[the_old_crowd] Re: Understanding Goat's Law

[ewe2]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 09:53:36PM -0000, davewitley wrote:

> 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.

I sometimes wonder what the religious landscape would look like without the
influence of Zoroastrianism, that either/or dualism from which Christianity
and other religions derive both their strength and weakness from. The strength
is that force gained with focus, the weakness the inability to tolerate
difference.

Dave:
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.

It's a symbolic reconciliation of the Muggle/WW dualism, a pretty tall order
for any writer. Narnia has a Zoroastrian triumphialism about it; Tolkien is
noticeably more careful, Frodo being his best example.

Pippin:
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.

Dave:
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.

JKR has instead made the WW the gatekeepers; and we frequently forget that
there are benefits for Muggles in learning more of the WW and likely less to
fear from each other than they think. It's still a tall order IMHO, but that
appears to be the bed JKR wishes to lie in.


-- 
sed awk grep cat dd ..Im a luser baby ,so why don't you killall -kill me.