The Overarching message - Caning + Mind Reading, of sorts

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 191672

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, sigurd at ... wrote:

Otto:
> Let's make one thing clear,
> 
> Not to be boorish about it, but there is no such thing as the Wizarding World.

Geoff:
I subscribe to that and that is why there are times when I am not 
sure whether to laugh or cry when members set out on long threads
involving the academic. moral and political dissection of JKR's world.

This has happened  before on numerous occasions and, for me at 
least, it removes something of the pleasure of going into literary worlds 
other than our own, imaginary worlds such as Middle Earth, the 
Wizarding World or the 24th century (imaginary at the present moment).

Almost from the publication of the last LOTR volume when I was a 
teenager, I have immersed myself in the world of Middle Earth with 
a "willing suspension of disbelief" to enjoy the journey through the 
story without needing to analyse everyone's last thought. OK, 
Sauron was a vicious, power-hungry dark lord who was amoral and 
without love. There were questionable characters on the "good" side 
whose actions left them open to question, from Wormtongue to 
Denethor to Saruman for example. But the reader can be caught up 
and swept along in the great events of the Third Age without 
spending hours agonising over, for example, Boromir's failures

I have for a long time been a Star Trek fan and many of my remarks 
in the last paragraph apply here also. There are alien races such as 
the Klingons and the Dominion who appear to belong to the baddie 
side with their desire for conquest and their view of the cheapness of 
life. On the good side, Roddenberry was accused of believing in a 
squeaky clean Earth where there was no poverty, everyone worked 
together in harmony. And yet I am prepared to out aside an analysis 
of the interactions of various individuals or cultures as it is that 
interaction which often drives the story. Interestingly, I can personally  
imagine the Klingons as the Slytherins writ large.

As with Harry Potter. One of my great delights in losing myself in the books
is that I can so often see small scale situations similar to ones I have 
experienced - For I well remember a disastrous college ball to which I went 
when my dancing skills were akin to Harry's at the Yule Ball with a similar 
result. I see my teenage self angsting over similar problems to some of 
Harry's - not facing a Dark lord admittedly. I want to be cross with Snape 
when he is unfair to Harry but would just like to shout at him without 
wading through a massive psychological and cultural analysis of his 
motives.

As a Christian, I like it that JKR has indicated that she wrote from that 
side of the argument and there are clues that she is well aware that her 
world is not perfect. If her world was, would there be a Voldemort to 
rage at? Would there be such a range of characters who, like us in the 
real world, are complex, with differences of world view like the Gryffindors 
and Slytherins and sometimes with secrets which they keep well locked 
away such as Dumbledore? Would you want to read about a fantasy world 
likethat? Would it grab you? 

Nope, give me a world like Harry's with a cranky, screwed-up, uncertain, 
generally good, often bad and diverse bunch of people with whom I 
would feel at home. I agree that some of the matters raised in this
thread are quite suspect in the real world but to start arguing about 
what constitutes rape or abuse is perhaps batter for when we close the 
book, return to our Muggle culture and switch on our disbelief again 
as we contemplate the books from outside the Wizarding World.

Otto:
>  The main issue is the privacy of the soul and the mind, where we are free to imagine what we wish.

Geoff:
For once, I would say with you "how true".

Die Gedanken sind frei.