Wonderfully put! Forgive me for commenting without reading the other comments.
The situation about HP and JKR's public comments is fascinating to me, in an extremely morbid kind of way. Because I constantly find myself going into the story and finding messages -- excellent messages -- that I think are buried there, in plain sight for all of her readers to work hard and find. And then the author sends out interview statements that contradict my assumption that it had been the author's *intention* to send those messages. Dumbledore described as "innately good" from her lips is one breathtaking example.
After all, the series has always had an aspect of morality-related mystery and hidden truths buried all over it, which readers were sometimes made to guess at for a long time before the next book came out to give answers. And the constant theme has been: You can never tell if somebody is good or evil, because appearances can be deceiving -- Snape vs. Quirrel [PS/SS], Tom Jr. vs. Hagrid [CoS], Sirius vs. Peter [PoA], the true nature of "Moody" [GoF], the true nature of the James vs. Snape interactions and James' characteristics [OotP], the moral nature of Snape [HBP-DH], and finally, for the grand finale, the true moral personality (and, less importantly, criminal history) of the patriarchal symbol of omniscience, Albus Dumbledore [DH] ...Or so I thought. I felt that final Dumbledore reveal was done spectacularly well, actually, with Snape's POV memories revealing down-right cruel (and utterly unnecessarily so in cases like the Yule Ball scene) sides of Dumbledore that were news to us who assumed Dumbledore was supposed to be unquestionably "good." Those scenes made us realize suddenly that the same character traits have been hidden right there in plain sight all along. Such as Dumbledore leaving Harry on his deceased mother's sister's doorsteps without even bothering to knock, or him telling Harry a straight-forward lie about why Snape was protecting him in PS/SS, of a type that was completely uncalled for even to keep his promise of secrecy, and served to make Harry under-appreciate and mistrust the man Dumbledore *knew* to be willing to live and die for the boy.
Which I thought was marvelous. Way to shift the paradigm, and ruthlessly, daringly send us a message saying: "Hey, even people you are led to believe are *impossible* to doubt can be extremely different inside from what they project themselves to be! In fact you have to be *especially* careful about trusting exactly *those* people!" So I thought JKR was sending a wonderful message by making Dumbledore out to be such a despicable person who just *happened* to end up saving the world out of sheer luck (or fated destiny or whatever it was). I thought we were finally given a crucial piece of the puzzle that shows us Dumbledore's words cannot always be trusted, especially where they concern love and morality. He's right about a lot of things but wrong about some -- as you point out, he's disastrously wrong about close attachment and romantic love for him being destructive.
Yet, just as soon as I think that I have finally solved JKR's grand mystery -- which I found it marvelous that we still *had* mysteries to solve post-DH -- she turns around to us, smiles, and *agrees* with the bad side of Dumbledore. And I'm head-desking like mad and my brain hurts. Because it's not like the text of the books suddenly changes; the wonderful messages I found are still *there*, it's not like they disappear, but suddenly they're not the Authorial Message. Or is it? Is she just teasing us? But does she think it's a good idea to *tease* there, have all the children who read her books believing Dumbledore's newly-revealed characteristics are actually in any shape or form "good" until they grow up and (if they still have passion in HP) figure out for themselves?
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Here from d_s (1/2)
Date: 2008-03-10 04:54 am (UTC)The situation about HP and JKR's public comments is fascinating to me, in an extremely morbid kind of way. Because I constantly find myself going into the story and finding messages -- excellent messages -- that I think are buried there, in plain sight for all of her readers to work hard and find. And then the author sends out interview statements that contradict my assumption that it had been the author's *intention* to send those messages. Dumbledore described as "innately good" from her lips is one breathtaking example.
After all, the series has always had an aspect of morality-related mystery and hidden truths buried all over it, which readers were sometimes made to guess at for a long time before the next book came out to give answers. And the constant theme has been: You can never tell if somebody is good or evil, because appearances can be deceiving -- Snape vs. Quirrel [PS/SS], Tom Jr. vs. Hagrid [CoS], Sirius vs. Peter [PoA], the true nature of "Moody" [GoF], the true nature of the James vs. Snape interactions and James' characteristics [OotP], the moral nature of Snape [HBP-DH], and finally, for the grand finale, the true moral personality (and, less importantly, criminal history) of the patriarchal symbol of omniscience, Albus Dumbledore [DH] ...Or so I thought. I felt that final Dumbledore reveal was done spectacularly well, actually, with Snape's POV memories revealing down-right cruel (and utterly unnecessarily so in cases like the Yule Ball scene) sides of Dumbledore that were news to us who assumed Dumbledore was supposed to be unquestionably "good." Those scenes made us realize suddenly that the same character traits have been hidden right there in plain sight all along. Such as Dumbledore leaving Harry on his deceased mother's sister's doorsteps without even bothering to knock, or him telling Harry a straight-forward lie about why Snape was protecting him in PS/SS, of a type that was completely uncalled for even to keep his promise of secrecy, and served to make Harry under-appreciate and mistrust the man Dumbledore *knew* to be willing to live and die for the boy.
Which I thought was marvelous. Way to shift the paradigm, and ruthlessly, daringly send us a message saying: "Hey, even people you are led to believe are *impossible* to doubt can be extremely different inside from what they project themselves to be! In fact you have to be *especially* careful about trusting exactly *those* people!" So I thought JKR was sending a wonderful message by making Dumbledore out to be such a despicable person who just *happened* to end up saving the world out of sheer luck (or fated destiny or whatever it was). I thought we were finally given a crucial piece of the puzzle that shows us Dumbledore's words cannot always be trusted, especially where they concern love and morality. He's right about a lot of things but wrong about some -- as you point out, he's disastrously wrong about close attachment and romantic love for him being destructive.
Yet, just as soon as I think that I have finally solved JKR's grand mystery -- which I found it marvelous that we still *had* mysteries to solve post-DH -- she turns around to us, smiles, and *agrees* with the bad side of Dumbledore. And I'm head-desking like mad and my brain hurts. Because it's not like the text of the books suddenly changes; the wonderful messages I found are still *there*, it's not like they disappear, but suddenly they're not the Authorial Message. Or is it? Is she just teasing us? But does she think it's a good idea to *tease* there, have all the children who read her books believing Dumbledore's newly-revealed characteristics are actually in any shape or form "good" until they grow up and (if they still have passion in HP) figure out for themselves?