Lupin quotes was Re: Never again

pippin_999 foxmoth at pippin_999.yahoo.invalid
Fri Dec 17 04:01:47 UTC 2004


Naama:
> 
> I think that, again, you're jumping from one thing to another. 'To 
 care' for a character isn't the same as 'loving' a character. Of 
course great literature makes you care about the characters. But 
that  sense of empathy and shared humanity is very different 
from the  simple liking/loving of a certain character. In fact,
they're almost  diametrically opposed: the first is about going 
beyond traits and personality to that vision of humanity as such, 
whereas the second is  exactly about partiality - liking/admiring a 
character for their  personality/traits (for the same reasons you 
like/admire a person in  RL).<

Pippin:
Erm, but if JKR is writing as one who is commanded to love her 
enemies as her neighbors, and her neighbors as herself, then 
ideally that distinction, and the one you make below,  don't 
obtain.  I think it is relevant to the  books, because that kind of 
love is almost certainly what's behind the door.

 Dumbledore berates himself, does he not, for caring more for 
Harry than for the nameless faceless strangers? He could 
almost be a CS Lewis character at that point, echoing Jesus's 
lesson that more is asked from a good person because  even 
 Roman tax-collectors are kind to their friends.

Naama: 
> I would think that JKR certainly believed that. However, this 
goes  back to what I said above - the difference between 
acknowledging  humanity in a person as such, and simply 
liking/disliking them. When  JKR replies to the "who is your 
favorite character" question, she is  talking about personal 
preferences - in fact, she is talking, in that  context, as any fan 
might. She is *not* talking from that very high  moral ground you 
describe. She is not taking God's point of view at  that point. <

She is simply listing the characters she is particularly 
 fond of, admires, likes - those she is partial to. I return to my 
 question: do you really think she could be particularly fond of, 
like, admire, a character who betrayed his best friends? After all, 
 once you have managed to convince yourself of Lupin's guilt, 
didn't  it make you not like him as a person? (I may be wrong, but 
that's the  impression I get from your posts.)

> 
Pippin:
Oh, no! I am *much* fonder of  clever, crafty ESE!Lupin than I ever 
was of Ostensible!Lupin, that weak-willed, passive-aggressive 
hard-luck case.*I* don't want to meet him, but that's because I 
don't know what makes him tick. Jo does.

 In a sense we've never met the real Lupin -- the wonderful man 
Jo describes is fast becoming only the hollow shell of the 
person he could have been. When he hugs Molly I want to shout, 
"How dare you!" The worst of it is, I'm afraid he's sincere, and 
actually has convinced himself things are going to be different 
this time. But he is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind. 
Alas.

Jo has idealized him as a teacher, I think, to make it clear that 
in a world in which he was allowed to fulfill the role he was born 
for, he would never have discovered his potential for evil, the 
same potential that rests in all of us. That's the kicker -- she can 
like him despite what he's done because at heart he's *not* 
different than the rest of us--he represents the normal, basically 
good person's potential to do wrong.

As Ursula LeGuin once said (paraphrase) the great fantasies 
don't say tritely that there's a little bit of bad in the best of us
and a little bit of good in the worst of us. They teach that  in each 
of us rests the possibility to do tremendous good or the greatest 
evil.

Pippin







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