Occlumency VERY VERY LONG

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 191750



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bart at ...> wrote:
>
> Pippin:
> > ... what Harry would have done, if Dumbledore hadn't messed with his head, is say to himself, "Wait, three kids trying to stop Voldemort is crazy...there's gotta be a better way?"  ...
> >
> 
> Bart:
> Except that three kids had a much better chance of stopping Morty
> than an army of people. It is the Lord of the Rings, and, to a 
> lesser extent, Star Wars strategy: distract the bad guy while a
> small, relatively weak group sneaks in to destroy his source of 
> power. ...
> 
> Bart
>

Steve: 

In any piece of literature, we can look at the story from two perspectives, one as if we were in the story ourselves, and the other as outside observers. 

From the outside, JKR has written the classic hero's tale. When in history have old men ever solved a problem. It is always kids we sent to war, while old generals sit back sipping tea and moving toy soldiers around on a map. 

The classic Hero's Tale is always one young man against overwhelming forces. He doesn't win in the end by sheer strength, but more so youthful cunning and determination. 

In that external sense, Harry is who he is and does what he does, as well as his being influenced by external characters like Dumbledore, because if he is not that, then we don't have a story. Hero's don't play it safe, in real life war or in fictional legends. Heroes defy all odds, heroes go against the grain, Heroes act alone (more or less), Hereos do not bow to authority or allow the puppet masters to make them dance. 

While one could say Dumbledore was a puppet master, I think on a grander scale, the true puppet master manipulating the citizens as a whole is the Ministry, which like any political organization is thoroughly corrupt and is primarily protecting its own self interest. 

Certain on a smaller scale, Dumbledore is a puppet master, he is controlling a small group of people who are unwilling to put their faith in the slow moving and corrupt Ministry. 

But in an odd twisted way, Dumbledore is the anti-puppet master puppet master. He is not acting out of self-interest in the way the Ministry is. He is actually trying to solve the problem. But Dumbledore knows something that others do not know. Something that he confides in Snape only near the very end. And that is that Harry too is a Horcrux.

That means Dumbledore must, to the extent that he can, manipulate people in such a way that a confrontation occurs between Harry and Voldemort, and further, in that confrontation, Harry does not defend himself, that he willfully accepts his fate. It is that act of not defending himself, that is key to actually saving him.

Dumbledore is risking a lot on what can only be considered a hunch. He is risking Harry's life and the fate of the wizard world if he is wrong. 

Of course, in a Hero's Tale, the hero can not truly die until the job is done. Or if he does die, it has to be in a way that allows the job to ultimately be done by others. 

As a person emotionally wrapped up in the story, I can see to a degree Dumbledore's manipulation. But as an outside analyst, I can also see that it was necessary to the flow of the story. While it seems as if Dumbledore was sending Harry to his death, he was actually allowing Harry to reach a state where he could defeat Voldemort. 

As Joseph Campbell said, in a Hero's Journey, the hero must die and be reborn several times. When Harry meets Hagrid for the first time and is told he is a wizard, that is a form of the death of the old, living at the Dursely downtrodden and oppressed Harry, and the rebirth of Harry as a powerful wizard. 

One could say, that every one of the seven stories written about Harry is a broad metaphor for Harry dying and being reborn. And in the end, it was the very act of death and rebirth that allowed Harry to ultimately defeat Voldemort. 

Give that the story is endless cycles of Harry dying and being reborn metaphorically, we really should have seen this coming. 

Steve/bboyminn