Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character/Now Rowling's control

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 180688

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > <snip>
> > I never got the sense that Voldemort could have succeeded as he   
> > did in the RW, so it wasn't even creepy in an "informing on real 
> > life" kind of way.  

> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
> Alla has answered  in regard to Stalinist Russia but I'll add that 
> the same thing happened with Nazi Germany. People not directly     
> involved did not realize the scope of what was happening.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I'm fairly confident that if you were Jewish and/or a member of a 
resistance cell and/or living in the heart of your country (ie 
Berlin) you knew.  Harry was all three and personally acquainted with 
all three.  Look how much trouble JKR had to go through to get Harry 
*out* of the way: killing his owl and tucking him away in the woods.  
She purposefully arranged things to give Voldemort the least amount 
of creep-factor.  Which is an odd choice for a story-teller, IMO.

> >>Pippin:
> > Both were freed from evil and slavery, which is what             
> > redemption means. 
> > <snip>

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > Hm, I'd say Snape died a slave, honestly.  He certainly wasn't   
> > his own man.  And I don't think Draco was ever really freed       
> > either.

> >>Pippin:
> Snape was pretending to be Voldemort's slave, and when his role
> required him to die, he did, or so it seems. But you mean his       
> service to Dumbledore, don't you?
> There seems to be this idea that voluntary service is a form of
> slavery, which I don't  understand. Are you imagining a completely
> non-hierarchical society? 

Betsy Hp:
I'd been imagining a thinker.  Instead I got a man totally controlled 
by guilt without a thought towards what and why.  I didn't feel like 
Snape volunteered for Dumbledore, instead he was an emotionally 
crippled puppet.  So yes, no free man there, IMO.

> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
> In what way is Draco not free? 

Betsy Hp:
He's still a Slytherin living in a Gryffindor controlled world, as 
his nod towards Harry showed.  (In this world, all the children know 
the Slytherin dolls are ugly.)  So again, not a free man, IMO.

The catch, the ugly truth, is that Harry is not free either.  He's as 
firmly bound by the chains he sacrificed to maintain as those on the 
bottom.  (It's why such societies inevitably erupt into violence, 
IMO.  Such imbalance cannot hold.)

> >>Betsy Hp: 
> > But, in a deeper sense, the WW is still embroiled in evil and 
> > slavery.

> >>Pippin:
> It is now being led by a man who not only believes in basic
> rights for Muggles but actually  knows  enough about them to
> successfully work among them.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I'm suspecting this is a Kingsly reference?  That's not really canon 
is it?  I thought this was just an interview bone JKR threw out at 
one point.  In either case, since Harry's actions didn't even push 
the WW in the right direction (he really was all about restoring the 
status quo, I thought, making life comfortable for *him*) I'm not 
putting any stock into any actions Kingsly might or might not take at 
some future, non-existent to the series, date.

> >>Pipppin:
> Slavery still existed after the American Revolution, but I wouldn't 
> say there was no progress in human rights over the previous regime.

Betsy Hp:
True, but slavery had been discussed (tabled only so that the US 
could win the war) and movement was made (ditto women's rights, I 
believe).  What Harry did was the equivalent of helping the red-coats 
prevail.  Harry *restored* he didn't revolutionize.  IMO, anyway. <g>

> >>Alla:
> Please tell me if I am wrong, but you pretty much said yes to
> Pippin's question that you wanted Snape and Draco to be coredeemers
> with Harry, no? So that would be a fair summary to say that the
> characters you wished to take central stage together with Harry did
> not take the central stage ( although I thought Snape took it pretty
> central, maybe not as central as Harry, but of course matter of
> opinion). What does it have to do with merits of the books again?

Betsy Hp:
That JKR chose to not have Harry deal with the antagonists the series 
*had* been setting up, and instead tried to shoe-horn in two 
replacements that failed utterly, IMO.

For six books, I'd say the Slytherin question was just that: the 
question.  But the seventh book decided the real question was, just 
who is Dumbledore, anyway?  I had never wondered, quite frankly.  And 
though his story was semi-interesting, it had little to do with Harry 
or how Harry perceived himself.

I mean, yes I'd have found the story *much* more interesting if Snape 
and Draco had played central roles (that rushed by chapter does not a 
central role make, IMO), and of course that's personal.  But I also 
think it goes towards the merits of the book itself because JKR 
pulled a cheat, IMO.  She failed to answer the question she'd asked.  
So her young hero ended up quite flat and childish and her story 
ended up... well, quite flat and childish. <bg>  IMO, of course.

Betsy Hp