Coming of Age in the Potterverse was Re: Dumbledore as shameless

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189034

 
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> Nikkalmati
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> JKR goes out of her way to show each of the good guys doing something wrong.  It can't be just a coincidence.  We see that James and Sirius were bullies.  She paints Lupin as a coward for going along with his friends and then in DH she has Harry berate Lupin for trying to abandon his family.  She shows DD has made mistakes as a youth through arrogance, but also that he creates a serious problem by putting on the ring which is the resurrection stone.  He is unable to resist it despite knowing it might be cursed.  He also states he could never allow himself to exercise the powere of the ministry.  Ron abandons his friends.  Hermione's bad acts have been discussed at length.  Now even Harry and McGonnagal cast Unforgivables.  I must assume she wants us to see that making bad choices and doing wrong things are part of human nature - no one is immune.

Pippin:
I think she also wants us to see that  the conventional fantasy universe, where "one step down the dark path and it will forever dominate your destiny" is a distortion of reality. There isn't really a progression between the selfish, cruel, greedy, power-hungry indifference of ordinary evil and the conscienceless behavior of a psychopath. No matter how many bad choices Crouch Sr. and Peter Pettigrew make they don't become like Voldemort, forever incapable of remorse.

 Tolkien and Lewis revived the heroic fantasy genre because they thought that the novel was inadequate to deal with the problem of evil in the modern world. How could individual character flaws account for an entire civilized nation going bad? So they re-introduced the idea of cosmic evil as  a force in human affairs and this idea has become embedded in the genre. I think it's this idea that JKR subverts.  

The hero of a conventional fantasy must realize that he is on the verge of becoming totally evil and make a choice that saves him (or, like Frodo Baggins, find that a past choice has made it possible for him to be saved.)  

For years we speculated about how this little drama would play out in the Potterverse. But, IMO, JKR always intended to show up the convention for what it was: a fiction that led us to sacrifice truth for clarity.

It took bad choices, but also the ability to make bad choices, to make  Voldemort what he was. Harry can choose not to restrain his hatred, but he can't easily quench his ability to love. And that makes a difference between him and Voldemort. 

I think it's why he fails at the cruciatus curse he aims at Bella. Though his wish to  avenge Sirius propels him to chase Bella down, he only tries to cruciate her when she mocks his love. He's angry, he hates her, but it's not the same as a desire for revenge.

 Harry does want revenge on Amycus. But he didn't use the cruciatus curse  because he was on the verge of becoming eeevil, he just lost his temper. And McGonagall is on the verge of panic when she Imperio's the Carrows, as Harry and Hermione were when they were in Gringotts.

 We don't know whether Dumbledore was panicking or  enraged when he used deadly force in the altercation with Grindelwald and his brother, but it's clear he lost control. What Dumbledore did was very wrong, but it didn't destroy his conscience, far from it. 

Carol said that Harry had crossed a line. But Harry crosses lines all the time. People in canon are always drawing lines and trying to make other people feel bad about crossing them. But no one is ever sorry because they crossed a line, only that the consequences aren't what they intended. And that's what's key.

Voldemort, Umbridge, Crouch Jr, Bella, Fenrir, Lockhart --  the really bad people in the Potterverse never feel sorry for  anything they've done, and no amount of pain or loss can make them do so. 

Pippin