Love in HP

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

Since Valentine's Day is close by, I thought this topic would be fitting to bring up and ramble about until I get it off my chest.

Here comes a few (potentially) silly questions I have about love as a reoccurring and major theme in the HP books: is love a redemptive and saving force? Is it a reflection of our inner nature and morals? Does it make us better or worse than we are? Is it proof we’re capable of good? Or is it simply a nice message to have in a children’s series i.e. love is more powerful than anything?

Voldemort is said to be incapable of love. He’s the product of an unhappy and coercive union; therefore, he’s doomed from the moment he’s born. Little Tom Riddle never had a chance.

Harry is said to have an amazing ability to love. His parents died trying to protect him and Lily gave him her magical protection because of her sacrifice. It doesn’t matter if Harry grew up in a terrible and neglectful household and grows up to experience a great deal of horrible things; he’s saved from the moment he’s born. He has the love of his friends and mentor figures too.

Dumbledore fell in love with the wrong man and suffered for it. He tries to rectify his mistake and… I’m not sure. Dumbledore confuses the heck out of me. He’s made critical mistakes in the name of love for Grindelwald but is still venerated despite his morally dubious self. He leads a long and admirable life and is seen as the epitome of good. I suppose he’s “saved” in a way too?

And then there’s Snape. He fell in love with the right woman but chose to follow his harmful ambitions and suffered for it. He gets Lily killed, shows remorse and strives to atone for the rest of his life. He remains slavishly devoted to Lily in exchange for nothing. He leads a miserable, isolated, and brutal life and succumbs to a miserable, isolated, and brutal death. He’s doomed from the moment he called Lily a “mudblood” (maybe even before - when he’s sorted into Slytherin). Beyond being branded a pitiful and tragic figure, I don’t think he was saved or redeemed by love at all. Although some fans disagree. I go back and forth sometimes too.

Lastly, we have the Malfoys. They’re established as a selfish and craven prejudiced family. And yet - they love each other. It’s Narcissa’s love for Draco which pushes for his protection. They walk away relatively unscathed from the war, other than their hurt pride and reputation. Love saved them, although it didn’t fully redeem them as moral figures in the story.

(There’s also love between other characters, such as the Dursleys’ love for their son, Bellatrix’s love for Voldemort, Tonks/Lupin, other romances, and so on. But I’m focusing on the big examples with the most significance to the overall plot.)

Love is important in the HP series. It’s heralded as a great power to have against evil and corruption. But does it - in a strange way - reveal how frozen the characters are? Harry is empowered by love because he’s the hero and innately good. Voldemort has no use for love because he’s the villain and innately evil. Dumbledore screws up greatly for love, but it’s all cool because he’s innately wonderful. Snape is innately a horrible person who made bad choices, but he loved Lily - so let’s be magnanimous and grant him a modicum of praise (but no proper redemption). The Malfoys are innately selfish and shady people, but they have love as a family - so let’s be magnanimous and grant them some praise too (but no proper redemption either).

My thoughts are all over the place. I’m a rambling type of thinker. I think JKR was going for the idealistic message that love is powerful and the most valuable thing in the world capable of defeating evil and revealing the humanity in unscrupulous individuals. However, it’s also connected to who you are innately as a person. But why does it have to be?

Why does Voldemort have to be “incapable of love” to be evil rather than his actions and choices as a person? Why does Harry have his parents and his ability to love praised to prove he’s capable of being a hero rather than his own actions and choices as a person? Why does love make Snape and the Malfoys worthy of recognition instead of their own actions and choices regardless of love? If it were not for their love for someone, they would be considered despicable and unworthy of mercy? And Dumbledore - well, he gets to love a big bad boy, mess up, and move on to be ultra powerful and admired because he’s untouchable (despite JKR’s attempt to give him shades of grey in DH).

And why is Lily’s love for Harry so special that it creates a unique protection spell? Have no other mothers or fathers in the history of the Wizarding World died to protect their child? Because only Harry can be the ultimate hero empowered by love?

Ah, I’m done for now. A lot of rhetorical questions. Love is weird. Or maybe I need to not take it too seriously… but I’m going to anyways.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

So, bringing it back to HP... I think Elkins identified some of what she called the "fault lines" in the text where the text seems to support contradictory readings. Blood doesn't matter, and the characters who say it does are evil and join the Wizard Nazis. But Harry is literally protected by his mother's love carried in his blood, Voldemort has a shot at redemption because he gets Magic Love Blood in his new body, and he was evil at least partly because he came from bad blood. Which does the text favor as the dominant reading? How does it resolve the contradiction? It doesn't. And that makes it feel unresolved.

I think Elkins also pointed out the "genre soup" aspect of the books as one of the things causing the contradictions. If you're writing a classic bildungsroman, the way the story is structured, the things emphasizes strongly, relate to how the character grows and develops. As long as there's a satisfying character arc with some kind of resolution, it feels "right" as a story. If you're writing a classic whodunnit, the clues and plot take precedence, and as long as you solve the mystery, it still feels "complete" even if the characters don't develop. But if it starts as a whodunnint and ends with Hercule Poirot declaring that the solution to the mystery is irrelevant because he's learned so much on the journey, it feels wrong.

Combining genres can work, as long as the elements fit together right. I think a lot of the time in HP, they aren't balanced right, so it's hard to tell how the text "intends" you to read it, i.e., which interpretation(s) it supports more strongly than others. Each of the first three books end with Harry defeating evil with the help of friendship or finding some mercy for an enemy etc. So it sets readers up to expect struggling with moral questions and growing as a person to be part of the story arc. It is structured as (among other things) a bildungsroman. So when the series ends without addressing most of those issues in favor of having Harry come to terms with the unfairness of death, it feels like the books switched emphasis somewhere. It started as one type of story, and ended as a different type. It leaves you hanging as to what it "means" when it strongly emphasizes how horrible torture and torturers are, and how someone on the "good" side like Crouch who condones those things is corrupt, but glosses over Harry using a torture curse.

Does the story structure, characterization, page count/emphasis, etc. encourage readers to treat Slytherins like stormtroopers, a non-issue, even though they're much more humanized and given internal conflicts, because it never resolves the inter-house rivalry issue? Or does it support a more complex reading involving Harry learning that people are complex and then just fail to resolve it? I'd say both, really, at different points. The text is at war with itself.

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

"Genre soup" is a good way of putting it. The tone shift of books 1-4 and books 5-7 makes me wonder if starting at book 5, JKR wanted to be taken more seriously as a writer. She wanted to keep her coming-of-age story about a young boy in a magical boarding school world, but she also wanted to appeal to adults by introducing heavier themes of racism, discrimination, politics, war, moral ambiguity, etc. She veered the story in a darker and gritter direction, but didn't develop her characters to fit the mature themes she was brandishing. Nor did she stick to a consistent tone - wanting both the "child-like" elements of book 1-3 and the "darker" elements of books 5-7 (with book 4 being a sort of "limbo" space between the genre and tone shifts in the series).

Does the story structure, characterization, page count/emphasis, etc. encourage readers to treat Slytherins like stormtroopers, a non-issue, even though they're much more humanized and given internal conflicts, because it never resolves the inter-house rivalry issue? Or does it support a more complex reading involving Harry learning that people are complex and then just fail to resolve it? I'd say both, really, at different points. The text is at war with itself.

I'd say it's both as well. I think JKR wanted to play around with complexity but revert back to simplicity to suit her biases. She can tease the potential of Slytherins being more than they seem with hidden depths, but backs out in the last minute by condemning all of them as evil or pitiful when needed. "Slytherins are 98% bad with one or two exceptions being maybe morally dubious at best."

Same thing with her Gryffindor characters. She teases the possibility of Gryffindors like James being greatly flawed on the same level as the cruel Slytherins, but backs out in the last minute by dropping any consequences for Gryffindors acting unsavory when needed. "James was a swell guy after all! Only Slytherins are allowed to be bad boys and bullies"

In my opinion, what JKR ended up with is a coming-of-age story where the hero doesn't seem to learn any life lessons beyond being loyal to Dumbledore because Dumbledore is always right. Harry remains unquestioning, passive, and dependent on his mentor figure to the end. He never escapes the shadow of his parents either. If anything, Harry seemed more willing to learn and own up to being wrong when he was a child rather than the young adult he was in DH.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, I think the series started as a coming-of-age story, but didn't end as one. It also had strong mystery and good vs. evil fantasy elements which got de-emphasized and never really resolved. Instead we got... well, I'm not really sure what. The story of a kid who has a rough life, comes to terms with death, and manages to grab some happiness before they all inevitably die? Kind of like how I see Les Miserables (they don't fix the larger social problems, but you never really expected them to--it was about whether specific individuals could be redeemed or find happiness despite living under a cruel, unfair system). Which is nice, but not the story we started reading.

And you're right that the series shifted tone and grew darker and more complex mid-way, but not successfully. It happened with a jerk instead of smoothly, and then the final book was a weird exercise in trying to scrub the complexity out again. Even as it added some in for Dumbledore. I'm picturing JKR playing whack-a-mole with her subconscious.

I like the genre soup aspect in a lot of ways, because it does add some unpredictability and freshness... but it's something that has to be carefully balanced. I think it came unbalanced somewhere around GoF, definitely by OotP.