Dragons, Produced and Tickled, and Other Pleasantries

[nrenka]

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

> Delayed accounting is what karmic retribution is all about. The 
> sins of the fathers are visited on the children, beginning with 
> Dudley's pig tail, culminating in Dumbledore's OOP speech "We 
> wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too  long, and 
> we are now reaping our reward."  Voldemort *is* what the wizarding 
> community deserves, Snape is what Harry deserves for his father's 
> treatment of Snape, but there is a power in the Potterverse greater 
> than karmic retribution, "at once more wonderful and terrible than 
> death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature." Harry's job 
> is to break the cycle of offense and retribution, not to give the 
> wheel another spin, IMO.

I have a hard time equating all of these 'deserves' with each other, 
because there's such a fast and loose transference of responsibility 
going on here.  (And as people who study institutions will also tell 
you, things like "society deserves, society causes" can get messy fast 
because it's such a grand way to obscure agency and specific 
mechanisms.)

So Harry Our Hero is going to break the chains of karma and do so with 
magnanimity.  I can see this happening, but I wonder about the possible 
overtones of "suck it up and deal" which many posters seem to be in 
favor of, but I don't see JKR going for.  You'll also note that many of 
her 'karmic' examples are quite specific--Umbridge damaged by beings 
which she overtly disdains, Lockheart taken down by his own weapon, 
Lucius Malfoy smacked around by the very same house elf which he had 
abused for years, etc.  Continue any of that pattern, at least 
partially (with a twist on it), and we have the tools of the tormentors 
specifically turning back upon them as well.

But to extend that to the lengths which this does--it makes me uneasy, 
although it may well be right.

And Pippin, I still want to know if you'd then agree that Snape got 
what he 'deserved' for snooping around, quite possibly with force (or 
at least covert magic). :)

-Nora, who likes to keep making more fine distinctions