Why I Hope XXXXXXXXX is Really Dead (HBP Spoiles)

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince spoilers
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There have been many threads where people have attempted to lay out evidence that Dumbledore is still alive, so I won't go into that aspect here. Instead I'll focus on why I hope Dumbldore's dead, as it relates to the structure of the overall story.

The Harry Potter series more or less follows the ancient pattern of "the Hero's Journey." More generally, Harry Potter is a "coming of age" story. Harry's growth is the core of all. As the story progresses, he grows in power, maturity, and enlightenment, as well as physically. As he grows, he casts aside the way of thinking used by children and shoulders more and more of a man's responsibility.

In stories structured as a hero's journey, the hero's mentor often has to be removed from the picture, either through death or some other means. I believe Rowling herself has said as much at some point. In Harry Potter, the chief mentor is Dumbledore, and he is removed at the end of Half Blood Prince by Snape.

Enter book 7. Harry is going to reach adulthood, as reckoned by wizarding laws. And since all of Harry's chief protectors gone, Harry is going to demonstrate his manhood by facing Voldemort--without any guardians whatsoever. Harry will of course need help from his many friends and allies. But now all of them, even his teachers, are his peers rather than merely his "elders."

So, given all that, I think the proper question to ask is not "what evidence is there for Dumbledore still being alive," but instead "/WHY/ should Dumbledore still be alive?" What purpose does his living serve?

Imagine if Dumbledore is still alive. He can't fight side by side with Harry, according to Rowling. She said that she wants Harry to "go it alone," and that "too much support makes his job too easy." So if he's to help Harry, he'd have to do it behind the scenes. But if it turns out that Dumbledore's still manipulating Harry's path behind the scenes, doesn't that badly hurt Rowling's theme of coming of age? All it would do is diminish Harry's accomplishments, and make the Harry Potter series seem to be as much about Dumbledore as it is about Harry.

The "Gandalf option" is also out. In /Lord of the Rings/, Gandalf returns after everybody thought he was dead. Upon returning to the world, Gandalf doesn't get to help Frodo and Sam directly, but he does orchestrate the defense against the enemy Sauron on other fronts. And we get to see this, because the /Lord of the Rings/ point-of-view shifts perspective, from Frodo and Sam, and then to Gandalf and his other friends, etc.

But that's *not* the case with Harry Potter. In Harry Potter the perspective is almost always fixed upon Harry. Rowling would have to change the way she writes the story in order to show a lot of Dumbledore helping the other members of the Order of the Phoenix. I'm speculating that she probably doesn't want to do that, so the only way for us to learn of Dumbledore's accomplishments is anecdotally. I think that's pointless.

In other words, it seems that there's very little purpose for Dumbledore being alive. The only thing that it would definitely do is make the ending happier. But IMO, making the ending happier isn't always a good reason for doing something. Sure, his being alive might increase the joy of that ending, yet at the same time it would seem to steal the thunder of Rowling's most important structural element: Harry's coming of age. I say let him be dead. Let the death be the most important dividing line between Harry Potter's childhood/adolescence, and his adulthood.

--
Efren Irizarry, II
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