CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 12: The Pat

[Margaret Fenney]

No: HPFGUIDX 189942

> 2. Why wasn't Harry's happy memory in this chapter enough to 
> produce a corporeal Patronus?

bookcrazzzy:

The memory was based on a negative - his desire to leave the 
Dursleys.  He did not yet know what Hogwarts was or what it 
would come to mean to him and the "goodness" of the memory was 
in being relieved of an onerous home rather than a positive 
event.  There was no true joy, love or achievement in the memory.

> 3. If Dementor can suck a person's soul from them, does it mean 
> that Potterverse does not believe in souls' immortality? If a 
> Dementor dies somehow, would the soul be released? Lupin tells 
> Harry that a soul is gone forever, lost. Where is it lost in 
> your opinion?

bookcrazzzy:

JKR has said that Dementors are her expression of what she 
experienced when suffering from clinical depression so I think 
that the Dementor's kiss is what she sees as the end result of 
such depression if no relief is achieved and yet life goes on - 
a life without soul.  A depression of such breadth and depth 
that joy, caring, love, achievement and all else that is good 
in life is of no importance or relevance.  I don't think it is 
a matter of theology, at least in terms of what JKR was thinking 
when she developed this part of the story.  I have myself 
experienced clinical depression and it is as though you are 
literally unable to feel good feelings no matter what you do.  
It is no wonder and certainly no irrational that people who have 
been clinically depressed for some time wonder if life is worth 
living, given the seemingly low likelihood of relief.  It is 
similar in some ways to the first part of grieving for a very 
close loved one for those who have had that experience rather 
than clinical depression.  It is difficult to express but my 
past experience makes the Dementor's Kiss viscerally 
understandable.

Setting JKR's depression aside and looking at it theologically 
is interesting though.  Voldemort loses his body but is still 
"alive" and can lose additional bodies without losing life so 
long as a horcrux remains. What does the horcrux really do?  
Does it keep the soul alive or does it keep it in this world?  
In other words, is the horcrux making Voldemort "immortal" or 
is the soul immortal and the horcrux keeps the soul in the
material world?  I haven't any conclusion about this, just 
throwing out some more, hopefully relevant, fodder.

P.S.  This is my first post and I'm glad to be here.  I have 
enjoyed reading the posts.