"But what I don't understand, Inspector..." was: Re: DD's Unspeakable Word.

[pippin_999]

Kneasy:
 A force of nature and a natural phenomenon are cause and effect IMO.
 The moon exerts gravitational pull on the earth - a force of nature.
This produces oceanic tides - a natural phenomenon. It is entirely
predictable once the physical laws are known. Can you say the same 
about life?

Is it  predictable, both advent and progression/diversity, the result
of as yet  unelucidated universal imperatives? Or is it something of 
an entirely different order? Nice question.


Pippin:
But you could ask the same of love. Is it predictable? Is it the
result of as yet unelucidated universal imperatives or something 
of an entirely different order?

And don't underestimate gravity. We don't have that unified theory
yet, for one thing. Also, its operations in the real world are not  
predictable once you get beyond two bodies. For example, it would 
be nice if we could tell whether the solar system is stable, but
AFAIK, we can't.



Kneasy:
 It's probably asking too much to expect that every loose end is
neatly tied,  that there won't be many a question paralleling the 
classic "But what I don't understand, Inspector, ....." but all the
major wrinkles will be ironed out at the very least. As for the 
minor ones - well, we can always speculate.

 If on the other hand I've grasped the wrong end of the stick and it
is  intended solely as a well-written children's adventure book with
a correspondingly straight-forward, even banal rationale behind it
(like 'love' - which would please carpers such as A.S.Byatt, whinging 
about the books not being "numinous" enough) then I'll have written 
an awful lot ofwords about nothing in posts like this. 

Pippin:
The hanging  threads will be caught up and tied with a bow. However,
as this is fantasy, I hope there will also be some "unexplored
vistas" , as Tolkien called them.

Let Florence remain a nobody and may we never find out what was so
odd about those ferrets! Of course, important clues may masquerade as
unimportant ones. Mark Evans is a nobody, but, IMO, duplicate names 
are an important clue. (Let us remember that JKR told us we would not
be getting full and frank answers until book 7 is released. Until
then, I take it, any answer which sounds as if it is incomplete or
misleading probably is, whether the author labels it as such or not.)

On the other hand, I don't quite see how complexity of plot relates
to complexity of  theme, or why, for that matter, one should consider 
'life' less banal than 'love'. I wouldn't  claim to understand either
of them.

I think what confuses people like Byatt is that in Rowling's world
there are characters  so intensely pragmatic that they see even
ghosts and unicorns as mundane (Binns, Grubbly-Plank) and others 
who are spiritual and see wonder everywhere  (Firenze,  Luna) and 
still others, like Trelawney, who pretend to have a spiritual outlook 
but are underneath it all  as mundane as Binns. I suspect at series
end, Harry will have returned to the Muggle world, but, being 
enlightened as to the power behind the door, he  will no  longer 
perceive the non-magical world as inferior.

Pippin