Luna or Diana

[Nora Renka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, sean dwyer <ewe2 at a...> wrote:

> Lupin's lycanthropy had no plot implications? Nothing intricate 
> there. No dog-like loyalty and protectiveness in Sirius? What use 
> would the symbolism have outside the Potterverse? Now kneasy is 
> pessimistic; I'm optimistic - whatever her symbolism, Luna is 
> potentially important to the plot. I wouldn't be interested in the 
> symbolism otherwise.

Oh, not saying that there's not symbolism there and she doesn't use 
it--perhaps I was not clear enough.  I'm the deep skeptic about the 
attempts to map the clear mythological/historical/whatever patterns 
onto the characters to predict future conflicts or plot resolutions.  
(The perpetual chestnut of how Arthur and Lucius both have names 
derived from Popes and thus are destined to fight it out is a prime 
example--alas, I don't even remember all the details).

Luna is important to the plot, but aspects of her character seem 
pretty obviously clear (at least to me)--she's really rather spacey, 
she inhabits something of her own world, she's extremely intuitive, 
and is thus the anti-Hermione, etc.  The best suggestion I've seen 
lately for her importance was actually over on that other list that 
we all frequent every once in a while.  The suggestion was made that 
Luna, in part, represents faith--her 'don't you hear them? it's not 
like we won't see them again'.  Throw that in with the self-confessed 
Christianity of the author (hello potential flamewar, I know), and 
you have some real resonance.

But any detailed and specific links to a mythological moon figure?  
Not really JKR's style.  No, she likes to modify her sources--Romulus 
and Remus are related to wolves, but there's no lycanthropy anywhere 
in that story.  With Sirius, the best you can get is that it's the 
brightest star in the sky, and the Dog Star--given that, she's 
extrapolated those lovably doggy traits onto the character, but 
dumped most all of the other associations.  The symbolism and 
allusion hunt can go on forever, but this isn't Vergil, where all of 
them are meaningful.  The trick is to find out which ones are, and to 
what extent the original sources can tell us much of anything.  It's 
always worth a giggle where you spot an original source, but it 
doesn't always tell you much.

-Nora waits for the library to open