To kill or not to kill and resolutions of the storylineWAS :Re: Disarming spell

[lealess]

No: HPFGUIDX 185493

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie"
<sistermagpie at ...> wrote:
> Magpie:
> I didn't think the Slytherin's resolution was that new either. I 
> mean, yeah, there are a lot of books where the houses would have come 
> together, but once you realize that the Slytherins are just bad guys 
> there's nothing new about them crawling away in defeat. There were no 
> orcs that came to the side of the Fellowship, no storm troopers who 
> switched sides in Star Wars. I believe the only Tellamarine who 
> switched sides in Narnia was the Prince who rather did it
> Snape-style.
> 
> The Avatar ending too, I agree, wraps things up with the same kind of 
> closures. They do it different ways (Ozai de-powered instead of dead; 
> Azula locked up and insane instead of dead) but they're hitting the 
> same points: the heroes triumph while being true to their better 
> ideals as laid out in the text. 
> 
> -m
>

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the storytellers didn't spend a lot of
story time on orcs or storm troopers the way JKR gave names and back
stories and fun scenes to Slytherin students.  She made the Slytherins
compelling, perhaps inadvertently.  And as others have said, JKR also
seemed, through the Sorting Hat, to advocate the reconciliation of
Slytherin with other houses.  (I haven't read the Narnia books.)

Generally in these types of stories, there is a spectacular and
highly-placed bad guy who heroically changes sides. The rest are
faceless pawns. Avatar specifically brought out the good in conflicted
characters (Zuko most of all) on the screen and disempowered the
overly bad characters.  In HP, the Slytherins most conflicted (Draco
and Snape) were ambiguously redeemed *while* being disempowered, the
boo-hiss bad guys (Voldemort and Bellatrix) were killed, and the bulk
of the storm trooper-Slytherin students became faceless in the final
battle by not being there, except for Draco's orc buddies and
confusing Draco himself.  So, yes, JKR did it differently.  And
there's always Slughorn, the good one.

Here with the sensibility of a 10-year-old,

lealess