Themes and theories

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:

> My impression of JKR is that, despite the many elaborate 
> speculations that have arisen in fandom, she just doesn't do 
 complexity.  She also, IMO, mostly sucks at tight plot 
construction -  POA is the least bad, and even there Sirius' 
actions are hard to  construe.  I am strongly suspicious that 
Dumbledore's 'screw-ups',  for example, are really JKR's 
screw-ups - or rather, JKR's lack of  concern for consistency in a 
magical fantasy series.
>

Pippin:
Heh, heh. You just don't get it, do you? . The plot ties to the 
themes pretty well, but to understand what happened to Sirius, 
you have to understand Lupin.  I don't think Lupin would be her 
favorite adult character if he were  sloppily worked out. But the 
key to understanding him, and thus everything else, is in CoS.

"It's not possible to live with the Dursleys and not hate them," 
said Harry. "I'd like to see you try it." --CoS ch 11.

These words aren't quoted nearly as often as Dumbledore's 
speech about choices in the same book, and yet I think they are 
crucial to understanding it. Oppression creates hatred;  in the 
Potterverse there is no choice about that.

 The choice that shows what the characters are is not whether to 
hate but how to deal with it.   They may turn their hatred inward, 
like Winky, or outward like Riddle, or they can channel it 
constructively, as Harry does with his saving people thing. The 
latter is the "good" choice, and for those who are "good", ie brave 
and relatively undamaged, the right choices are the easy ones. 
Harry was never seriously tempted to join Slytherin; quite the 
contrary.

But for those whom suffering has made bitter and/or cruel, which 
is *not* presented as  a choice, it is no longer  easy to turn away 
from revenge. Few seek it as wholeheartedly as Riddle,  but 
there are many who would like to be good to their friends and evil 
to their enemies. I believe Rowling intends to show us that this 
is impossible, both because it is not in the nature of evil to 
distinguish between guilt and innocence, and because there are 
those like Voldemort who are expert at manipulating the 
hate-filled mind.

 In order to resist that manipulation one must  choose what is 
right over what is easy. But according to Dumbledore AKA Jo,  we 
should have sympathy for those  who are too weak to do so, for 
they are what the cruelty and indifference of others has made 
them. So Dumbledore has sympathy for Kreacher, and IMO, Jo 
has sympathy for ESE!Lupin, too.

Does that make sense?

Pippin