Ron WAS: Re: DH reread CH 4-5

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186316


> > Pippin:
> > If JKR made it easy for the characters to form new habits,  there'd be less challenge in doing what's right rather than what is easy. They'd just have to keep doing the right thing until it got easy for them. That works for some of the characters some of the time, but IMO JKR is more interested in what happens when it doesn't work.
> 
> 
> Magpie:
> Actually, I think there's already zero challenge to do that because that's never really an issue for anybody. (Although I can think of some cases where they face right vs. easy and choose easy with no bad effects.)

Pippin:
Do you think it was easy for Ron to resist the horcrux? 

He doesn't perceive it as an issue of right vs easy because no one actually in the process of a moral decision can frame it that way. Once you've labeled one of your options as right, the moral decision is over. You've  decided what you ought to do, though you may fail to find the courage or the will to do it. 

When the consequences of choosing easy over right are immediate, obvious and dire, there's no chance of falling into evil habits or turning a blind eye. Crabbe will never use fiendfyre again. But  bad consequences  aren't always immediately apparent to the perpetrator or the witnesses, which is IMO why Dumbledore offered us another way to judge between good and evil. 

It isn't easy for the characters  to summon all their resources of courage, will and trust, although some of them have  those qualities in enviable amounts. If they make a choice that  doesn't require that, if it's easy and self-indulgent, and most especially if it requires more effort to justify than it did to perform, then it's  wrong, by the standards of canon, whether we get to see the bad consequences or not. 

Harry's crucio and many of his other actions are condemned by the excuses he made for them. He doesn't make excuses when he's done something to be proud of.

Pippin