Dumbledore himself even agrees! He becomes mistrustful not of his moral compass, not of his own abilities to know right from wrong. No, he becomes asexual, deducing that the problem is that he needs to keep himself pure from others so that he can always be sure he's relying on his own "innately good" moral sense.
See, I can see this kind of character arc as a brilliant character portrayal of someone who is horribly deluded and sad. There could be some psychological acuity to showing someone so terrified of his sexuality that he withdraws into his shell for decades and loses track of every other aspect of his moral life. Except that kind of fundamentally flawed character portrayal isn't what Rowling is after -- she sees D's sexual withdrawal as a normative response to an imperfect situation. Which, ack. Is hard to wrap your mind around.
What comes across most to me in this interview is that Rowling seems to think love is petrifying. Given the tremendous and mostly destructive power she attributes to love, it's no wonder she couldn't quite get her act together to show Harry truly caring for Ginny (as opposed to telling us that he cares, as she so often does). In this withdrawal from sexuality as in so many other things, Harry really does turn out to be Dumbledore's man, poor kid. :(
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Date: 2008-03-10 02:01 am (UTC)See, I can see this kind of character arc as a brilliant character portrayal of someone who is horribly deluded and sad. There could be some psychological acuity to showing someone so terrified of his sexuality that he withdraws into his shell for decades and loses track of every other aspect of his moral life. Except that kind of fundamentally flawed character portrayal isn't what Rowling is after -- she sees D's sexual withdrawal as a normative response to an imperfect situation. Which, ack. Is hard to wrap your mind around.
What comes across most to me in this interview is that Rowling seems to think love is petrifying. Given the tremendous and mostly destructive power she attributes to love, it's no wonder she couldn't quite get her act together to show Harry truly caring for Ginny (as opposed to telling us that he cares, as she so often does). In this withdrawal from sexuality as in so many other things, Harry really does turn out to be Dumbledore's man, poor kid. :(