it's hard to imagine exactly how she pictures the idea of love *except* as a big dramatic sacrifice.
*nods vigorously* That seems to be the only aspect of love left intact once JKR has done her number on its other manifestations. I mean, I'm connecting to your post about family by treating it as one case in a general puzzle -- just as she dismantles the idea that love = happy families, she ridicules the idea that love = romance in HBP; she makes it part of an ugly manipulation plot in the Merope story; she subverts the idea that love is ennobling by making it Narcissa's and Draco's leading motive in their murder plot. And of course, there's Dumbledore on how Harry is "unique" because he's preserved his capacity for love -- so now he can go kill Voldemort! (I keep harping on that particular bit of cognitive dissonance . . . )
So yeah, love as self-sacrifice -- pretty grim and joyless on its face. And what's worse, even that kind of love is not consistently redemptive. It's supposed to be in Harry's case, I guess, but it clearly isn't in the Crouch or Riddle cases. And yet: love, love, love is all you need. It doesn't hang together.
I saw your comment on another post that I skimmed yesterday (and that I'm too lazy to look up now and double check!) where the poster talked about how JKR really doesn't have any master plan or scheme, that she doesn't really do world-building, she just invents characters and makes up the context as she goes along. I think your point (or maybe you were replying to someone else's point?) had to do with how certain tricks drew the reader in effectively, and maybe that was all she was trying to do.
And I wonder if that's the answer to our love-family puzzle. The parts don't make sense together because she hasn't bothered to make them coherent. They're just part of a mixed bag of rhetorical tricks for getting the reader involved in the story. So we hear that love conquers all because it's fun to believe in and it draws in the sentimental side of readers. And then we see complicated and messy families because we can all connect with that. And the highest purpose is just to have a fun, engaging read, moment to moment, not to have all the separate themes add up to say anything complex or coherent or serious.
Now, as some posters on that other thread pointed out, it would take a terrible snob and prude, I'm sure, to not enjoy the fun parts of the books because they don't aspire to be anything more than entertainment. :) But this may connect with one of our old conversations about serious vs. "genre" literature -- in "genre" literature the author uses his/her rhetorical tricks to engage and stimulate and divert the reader without any responsibility for larger thematic significance, or even coherence. While a "serious" writer might start with the same tricks, but would try to work from those moments of engagement to build up themes that cohered despite their complexity, and that maybe added up to some genuinely startling or powerful insight.
*facepalms* Why do I always end up with the same issues? For some of us obsessives, indeed, everything means another spanking!
no subject
*nods vigorously* That seems to be the only aspect of love left intact once JKR has done her number on its other manifestations. I mean, I'm connecting to your post about family by treating it as one case in a general puzzle -- just as she dismantles the idea that love = happy families, she ridicules the idea that love = romance in HBP; she makes it part of an ugly manipulation plot in the Merope story; she subverts the idea that love is ennobling by making it Narcissa's and Draco's leading motive in their murder plot. And of course, there's Dumbledore on how Harry is "unique" because he's preserved his capacity for love -- so now he can go kill Voldemort! (I keep harping on that particular bit of cognitive dissonance . . . )
So yeah, love as self-sacrifice -- pretty grim and joyless on its face. And what's worse, even that kind of love is not consistently redemptive. It's supposed to be in Harry's case, I guess, but it clearly isn't in the Crouch or Riddle cases. And yet: love, love, love is all you need. It doesn't hang together.
I saw your comment on another post that I skimmed yesterday (and that I'm too lazy to look up now and double check!) where the poster talked about how JKR really doesn't have any master plan or scheme, that she doesn't really do world-building, she just invents characters and makes up the context as she goes along. I think your point (or maybe you were replying to someone else's point?) had to do with how certain tricks drew the reader in effectively, and maybe that was all she was trying to do.
And I wonder if that's the answer to our love-family puzzle. The parts don't make sense together because she hasn't bothered to make them coherent. They're just part of a mixed bag of rhetorical tricks for getting the reader involved in the story. So we hear that love conquers all because it's fun to believe in and it draws in the sentimental side of readers. And then we see complicated and messy families because we can all connect with that. And the highest purpose is just to have a fun, engaging read, moment to moment, not to have all the separate themes add up to say anything complex or coherent or serious.
Now, as some posters on that other thread pointed out, it would take a terrible snob and prude, I'm sure, to not enjoy the fun parts of the books because they don't aspire to be anything more than entertainment. :) But this may connect with one of our old conversations about serious vs. "genre" literature -- in "genre" literature the author uses his/her rhetorical tricks to engage and stimulate and divert the reader without any responsibility for larger thematic significance, or even coherence. While a "serious" writer might start with the same tricks, but would try to work from those moments of engagement to build up themes that cohered despite their complexity, and that maybe added up to some genuinely startling or powerful insight.
*facepalms* Why do I always end up with the same issues? For some of us obsessives, indeed, everything means another spanking!