Dumbledore WAS: Re: Love and Joy vs. Hate and Despair

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 190913

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, June Ewing <doctorwhofan02 at ...> wrote:
 
Alla:
> > June, the advice that always works if somebody finds somebody
> else's posts annoying, crap or whatever is not to read them. My
> interpretation of Dumbledore annoys you? That's fine, start the
> thread saying how great Dumbledore is, or do not read my posts.
> It always worked for me. There are plenty of topics which were
> discussed here which I never cared for, so I stayed away from
> > them. I however never called them "crap".
> 
>  
> June:
> No, my problem is (and the problem that just made someone leave
> the group) is that people are steering away from the subject and
> creating a new version of the books. The books have already been
> written. This is why I got sarcastic and said you should go back
> and read the book and pay attention. I don't know, maybe some
> people aren't understanding the books but Dumbledore was not
> trying to kill Harry. 

Geoff:
I have probably missed a lot of this thread because I have just 
returned from a holiday where I have had very limited access to the 
Net and only glanced in in  Main two or three times in ten days.

However, having been a member of this group for nearly eight years. 
I am fully aware, as many other long-term members are, that there 
are going to be threads and opinions which disagree; this really doesn't 
need us to get hot under the collar or start throwing bad language 
around, because that achieves nothing but further ill-feeling and a 
loss of the camaraderie which has existed among us for so long.

I think we are perhaps missing a very important point which has been 
evident in the books from the beginning: JKR has generally given us 
the version of events as seen by Harry and interpreted by him at the 
age he is at. Sometimes he has not got all of the facts or he sees 
something which he misunderstands; he perhaps takes someone's 
opinion as final without seeing a possible variation.

For example, in PS, he is catapulted almost violently into the Wizarding 
World. He meets Hagrid, who introduces him to his new home, Hagrid 
whose devotion to Dumbledore makes him paint him as an omnipotent 
and all-knowing wizard - which as we find out gradually in the books  - 
is not always true. Ron, who immediately instils into him a suspicion 
of Slytherins which leads to what I feel was the disastrous meeting 
between him and Draco.

There are many instances where Harry's conclusions do not fit the facts 
because he hasn't got them all and he sometimes is a little too quick on 
the trigger as when he is very quick to threaten Sirius at their first 
meeting because he believes he is facing his parents' murderer and isn't 
very willing to give him a chance to explain.

Looking at the current matter of Dumbledore, Harry is now seventeen. The 
naivety with which he faced the Wizarding World in PS where everything 
is black or white has been replaced by a healthy suspicion that there are a
lot of greys around the place. Already it is obvious that Dumbledore has his 
own skeletons in the cupboard. What we are seeing about Dumbledore 
wanting Harry dead is Harry's interpretation of the conversation he heard 
between Snape and Dumbledore in the Pensieve. 

'Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the 
office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, 
Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was 
to walk calmly into Death's welcoming arms'
(DH "The Forest Again" p.554 UK edition)

Harry's misunderstanding arose from what he had heard said to Snape. I 
believe that Dumbledore said this to Snape because he might  otherwise 
have given something away to Voldemort which would have alerted him 
and did not expect that Harry would become privy to this but would 
perhaps see for himself what had to be done.

Dumbledore makes it clearer later to Harry in King's Cross:
'(Harry)"Why did you have to make it so difficult?"
Dumbledore's smile was tremulous.
"I am afraid that I counted on Miss Granger to slow you up, Harry. I was 
afraid that your hot head would dominate your good heart. I was scared 
that, if presented outright with the facts about those tempting objects, 
you might seize the Hallows as I did, at the wrong time, for the wrong 
reasons. If you laid hands on them I wanted you to possess them safely. 
You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek 
to run away from Death."
(DH "King's Cross" p. 577, UK edition)

Harry could not have been told these things earlier because he would have 
been too young to understand and accept them.

One of JKR's great skills is to show us that there is not one character who 
is infallible or who can be diverted from their path by circumstances or 
the influence of others; not even Voldemort. They are like us; I see myself 
in many ways like Harry when I look back at events in my life and my 
actions about them: sometimes biased, misunderstood, rash....

I am afraid that I do not subscribe to the view you express "that people 
are steering away from the subject and creating a new version of the 
books". With more and more story emerging, each character is being 
fleshed out in greater depth and we see that many of them do not have a 
simple agenda but are influenced more subtly.

On that subject and digressing for a moment, I haven't yet seen film 8 - 
only several trailers, but I already have suspicions that, like films 6 and 7, 
something I personally term the "David Yates Syndrome" seems to be 
emerging where there is an element of diverting and altering the story which 
is affecting the main plotline and with which I haven't always concurred. 
But that is not what has happened in the past and is happening now where 
members of this group are using the greater depth of characterisation 
provided by JKR for analysis and discussion. As has been said, we don't 
have to read a thread if we don't like it. I, for one, have studiously avoided 
threads about Snape because I don't like him as a character - and still don't!