Resolutions/Ron's Cloak/Slytherins are Bad

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 183506

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
>  
> > Montavilla47:
> 
> > 
> > As an example, let's take the House Elves.  Because she ends the
> series  with her hero perfectly happy owning a slave, I tend to  think
> JKR confused her "slavery is bad" message, and that the real message
> ended up being, "slavery is only bad if you abuse your authority as a
> slave owner."
> 
> Pippin:
> But is that a real message? Nobody that I know of has actually felt
> swayed to that belief by the books. No character in the novel wants
> less freedom than he or she has. Even Voldemort's most willing
> servants expect to win more freedom, not less. No reader that I know
> of feels Kreacher's lot was happier than Dobby's, though Kreacher
> lives and Dobby dies.

Montavilla47:
The point isn't that people would be swayed to that belief.  Obviously,
most people don't own slaves--well, that they'd admit to.  There was
a case in the last few years about a group of East Indian workers who
were held in virtual slavery in Texas.  The "employer" confiscated their
passports and kept them in a barracks, feeding them rotten food
and paying less than they were charged for room and board.

What's subversive about it is that it allows the audience to become
very comfortable with the idea of slavery as a positive arrangement.

Why it's worth pointing out is that the message is more powerful
when it isn't directly stated.  When it's simply, as it were, part of 
the background.  

Pippin:
> There's a famous painting called "The Treachery of Images" in which a
> realistically painted tobacco pipe floats in space above the words (in
> French) "This is not a pipe." On one level the words read as false.
> But on another level they are true: you're not really looking at a
> pipe, it's a painting of a pipe. The artist subverts the conventions
> of genre in order to show how convention shapes what we see.
> 
> JKR does the same thing. Epic heroes are supposed to represent all the
> values of their culture. Harry is instantaneously recognizable as an
> epic hero, but he's doing something people in our culture aren't
> supposed to do. It creates a cognitive dissonance, and reminds us that
> Harry is not a real hero, he's a fictional one. But it also reminds us
> that if he were a real hero, we would be unwise to expect  him to be
> morally flawless. The image of a hero is not a hero. 

Montavilla47:
That only works if we recognize that the image of the hero isn't a 
hero.  I'm not sure that most people actually do realize it.  

Especially because we lose Snape in the last book.  He was a
useful character for pointing out where Harry came up short in 
the hero department.  

McGonagall is only briefly taken back when Harry uses an
Unforgivable curse and she immediately uses another one 
herself.  She's the only person who is even slightly thrown
by it.

Whether by accident or design, we are left in the last book
with no conscience at all.  And there's nothing in the book
to prevent us from cheering along with everyone else
when Harry tortures Amycus.  Indeed, many readers have
stated that they did.

Pippin:
> It's not the evil characters we're asked to forgive. It's the good
> ones, for not measuring up to our ideal of goodness. And it's not the
> crimes of the evil characters we must pardon, but ourselves for seeing
> more evil in them than was there. 

Montavilla47:
Where in the book are we asked to forgive the good characters?
Other than Dumbledore, who is dead anyway?

Pippin:
> Snape is right at the cusp of this: readers who expected him to be
> good found that he wasn't as good as they hoped he would be. Readers
> who wanted him to be evil discovered that he wasn't as evil as they
> thought.
> 
> Who do you think Anne Frank was talking about when she said people
> were basically good? Didn't she mean that people were only cooperating
> with evil because they were frightened and misled,  inflamed against
> the innocent or desperate to help the people they loved? How is that
> different from Draco? Or Snape? 

Montavilla47:
Exactly, Pippin.  That's who she was talking about and probably what
she meant.  But isn't part of her story that given half a chance people
will do what good they can?

The problem I have with Draco's story is that it's left so ambiguous 
that you can easily say that Draco tries to do good and can't, or tries
to do bad while being pathetically incompetent, or doesn't try to do
anything at all.

I'm sure that was JKR's intention.  So, I'm going to be unfair and 
say I didn't like her authorial choice.