the dementors to make him realize it. 


> > >>zgirnius:
> > <snip>
> > This explains why Gryffindors are for the most part the heroes of
> > this story, by the way. All the characters have innate morality,
but this is a story of life-and-death struggle and danger...so the
brave characters who can cope with life and death stuff, come out
looking best.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Bravery is the end all, be all of JKR's moral ladder of worth in
this universe.  And Gryffindors (being the house of the brave) are 
> naturally on top. 

Pippin:
Gryffindor House idealizes bravery, so in a story about bravery,
everyone is measured against the ideals of Gryffindor, whether they
are Gryffindors or not. If JKR had wanted to champion creativity and
the pursuit of excellence, she might have made her heroes Slytherins
and judged everyone against the Slytherin ideal. 

But our society already puts a premium on those things, to the point
where  fame and fortune accrue  to the people who create excellent
stories about heroes rather than to heroes themselves <g>.

It's not that JKR is against creativity and excellence, IMO, it's just
that few in our society lack  encouragement to pursue them.  And
I believe she feels that people who pursue those ends to the exclusion
of others are likely to fall short ethically -- shorter than they
would if they were encouraged to value bravery too (not to mention
hard work, loyalty and wisdom.)  

But to claim an ideal is not to live up to it.

Gryffindors are  as likely to fall short of their ideal as anyone else
in canon, and of course you don't have to be a Gryffindor to be brave
in JKR's world -- consider all the wizards who are not sorted at all
because they aren't Hogwarts students. We meet two of them: Fleur and
Krum. They're not in Harry's class, of course,  but then, none of the
other Gryffindors are either. 


Betsy Hp:
> But it is a lack and it means a not-Gryffindor will never stand
equal  with a Gryffindor.  I think the best that can be a hoped for is 
> a "very nearly there".

Pippin:
Odd, then, that Harry ends by promoting Snape's bravery above Sirius's.
 
To claim that Snape, admired by  Slytherins to the end,  is so
apostate from Slytherin that he no longer counts  strikes me as
wanking, to say the least. In fact to buy into your analysis of the
story, I'd have to presume everything Harry thought or said from the
moment he emerged from the pensieve  in DH was insincere, and in a
character whose sincerity is so great that he couldn't learn even
basic occlumency, that's a leap even Buckbeak couldn't manage, IMO. 

> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Just to be clear, I've read what I've snipped.  You aren't being 
> ignored. <g>  But I disagree that you're providing examples of 
> special powers on Voldemort's part.  He's vicious and blunt and will 
> use the magic all wizards have to the fullest extent of his ability, 
> no matter what they may do to his victims.  But there's not
something  so uniquely different about his powers that it explains why
the WW  had no choice but to cave to his appearance and await a
"special  hero" to save them.

Pippin:
It's the combination of his powers that's unique. He has the
theoretical dark arts knowledge of Quirrell, the charisma of Lockhart,
the shrewdness of Pettigrew, the acting ability of Barty Jr, the
ruthlessness of Umbridge, the magical ability and practical skills of
Snape, and, dare I say it, the will to power of the young Albus
Dumbledore. He's a perfect storm, a hundred year flood, a confluence
of talents none of which is unique in themselves but which in 
total are more than formidable, even when he's sacrificed most of his
charisma to the powers of the horcruxes. At least until he
overreaches. I don't know think that happens too soon. I wasn't really
aware that he was breaking down until he started punishing  people for
the theft of the cup (perhaps that was when he began to feel the EW
couldn't do all he expected of it. Peter Pettigrew had managed to kill
twelve people with a single spell, why not LV?)

Betsy Hp:
 As of DH, I think only his viciousness remained as a real 
> part of his nature.  Which I found actually lessened him as a 
> villain.  He was reduced to a thug, more willing to be a thug than 
> all the thugs surrounding him.  Which, yes, thugs can be scary but
it  doesn't take all that much to take them down.  And they rarely (if 
> ever? I can't think of any) achieve world domination.

Pippin:
And that's the inevitable result of Voldemort's ruthlessness. Barty,
Lockhart and Umbridge make the same mistake, and IMO, for the same
reason. They can be as ruthless as they are because they have no
interior censor -- none of them  ever lost a moment of sleep to a
troubled conscience. All we ever hear them worry about is not getting
caught. But let them feel that's no longer a threat, and they are soon
impaled on their own swords --- they lack  the emotional need to
hesitate, to dwell on what might go wrong, so they don't. Give
 'em enough rope, as the saying is, and they'll hang themselves. 


I think this is the reason that Harry's victories depend so much on
luck. It's fine to be clever and resourceful and  take advantage
of the enemy's mistakes, but he still has to make them. It would be a
lie to say that   cleverness and resourcefulness will always be enough
to keep you alive till that happens. JKR can't promise that, only that
if people are willing to "fight what seems to be a losing battle"
against this kind of evil, someone will be able to defeat it
eventually -- but there's no guarantee that person will survive.  

It didn't have to be Harry, but it had to be someone who would do what
he did -- go on in the face of despair and with no hope for himself.
Could it have been a group instead of a single person? Of course, but
since it's the emotional readiness for this fight that concerns JKR,
it's more easily explored through one mind. 

Pippin