[HPforGrownups] Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)

[Lee Kaiwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 183515

I've a nagging feeling I'm misreading you here; maybe I'm sparring with 
windmills.

Carol:
JKR had every right as an author to kill off characters in the
way she saw fit and to bring in the Deathly Hallows, in particular the
Elder Wand, just as we as readers have every right to wish that we
hadn't. What we can't do, however, is to judge such authorial
decisions as flaws in the books comparable to the various Flints and
inconsistencies, which *are* errors

CJ:
If by "not comparable to" Flints, et alia, you mean "of a qualitative 
difference with", I'd agree. One would certainly not want to compare a 
structural flaw with a minor math error.

However -- and this is where I may be flailing at phantoms -- I read you 
as saying we're not allowed to judge them as flaws. Full stop. I think 
as readers we have every right to judge whether an authorial decision as 
significant as the introduction of a major plot line succeeds or fails 
literarily. Of course, Flints and math errors are relatively easily 
corrected in future editions. Structural integrity (or lack thereof) is 
much more difficult.

> Carol, who thinks that to some extent both the Hallows and the
> Horcruxes are McGuffins

Not that you don't already know what a MacGuffin is, but as a point of 
reference, Wikipedia says a MacGuffin is "a plot device that motivates 
the characters or advances the story.... Its importance is accepted by 
the story's characters, but it does not actually have any effect on the 
story."

More succinctly, movies.ign.com defines a MacGuffin as, "the object that 
drives the story forward and is of vital important to both the heroes 
and villains even if the specifics of the object itself remain obscure 
or are unimportant." (http://movies.ign.com/articles/875/875339p1.html)

As to the Deathly Hallows, I've argued that they the plot not at all; 
rather the opposite. Whether they motivate the characters is perhaps 
also questionable. They seem to motivate Harry to not much more than a 
few unremarkable angst-filled months of indecision. Their effect on DD 
seems to be more significant, at least insofar as they provide the 
catalyst for introducing readers to his backstory. But how important 
that was in terms of driving the story is a question to be discussed.

The horcruxes are where I get confused. Certainly they're more 
significant in the driving-the-plot sense. But the fact that they 
contain pieces of LV's soul hardly seems an obscure or unimportant 
factoid in light of the fact that LV's demise and how to accomplish it 
*is* pretty much the plot.

OTOH, movies.ign.com lists Sauron's One Ring -- and what is the Ring, 
after all, if not the ultimate horcrux? -- as one of the top ten movie 
MacGuffins of all time, so perhaps there's something I'm not 
understanding about this "does not actually have any effect on the plot" 
stuff.

--CJ