Prophecies and Chosen Ones

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 186800

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Zara" <zgirnius at ...> wrote:
>
> > Alla:
> > But I cannot help but think that Rick Riordan did way better job with the Prophecy by introducing excellent excellent twist at the end. Because seriously, I do know that Prophecy is a widespread device of the genre, but with all the talk of subverting it, transforming it, with the use of this plot device I quite honestly saw nothing of the sort.
> > 
> >  Were you initially disappointed when prophecy was introduced? Were you happy how Prophecy played out?
> 
> Zara:
> I cannot address how Riordan used a prophecy as I have not read his series. But Rowling did try to fool us and throw in a twist. Did you know Harry was not going to die? The Prophecy, after all, does not state that Harry is the one who WILL defeat Voldemort, just that he has the power to do so. Perhaps it was by letting Voldemort kill him, his Zfinal Horcrux. ;-)
> 
> It did not fool me, but I did not worry much about the Prophecy and it was not the source of my certainty.

Montavilla47:

The whole fun of having a prophecy in a story is having it come true in an
unexpected way.  For example, the prophecies about Macbeth promised that
he was safe until Birnum Wood came to Dunsinane (I apologize if I'm 
misspelling any of that), and that "none of woman born" could harm him.

Of course, we get the wood coming to Dunsinane in an entirely unexpected
way, and we have Macduff's story of being "untimely ripped" from his 
mother's womb.

And then there's Oedipus, whose parents try to kill him to avoid his
prophecy, only to create the conditions for the prediction to come true.

I would have liked to have an explanation for the prophecy--because
it only works if you use the word "live" to mean "live a full, happy life."
And it only works for Harry, because Harry's the one who has to get 
rid of Voldemort before he can start enjoying things like snogging.  

Except for getting paged all the time by his Death Eaters, Voldemort's
existence post-GoF would have been much the same whether or not
Harry was alive.  He was having a high time killing people and taking 
over the world.