Ron WAS: Re: DH reread CH 4-5

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186320

Magpie wrote:
> So we're talking about Ron's decision to leave? Because like I said, for me right vs. easy needs to be heavy on the easy. Iow, the "easy" choice is just that. I don't think it was easy for Ron to leave Harry and Hermione. It was easier than fighting the Horcrux, maybe, but Ron Weasley is committed to his friends and fighting Voldemort. He's been doing it since he was 11. So I just can't see walking away from them as an easy choice for Ron. He did it in an angry moment and then wanted to go back. I don't consider "seems easier in the moment" to work--it has to really be easy. Which is why yeah, I can see how we can apply that to this situation, but it's not one that I think illustrates it very well. Saying it's about giving up or giving in to dark impulses or not fighting anymore--that works for me. But I don't see a tempting, easy path with no bad consequences waiting for Ron when he walks away so that the *only* reason for Ron to stick around is because it is right.
> 
> I know I'm taking a very narrow, strict view of that phrase, but I think that's necessary to really say we're illustrating it. Especially if Ron had been in his right mind, there would be a lot of things to make leaving Harry and Hermione a difficult choice. The way this story is set up there's not really a lot of places JKR can set that kind of choice up for the good guys to have to choose easy over right since so much is at stake for them.

Carol responds:
Interesting perspective, Magpie. I wonder if we've been taking "right vs. easy" beyond its original context and applying it when JKR was thinking in more conventional terms (right vs. wrong or hard vs. easy). It seems to me, off the top of my head, that Harry and Ron both choose to do what's easy rather than what's right when it comes to homework, whether it's inventing dreams for Trelawney or using the Prince's potions hints and letting Slughorn think that Harry is the Potions genius. Harry does the opposite--what he thinks is right vs. the "easy" (or easier) route taken by the other champions--in choosing to rescue hostages other than his own. (Obviously, the other contestants weren't *wrong*--the "victims weren't really going to drown--but certainly they didn't go out of their way and put themselves in danger the way he did. Then again, maybe that was just easy vs. hard! Same with going after "Snape" in SS/PS. He did what he thought was right and knew was hard. The easy way out (letting "Snape" get the stone or trusting DD to stop him) would have been wrong to Harry. And certainly, CoS, in which it really *would* have been wrong not to try to find the Chamber and rescue Ginny, reinforces this view. OTOH, skipping PoA at least for the moment, going after Sirius Black was, again, mistaking the hard thing for the right thing. (The easy choice, doing nothing, would have left Sirius alive and the DEs waiting for a mission that never came.)

In the case we're discussing--Ron storming out and "deserting" his friends--I agree that we can't categorize it quite so simply. IMO, he lost his temper under the influence of the Horcrux (combined with frustration, his own magnified insecurities, and a shortage of food) and walked out without thinking of the consequences. The moment he cooled off, he discovered that he couldn't come back and soon or immediately (I forget which), he was caught by Snatchers, a wholly unintended consequence. And he couldn't go home in any case, since he was supposedly suffering from Spattergroit, the whole point of which pretense was to allow him to be with Harry. It's not as if he really had the choice to just go home and give up or as if he really wanted to make that "easy" choice (which would also have been a wrong choice, as I think he knows). 

I agree with you that Ron could not and would not have made that choice. He wants to fight Voldemort, too, and the absence of any progress since the finding of the locket Horcrux is part of what's making him miserable.

At any rate, I don't think we're dealing with "right vs. easy" here, or even with straightforward right vs. wrong. I think we're dealing with the unintended consequences of Ron's (hasty and hot-headed) choice, one of which is being in exactly the right place at the right time to follow the silver doe, and rescue Harry, retrieve the sword, and destroy the Horcrux, which, IMO, he is "meant" to do (it's a highly symbolic and personal act for him as it would not have been for Harry), but "meant" in a sense that Dumbledore, who anticipated his leaving, could not have realized. (Maybe it's only "meant" or intended by the author, but, as it plays out, there's a sense of fate or destiny. (I keep hearing Gandalf's voice saying that Bilbo was *meant* to find the ring and that Frodo, also, was *meant* to have it.)

Carol, noting to Potioncat that her newly activated spell check suggested "Sandalwood's" for "Gandalf's" and "smolders" for "Voldemort"