Ron WAS: Re: DH reread CH 4-5

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186324

Carol earlier:
> > <snip> 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. <snip>
> 
> Magpie:
> Yup, those choices to me are examples of right vs. easy, because it really is easy. Where as even in cases like Harry rescuing Ginny or the hostages or the stone or Sirius, I don't see the alternative as easy because it would drive Harry crazy. He'd be (in his mind) letting people die or handing over something to the bad guys. So it's just a clear choice of right and wrong, imo. Sometimes Harry even by-passes an easier but equally (or more) right choice because he's dealing with his own personal need to save people himself.
> 
> Like I said, it's not that I'm putting down any of these choices as not being as good as they would be if I saw them as right vs. easy. I just don't think that given the situation JKR created and the characters she created, that we see it very often. Except in some of these smaller moments like cheating on tests, where choosing "easy" is really no big deal. I see those choices as actually being easy because they really are, both to do them and to live with them.

Carol responds:
Ron's cheating on the Muggle driver's test falls into the same category, I think. Unfortunately, all these examples seem to work against the precept of "right vs. easy" since the good guys get away with the "easy" (and wrong) choice. (Part of making them human and imperfect, I realize, but it's rather disturbing that even with the Crucio--both easy and wrong, IMO--there are no consequences, intended or otherwise. Well, yeah, Amycus is knocked out, but Stupefy would have achieved the same results with no yielding to the temptation to inflict pain.)

The question is, do we see the theme or motif or whatever you want to call it of "right vs. easy" on a larger scale? I think we see it in Harry's choice to face Voldemort and seemingly certain death unarmed. We also see it, perhaps less clearly, in the choices Snape makes in HBP and DH, starting with the "easy" and wrong choice of becoming a Death Eater and the right but difficult choice of going to Dumbledore and spying for him and culminating in the "murder" of Dumbledore on the tower and its consequences. It would have been much easier to wriggle out of the promise to kill Dumbledore by refusing to take the Unbreakable Vow. It would have been much easier to stay in his office after Flitwick alerted him or to join the fight against the DEs,  regarded by the other Order members as a hero and DD's true man while Yaxley or Amycus killed DD. (Even if he died, killed by a DE or by the broken UV, such a death would have been easier than carrying out the terrible duty of killing Dumbledore and being viewed by his colleagues and future staff members as a traitor and murderer.) I don't think there's any question that he chose a difficult and painful path, culminating in a painful death, or that he was right to make that choice--IOW, that he chose what was right over what was easy. We see Wormtail making the opposite choice, choosing what's easy (first doing Voldemort's will in betraying the Potters and later, in PoA, returning to Voldemort) over what's right (which would have meant terrible punishment in either case). But serving Voldemort isn't always easy, either, as Wormtail discovers when he has to cut off his own hand and Draco discovers when he's faced with killing Dumbledore or forced to Crucio Thorfinn Rowle.

Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that JKR consistently maintains the "right vs. easy" view of morality in the books, or if she does so, the absence of consequences for "easy" choices undermines the motif. (Sure, Wormtail eventually gets his just desserts, but not as a direct consequence of betraying the Potters, and many other characters, most notably Dobby, don't deserve their deaths at all. Dobby does what's right and dies as a consequence.) Then, again, if doing the right thing always resulted in a reward and doing the wrong/easy thing always resulted in punishment, the book would be a moral fable and not a novel.

In the long run, I think that other themes/motifs are much more important, notably redemption and forgiveness. Without a wrong choice (easy or otherwise) to begin with, neither redemption nor forgiveness is possible.

Carol, just exploring the topic to see where it leads