Lack of re-examination (was:Re: Secrets (Long) OLD POST REPOST)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 186533

> >>Betsy Hp:
>> Honestly, that the books don't obligate readers to go back and re-examine things like that is a reason I'm so squirmy about them.  

> >>Pippin:
> The books  force you to re-read in order to understand the plot twists. 
> If you're at all into the books,  even vaguely curious, you're going to go back to see if you should have spotted any clues that Fake!Moody was a DE -- and whoa! there he is, torturing people. Do we really need Harry to say, wow, I should have known then? If he did, we wouldn't have to go back and look for the clues, and that wouldn't be nearly so much fun.
><snip>

Betsy Hp:
Going back to the post that inspired this one, as Montavilla47 pointed out, not every reader is going to enjoy going back for a reread.  I think JKR would have been asking too much of her young readers if she expected them to do as much.  So I think it was a bad writing choice if that was indeed her intention.

But as far as Harry not re-examining so that I'd be forced to, I'm not made squirmy about it on *my* account.  It's Harry that I'm bothered about.  Yes, I *do* expect him to have a "wow I should have known" moment.  Because he gleefully watched an adult mistreat a schoolboy.  Sure he had his reasons at the time, and they may have well been valid (sometimes it's nice to watch people you dislike get smeared).  But learning that it was a DE he'd watched?  That should have caused some sort of reaction. (It certainly caused a reaction in me. *g*)

> >>Pippin:
> The point of right vs easy is that moral awareness can take  effort even from people who are instinctively generous and protective. Just because Harry's instincts are admirable most of the time doesn't mean that they're admirable all the time. IMO, JKR wants to make us realize that it's the same for us as readers. Usually we know right away when our heroes are doing the right thing and when they're not. But not always. 

Betsy Hp:
But I *did* pick up on this.  It was kind of red-banner as far as I was concerned. That's what makes me squirmy.  Not that Harry missed small things, he missed *massive* things.  At least as per me.  *I* thought about the implications of Neville being alone in the classroom with the man who tortured his parents to madness at a time when he was emotionally vulnerable.  I thought about it, and thought about it, and the books never dealt with it at all.  In fact they go the opposite way and have one of Neville's classmates praise that DE in front of him.

> >>Pippin:
> IMO, JKR's goal isn't to make us want to be moral. She thinks (as a liberal must) that most of us want to be moral already. She wants to show us that moral awareness can be tougher than we think. Since she doesn't want to preach, she leaves it up to us to decide whether it's worth the effort.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I don't share your opinion about JKR's goals.  What I get from the books is that there are good people and bad people and that's that.   (Frankly, the books don't strike me as all that moral.  I think there's a missing strain of goodness within them and that they're too heavily revenge oriented. But that's strictly my opinion.)

I will say, I don't recall Harry ever struggling with his own moral awareness.  *That's* what I was missing.  There was such a good opportunity if he'd re-thought what Crouch, Jr. did to Draco, but he didn't.  And that's because JKR chose not to write it.  Which means she wasn't inviting the reader to re-think it with him.  When I re-thought it I felt I was working against the book, not hand in hand with it.

> >>Pippin:
> The WW may take centuries to work out that it was wrong to enslave the Elves, just as our culture took centuries to work out that it was wrong to enslave other humans.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Totally off-topic here, but... One more example of the vast superiority of the Muggle world over the Wizard!  We figured it out *ages* ago, and the Wizards haven't even gotten to first base!  (Maybe they need more Quakers? *tongue firmly in cheek*)


> >>Pippin:
> Snape made it very plain with his disgusting pictures in HBP.
> This is what you're fighting, he says  -- the things that enslave and torture and kill. And I was shocked to re-read that, because I too had believed the Dark Arts were poorly defined in canon. But they're really not. It's just that the definition doesn't fit into our familiar little fictional mythology of good guys and bad guys.

Betsy Hp:
Doesn't it?  "Don't support that which enslaves, tortures or kills" sounds pretty familiar to me. :)  (I'm rewatching "Batman Begins" as I type. A moment when Bruce separates himself from the villain?  When he makes clear, "I'm not an executioner."  \o/ Long live Batman!)

> >>Pippin:
> I was expecting a definition of what the bad guys do and the good guys don't. But that's not it. They are something that people have to fight, period. As Snape tells Draco, it's childish to think that you won't have to fight them if you're on their side. And, as the books demonstrate, it's also childish to think that you'll be prevented from using them if you're not on their side.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
You won't be prevented and, if you're a good guy, you don't have to re-think it if you *do* use it. Which yes, doesn't fit in with my "little fictional mythology of good guys and bad guys".  Again, it's why I'm squirmy about these books.  (I'm old-fashioned in that I see the "mythology of good guys and bad guys" as neither "little" nor strictly "fictional".  There's a lot that's foundational and instructive to real-life issues in those sort of mythologies.  It's why they're still told, I think.)

> >>Pippin:
> What I see is  sinful people who think it's worth the effort to try to be virtuous, to try to stop people from hurting each other,  against sinful people who think it isn't. 

Betsy Hp:
But Pippin, that's my whole point.  Harry didn't try and stop Fake!Moody from hurting Draco.  On the contrary, he enjoyed the show.  And even after learning that it was actually a particularly sadistic DeathEater doing the hurting, he didn't re-think that fact that he enjoyed seeing that sadism in action.  It obviously wasn't worth the effort.

> >>Pippin:
> Are you saying it was authorial sloppiness that Fake!Moody was an effective teacher?  Didn't Mussolini made the trains run on time? Do  horrible people have to be shown as horrible at everything they do? 

Betsy Hp:
I'd like to think that if I were standing next to Simon Wiesenthal I wouldn't praise Hitler's building of the Autobahn.  So yeah, I'd prefer to think JKR was merely sloppy there.  (And I honestly do think the moral issues I have with the series have more to do with JKR not thinking some things through rather than personal moral flaws on her part.)

Betsy Hp