Beedle the Bard SPOILERS The Warlock and his hairy heart

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 185169

> Alla wrote:
>
> So, the Beedle. I really love fairy tales and honestly, for me it 
was 
> no question whether to buy them or not, because even if they would 
> not have added anything to HP World, I could not wait to see how 
good 
> JKR is at fairy tales writing.
> 
> Honestly, from the retelling of the Three brothers tale in DH I was 
> not much impressed by it. I mean, no scratch that, I thought it fit 
> very well in the story and advanced it, however the story on its 
own 
> was a bit blah and so what for my taste.
> 
> After reading the Beedle, the tale of three brothers is still my 
> least favorite of the five tales. However, boy I think JKR can 
write 
> a fairy tale very well and even make them original enough. I mean, 
of 
> course I do not think she created the wheel here, of course not, 
but 
> to me she made those tales fresh and exciting enough.

> 
> Take Warlock and its Hairy heart for example. When I started 
reading 
> this tale I was thinking oh, it reminds me of "A Heart of Stone" by 
> Gauf (spelling?) where young Peter Munk due to his own idiocy and 
> succumbing to gambling addiction in essense gives up his heart and 
> ends up with stone one.

a_svirn:
They are original only in the sense that the imagery is straight out 
of the Harry Potter world. But plot-wise and "moral-wise", so to 
speak, they are quite ordinary and bland. Babbity-rabbity, for 
instance, seems to be derivative from the "Emperor's clothes" – it's 
like Andersen set in the Potterverse.  As for the "Hairy Heart", I am 
with Dumbledore on that one: the whole thing seems like a rerun of 
the Horcrux theme (or vice versa) – the search of invulnerability at 
the expense of humanity. It reminds me not so much of "A Heart of 
Stone", but of ye good olde Kaschei the Immortal. 

I think the best part of the book is actually Dumbledore's 
commentary, and the best part of the commentary is its sloppiness and 
patent insincerity. The latter is especially manifest in his notes on 
the Hollows and particularly on the Elder Wand. He writes something 
to the effect that The Wand awe-inspiring reputation is manifestly at 
variance with its own history. And yet, we know that not only he 
craved it as a boy, but he actually claimed it after defeating 
Grindenwald – so he doesn't seem to have listend to his own advice. 
Or he thought it applies to anyone, but himself. 

It seems to me that Rowling became somewhat obsessed with Dumbledore 
in the last two HP books, and "Tales" is simply another way to 
revisit that character. Certainly, his "notes" provide a fascinating 
insight into the sheer convolution of his way of reasoning – the 
depth of soul-searching and self-deception behind the bland and 
clichéd "and the moral of this story is
." 

a_svirn.