Lupin quotes was Re: Never again

[naamagatus]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
> 
> 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.

We can start a deep philosophical argument here regarding the 
relationship between the Christian love you refer to and 
specific, "human" love. Without going too deep, I'd say that for JKR, 
you are supposed to love the people you love (we see how important 
Lily's love for her son is). 
However, it's not relevant to our specific debate, since JKR is 
*obviously* not showing an all-ecompassing, love-thy-enemy type of 
love when she is listing favorite characters: 1) the very act of 
picking and choosing indicates partiality, preferring this over that -
 which is (sorry to repeat myself) diametrically opposed to the 
notion of an all-encompassing, divine love 2. She marks Snape as a 
character she likes to write, but doesn't like as a person. In fact, 
in many interviews she makes clear that she doesn't like Snape, 
Draco, the Dursleys. Again, not all-encompassing at all.
> 
> > 
> Pippin:
> snip>
> 
> 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.

And Draco, Snape, the Dursleys, Tom Riddle never had a potential for 
good? Why does JKR dislike them? If anything, your!Lupin is much more 
vile than the Dursleys, who have never (as far as we know) betrayed 
their best friends to their death, while making sure that their other 
best friend suffers a fate worse than death.

> 
> 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.

I agree. I just don't think that JKR is showing us this via Lupin. I 
think she is starting to demostrate that through *Harry* - he has 
cast, or tried to cast, an Unforgivable, and my feeling is that this 
is only an introduction of a theme that will be fully developed in 
the next book.


Naama