Understanding Goat's Law

[davewitley]

> Pippin:
> 
> The distinction, as Tolkien made it, has to do with belief.  A
> secondary reality is an imaginary world which,  through art, 
> becomes real to us while we inhabit it; a condition Tolkien 
> called 'enchantment' or 'secondary belief.'

Thank you (and Sean), that's a lot clearer.  The fact that we were 
talking about religion led me to think of the distinction many 
religions make between a 'primary' world inhabited by God or by those 
who have attained enlightenment or whatever, and a 'secondary' world 
of sin or illusion.  Your post read like so much 1s and 0s on a tape 
when approached from that angle.

In effect, I think you are saying that JKR will be not true to her own 
rules - or the conventions of fantasy writing - if she just has Harry 
vanquish Voldemort with a zippedidoodah spell or a batshit potion.  
There has to be something that makes Muggle sense, such as a 
sacrifice, or love, or poetic justice ('the room contains what you 
bring into it'), as well.  Certainly such an outcome would be deeply 
disappointing - the equivalent of rerouting the thrust modulator past 
the warp coils to avoid dilithium meltdown and escape the Romulan 
threat.

> Of course Rowling's world has dragons and fairies in it, but they
> inhabit the same world as Vernon Dursley and hose pipe bans,
> which is a very different order from Narnia or Middle Earth.

Yes, I was wondering about that.  CS Lewis and Philip Pullman cotrol 
the gateways between their worlds very strictly by comparison, and so 
avoid a lot of the headaches JKR gets.

David