Re: Who are the two you think will die... and WHY??

In message <news:rzKrg.282617$8W1.241447@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
"DaveD" <davedn1DELETE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> enriched us with:

"Troels Forchhammer" <Troels@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns97FA13FC1E273T.Forch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


<snip>

No problem there, IMO -- just kill them both off, no sweat and
good riddance . . .

My god but you're ruthless :-P

Precisely!

And he said, "Well, don't do it then." I thought, a
doctor you know . . . and I said "Well it just doesn't
work like that. You are writing children's books, you
need to be a ruthless killer.
[Jo Rowling, interview with Jeremy Paxman, 19 June 2003]
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_3004000/3004878.stm>

Grawp is just a throwaway whose only purpose can be to redeem (in
death) the giants, and Hagrid is the at the absolute top of my
death list.

And NOOOO! I like Hagrid

Well, /I/ like Hagrid, but that doesn't change my assessment. In a
purely Bayesian sense (Dave Varness would be thrilled <G>), Hagrid is
the one (of the good guys, obviously) that I consider having the
largest probability of dying.

- he may not be a good mature father figure, but he does
represent a solid presence for Harry, an anchor, in lieu
of his parents.

Bah! More often than not it is Harry who has to save Hagrid's neck,
when Hagrid has been acting the baby again. Correct what I said about
Hagrid being an big brother to Harry -- he's a big brother with some
kind of brain damage.

(I'm afraid that I can't stand Molly's hen-mother type of
mothering Harry, and Harry's acceptance of it strikes me as
wholly unrealistic in a boy the age he has now.)

It would be if Molly was his mother - Harry'd hate it - but she's
not, so he puts up with it.
[...]

Out of politeness? Well, you might be right, though I don't think so --
if that was the case, we should have had more 'internal' resentment
from Harry; something in the narrative voice explaining his situation.

Actually I think that much of the emotional stuff is pretty badly
written. It works in context, certainly, and I am often teary-eyed when
I read the books, but it works not through subtlety or literary skill,
but through the application of brute force: a layer of cloying
sentimentalism that is so thick that it is, when viewed in a more sober
moment in retrospect, nearly nauseting.

That's the way Molly is written -- the Sledge of Sentimentalism, and
it's so bad that it doesn't even work for me in context; I just think
why Harry doesn't just tell her to back off . . .

If Harry is to survive to need a father-figure, then Lupin
is the only real possibility among the characters that are
presently available.

I'd say Lupin is more of a kindly uncle than father-figure.

Yes -- he is not at the moment a father-figure, certainly. But as a
potential father figure, he is, IMO, the only likely candidate among
the current character-set (that is, someone like Moody might also work
out in the end, but that is much less likely, IMO).

Much as I like him, he's a bit more distant - mentors Harry
rather than being totally in the thick of his affections.

Yeah -- that adds to his survival chances ;-)

But hopefully he'll survive to show that even individual members
of a group as derided as werewolves can be good (i.e. don't
stereotype - in this example, just because some are Fenrirs
doesn't mean they all are!)

One of the things that I really like about Rowling's works is her
wonderful cynicism. She shows the kids that the world can be a very
cruel place, and that there is no way that we can take away all the bad
things. One of the aspects of this is that we find prejudice and
'a loathsome pecking order' even within the ostracised group of
wizards.

I don't think we should expect any revolution in the magical community:
house elfs, werewolves, goblins, Muggle-born and other down-trodden
groups will, at best, see marginal improvements. The message of the
books is, of course, that this is wrong, but also that this is how the
world works.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

Leave this world a little better than you found it.
- Lord Robert Baden-Powell
.

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