Snape, 24 and Dead Dumbledore
The DumbledoreIsNotDead.com guy posted this the other day in defense of the site. It's worth reading. This line near the end made me think.That's the crux of the matter, isn't it? Everything I've written about on this site hinges on whether or not Snape is on our side, and working on Dumbeldore's orders. No matter how you take J.K.'s answer on this, she obviously agrees.[Note: I began this rambling post on Sat., 8/6/06, so it was pre-Felicity-2616. I highly recommend reading that piece which explains a lot of what I'm merely musing about here.] I don't know how many of our readers are fans of the American TV show 24, but I'm an admitted addict. The characters are boldly drawn and the dialogue is masterful; those are two of the reasons I love Harry Potter as well. And no, I'm not going to draw parallels between Jack Bauer and HP or DD's character. But I wanted to point out that the moral dilemmas and controversies within the plot usually center around when and whether it's OK to do something that would usually be considered a horribly immoral act. This is generally referred to as the "ticking time bomb" scenario and I contend that it might shed light on Snape's act on the tower. Phrased as a question, can you "do evil (such as murder) that good may result"? The Christian answer to this is a strong "no". Even under the principle of the double-effect, the action must be good or morally neutral. Being a strong proponent of the Snape-is-good-and-faithful-to-Dumbledore theory, this leads me to ask if Snape is committing murder in the strict sense. One position I've heard espoused is "yes, because Avada Kedavra is always morally wrong." Well, that's the ministry's line; the same ministry that threw Hagrid into Azkaban on circumstantial (and false) evidence. So I don't know if this line can be taken anywhere. AK could be merely a means, just like AK-47's (wink!) You know, the whole "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Cheesy, yet true. So is it like when Jack Bauer kills a federal agent upon the orders of a madman to keep him from releasing a virus which would kill more people? Even within the 24 storyline, this is treated ultimately as an evil act; Bauer says "God, forgive me!!" before he executes the innocent agent. The parallel in HP would be killing Dumbledore to give Snape a way into "deep cover" territory with Lord Voldemort. So this would be killing for mere expediency of a tenuous battle-plan, and what if the plan didn't work? So, what if Dumbledore is dying anyway? Is this so-called "mercy killing"? Also incorrect according to traditional Christian ethics. But, yes, mercy is involved here. "It is my mercy, and not yours that matters now," Dumbledore said to Draco. I see the event as involving Dumbledore's sacrifice of his own life to save another, i.e., Draco, the ultimate act of laying one's life down for another. The difference between this and both the Crucifixion story and the sacrifice of Aslan in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" is the purported goodness of the sacrificer, Snape, as opposed to Pilate or the White Witch. I believe the "way around this" is to see the narrative as it plays out in context of Rowling's world, the "Potter-verse" as Red Hen likes to call it. Felicity's post is great for that purpose and points out many probable plans. I would just point out that Snape is in a sense keeping Dumbledore alive until his "hour" comes, following orders. Looking at things in this way, the argument Hagrid overhears between Dumbledore and Snape is a parallel to the rebuke Christ delivers to Simon Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!" Sacrifice is the best context in which to see Snape's action being OK -- Dumbledore's death saves Draco's life and Snape's as well as having the possible secondary effect of providing Snape with deep cover on what will most likely be his final assignment -- is that a prediction? One more thing: I would like to point out that this post probably wouldn't have been possible a week ago because I still wasn't sure Dumbledore was dead. So I'll admit -- it's good to have this item cleared up for the sake of theorizing and musing. |
Comments on "Snape, 24 and Dead Dumbledore"
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Merlin said ... (August 06, 2006 4:20 PM)
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Merlin said ... (August 06, 2006 4:32 PM)
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jkr2 said ... (August 06, 2006 5:29 PM)
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Merlin said ... (August 07, 2006 3:09 AM)
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Anonymous said ... (August 07, 2006 12:23 PM)
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Merlin said ... (August 07, 2006 2:29 PM)
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Merlin said ... (August 07, 2006 9:03 PM)
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Pauli said ... (August 07, 2006 10:07 PM)
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jkr2 said ... (August 07, 2006 10:09 PM)
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Pauli said ... (August 07, 2006 10:12 PM)
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Merlin said ... (August 08, 2006 12:54 AM)
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jkr2 said ... (August 08, 2006 6:49 AM)
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Sumara said ... (August 08, 2006 7:52 AM)
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Pauli said ... (August 08, 2006 8:32 AM)
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Sumara said ... (August 08, 2006 6:13 PM)
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post a commentI've never bought the "x doesn't kill people, people kill people" in this context ... at least not to the level of erasing all objective distinction in regards to killing and something like the AK ... keep in mind, the bullet in these cases is not separate from the person as it is in a gun ... the "bullet" is the persons's own psyche/magical power chaneled through the medium of the wand (or maybe "amplified" would be a better word to capture the need for objective transcendance as well - since a wand's power comes from the core that comes from a magical creature etc)
Even in cases of justifiable killing such as justifed war or self defense ... the stories you usually seem to hear are of guys puking in their helmets the week after they have to actually pull the trigger and kill an enemy ... I remember in talking about the "crucifix stamping" scene in Lewis' That Hideous Strength and Dr. A. Hoffecker (this was in his class on CS Lewis at GCC) talking about when he was in the army there were specific drills for "overcoming your moral gut instict" like bayonetting a dummy repeatedly to sort of desensitize that nerve that cries out that ending a human life is always objectively evil (I always liked that line at the end of "we were soldiers" where Moore says "I'll never be able to forgive myself" and the photographer says "for what?" and he replies "because I survived and my men didn't" ... in the idea of war his survival was more necessary - take out Ulysses the strategist and nobody survives and you don't achieve your objective of protecting innocents etc etc ... but even though war may be a necessary evil and their maybe genuine virtue in doing it well ... it's still an evil ... I guess I see the AK less like the "objective material" of the gun and more like the subjective action of pulling the trigger ...
BTW (aka "rant material" LOL) I think there are a lot of "bad ideas" in this area - I had an ex-cop from South Philly who owned a gun store next to my apt, and sold me a handgun I used to have fun going out to a friends cabin and target shooting with before I needed $$$ and sold it, telling me "PA is a 'shall issue state' - you should get a concealed carry permit" and thinking "I don't know if that's the brightest idea in the world" - a lot of guys out there running around carrying and you know what, I'll bet there are some good, clever, fast thinking criminals out there who would not have really a whole lot of trouble stealing said concealable lethalities from said "Walker, texas-ranger wannabees" ... simply because it's a lot different world when you're actually in it ... I took Karate for about 9 months in early highschool and the guy who ran that set of schools, a 7th degree blackbelt, said once "a good street fighter could beat probably about 75-90 percent of the blackbelts out there" ... why? because sparring in the dojo is a whole different world from the street and somebody with a knife who is actually crazy enough and out of the moral center enough to pierce your flesh with it and drive it home ... in short, actually keeping your head and fighting well in that situation is not as easy as one thinks when one is practicing in the dojo or loading the concealed gun at home, or to quote DD "killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent think" ... I might keep a gun in my house for protection becuase there I should be able to let down my gaurd enough to sleep and if somebody comes in that far I'll steel my nerves, shake hands with Murtog and Mulroy and blast away, but on public turf I think I'll stick with my wits, and probably have more incentive to use and hone them well without the maybe unjustifed confidence of having mr smith and mr weston in my pocket).
(Return to actually being on -topic :)
I think that one of the things here is a distinction between objective quality (and the ensuing effects) and moral culpability. It's Hermione, who is no MOM patsy by any means, who, in book 4, says "there is a reason they're called the inforgivable curses"
I guess in the end what I really like about the stoppered death theory is the idea of DD being already irrevocably on deaths doorstep the whole time. This seems, to me, to change things. So, for me, even without the mechanics of a specific stopper potion/spell and the mechanics of making pulling it look like casting the AK, there would have to be some impending death already in motion to the extent that casting the AK in this context is noticably more like "pulling the plug" on extraordinary/disproportionate means of life than (as distinct from seomthing that is more of a baisc right, like say artificial/assisted nutrition) than active killing ... at least for me personally not to feel like there was serious moral failing or failing in moral understanding on DD's part. In the case of war the "impending" is in the form of "whether through misguided patriotism or lack of heroic resolve (resolve like that of somebody like Franz Jaggerstatter, who went to prison and death rather than return to active duty for the Nazis) this person has become an insturment for those who have demonstrated intention to do great evil" in DD's case it is "he's already concretely a casualty, doing it this way optimizes what can be optimized from that fact though" ... but I still think DD would have concern ... keep in mind that it is the material act of killing that splits the soul and makes the Horcrux possible ... it is technically "murder," which involves circumstance and subjective disposition but it just seems to me like to make it so heavily dependent on those things that you lose the fact that the objective quality of the act being materially involved in ending life no longer constitutes a major aspect of it (murder) seems to be dangerously close to subjectivism.
The type of thing I am thinking of that would not be a technical/"material" stopper would be something like say legilimency going on between them for DD to reveal to Snape "when you helped stop me from dying when the hand got crippled from the ring, you and I both knew that that curse took enough out of me that I cannot withstand something like the potion I drank tonight and survive for long ... I'm a goner sooner either way ... utilize it."
(I haven't hopped over to Felicity's yet ... this just kind of rambled off the top of my head on the AK comparison ... but still meaning to stop over to your LJ Felicity and read your detaisl :))
Another question may be Voldy's prowess at Legilemency and the need for a "stain" to convince him. It may be that it was a full AK and still acceptable ... with somebody like Voldy, especially being so skilled at legilimency, you may not get that far in "deep cover" without the "mark of a killer" on your soul and the willingness to let Voldy read it there ... and DD might realize this and this might be the content of the discussion that Hagrid overhears (these are some dark waters)
I mean, wormtail's self-lothing is so appararent ... Voldy has no trouble trusting him with his own wand in GOF ... somebody with as much prowess and confidence and ability as Snape ... It would be like in Donnie Brasco when Pacino hands Depp the gun to kill the son of the skipper they whacked earlier ... kinda like "I gotta see you do it" or "I gotta see that stain"
hey, guys.
i posted a link to an article on lumos at my blog.
really interested to hear your responses.
jo
To the "Reviewer":
According to the programme notes, Dr Kern holds the chair in history at Lawrence University. His talk, however, is just a nice old-fashioned piece of lit crit based on a close reading of the text. It's the type of thing that English professors did before theory was invented. Which is all well and good - it just has nothing whatsoever to do with his academic speciality. Not that anyone notices.
Whoulda-thunk-it? a person in a literary talk actually doing a presentation on a close reading of the text ... like the talk title advertized ... instead of what Marx or Foucault or the "new-historicists" said (or whatever "theorist" you define "real academics" by ... btw, where is the sarcasm button on this thing?). Heaven forbid we cross the sacred lines of "specialty-ism."
This is the type of "high-road" criticism Granger talks about in his books. This type would rather Kern "stick to the code" and do a really dry talk in a room full of smug and boorish academics, like he is "supposed to." ... as Tank says of the operations programs he is supposed to load into Neo in the first Martix movie: "major boring s**t."
I mean, heaven forbid (referring here to the "kids lit" comments) we would ever chuck that stuffy idol of ourselves as "mature adults" and admit that "children's literature" might be the perfect venue for truth because the imagination of child remembers a lot of the truth of the beauty beauty in the world that we "adults" forgot when we got so "sophisticatedly" jaded ... I mean, uh, "mature."
The Dark Side of Lumos
As for the, shall we say, "darker side" of Lumos (and I do believe it is dark, and in a lot of cases I think there is a lot of the "darkness of confusion" in our culture) ... this is what I refer to regularly as the 1960s' "morbid fascination with the smell of its own vomit" (and, as you can tell by that, this is me going postal, as opposed to the rest of this comment and my "normal jerk rant level" *sheepish grin* ... but this is one thing I do get blood-boiled over and have more difficulty being thick-skinned about because I think there are a lot of people like this who "concernedly" but "lightly" and "un-judgmentally" point things out that are very real things/struggles/confusions in people's lives in this culture - when in fact the "architects" of such a culture stare back from the mirror of their own public comments (such as this review). This is the part of it that really actually bothers me ... quite titilating isn't it? Like she wasn't banking on that to grab readers.
The Sill Side of Lumos
As far as the "silly" side of the thing ... yeah, there was a lot of silliness and I could tell tales of even sillier things than she listed (the "procession" and "dance" of the "hufflepuffs" before the welcoming feast was actually pretty bazarre) ... but what can you do? does she actually think "pure academics" or "pure" (or I should say, rather, "sterile") anything without somebody taking something to a level that is a little bit whacky? Of course she's not "complaining" ... just "noticing." (but of course, she wasn't saying that did exist right? but the unconscious assumption of that on the part of her reader is what makes her comments on this aspect interesting to anyone)
In the end I think three things about this reviewer:
1. I think she resembles "William" in Sheryll Crow's song "All I Wanna do ..." - that is, "Never had a day of fun in his whole life" ... at least not since "growing up," and I feel really bad for the niece, Bethan, because with adults like this to look up to she is probably going to grow up just as jaded and "sophisticated" and miserable, drwoning that dull nagging ache in the pit of her stoumach with "adult" things like drinking and adultery ... and basically because the adults in her life bored her stiff.
2. It reminds me (as far as the "darker side" goes) of a song by the Pogues called "The Wake of the Medusa":
"The architects of our doom
Around their tables sit
And in their thrones of power
Condemn those they’ve cast adrift
Echoes down the city street
Their harpies laughter rings
Waiting for the curtain call
Oblivious in the wings
The casket is empty
Abandon ye all hope
They ran off with the money
And left us with the rope"
3. The third is "wannnh!" ... in 100 hundred years I think JKR will be voted the most popular author of at least the first half of the twenty-first century, and John Granger will be being studied in literary programs as having clarified a new genre of literature called "Post-Modern Realism" ... In the meantime time this reviewer will be sitting around in the same stuffy room with the same boring academic friends, miserabel but (like the flip-side of the coin to the monkies in the shed in the end of Lewis' Last Battle) never admitting it, griping endlessly about how "lame" the populace is for not realizing their own greatness and at the same time feeding off of that fact by patting each other on the back for being so "uniquely insightful," and endlessly complaining about Tolkien being voted best author, but of course in a "dis-interested" way.
But, to quote Tyler Durden, "but that's just me ... I could be entirely wrong" :) She tries to pull off the "but honestly, I really do like the books and think this is actually pretty interesting and fun/ny" thing at the end but all I can hear is "yada yada yada" (where is the "irony" button? that's from Seinfeld, which I am notorius for thinking worthless, at best ... at least overall ... I think there is a minor percentage of genuine humor in it but that primarily that percentage functions as a vehicle for a much larger percentage of other things ... but that is neither here nore there as far as this discussion goes ... I just thought the phrase so accurately descriptive as far as this type of thing goes and ironic as far as I go).
I just think an awful lot of "high-road" bias slips through that cannot be glossed by the final statement (and is really only meant to be glossed on the "conscious" level, but meant to stick rather well on the "sub-conscious" level) ... a lot of people do this sort of thing, it's like the "objectionable question" in the typical television court-room drama. The point is not whether it got struck from the transcript/record or not - you already got it into the jurors' heads, and then when the opposition shouts "objection! leading the witness!" blithely say "withdrawn" or "oh, I wasn't saying that!" The same tactics have been used in mud-slinging political campaigns for generations (on the level of personal relations it is technically refered to as "passive-agressive behavior" ... as you can probably tell, I am one of those "straight-forwardly agressive drivers" who prefers the "honest" New York way of waiving "hi" in traffic LOL ... I like driving in NYC, if you forget about the lines it's like a video game where the object is to get from point a to point b without getting nailed by one of the crazy yellow cars ... I actually do try to be fair in traffic sometimes, and I haven't had any on-road collisions yet, so I guess I'm doing all right). The version of this here is "oh, I'm not 'mad' about it or anything, I just thought it a bit puzzling that a 'fantasy' writer like Tolkien was voted best author ... that's all."
(I loved how she jabbed at academic titling at the end ... seemed more like a ruse to me and she actually likes thinking herself "academically insightful" but of course "non -traditional" and "new" and "refreshing" ... it's academics and, like everything else, it has a lingo -of course I would expect such talks to have words like "discourse" and "trope" in the titles ... just as, if I put my tool-belt on and walk onto a house-framing job I expect to hear words like "balloon framing" and "cantelever" and "stick-framed roof vs trusses" and "skreeting" and have to figure out that what one crew calls a "rake board" another crew might call a "sill board")
Ok, that all seemed a bit harsh in re-reading it ... but I wrote it cause I care (especially about the "darker side" stuff) ... not sure what her excuse was (oh, yeah, that's right ... it was "objective news" ... and I will find the sarcasm button on here someday)
And for the record, none of this applies to Jo for bringing it up ... I'd rather know the stuff is out there (especially on the "dark side" stuff ... sorry, I know I sound like a broken record on that)
PS
(Pauli, email me ... can I email the said reviewer a link to this post and comment? I'll understand if you say no :) )
Guardian is very left-leaning, "progressive" journal deeply rooted in 1968 "values". Just read the crap they wrote about Narnia movie and books:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1657759,00.html
I'm afraid to look at what they said on Narnia LOL
Hey, this is totally un-realted ... just a tech thing I just noticed ... when I look at this in the combox here, the one place I used an apostophe is fine ... but when viewed in the template format it does that funky thin with the squiggles and symbols for the apostrophe's and quotation marks ... so blogger seems to have trouble even between it's own combox interface and it's blogspot front end html/text (in other words it wasn't from composing in MS Word and then copy and pasting into blooger)
technicality correction ... in house framing, if I am remembering correctly even now (been a few years since I was framing), some refer to it as a "rake board" and some as a "band-board" ... I think everybody universally refers to the treated board you lay flat on top of your foundation block wall (and on which get set your first floor deck floor joists) as a "sill board" or "mud sill"
Merlin - the squiggly apostrophe problem is kind of a problem with blogger; IOW there is (probably) a way to fix, but it entails fixing/adjusting the "code page" -- maybe I'll email Blondie about it.
sorry i didn't notice you'd answered to this here.
can i link to this response?
btw, you said pretty much what i thought you might. :)
go, you.
jo
Andrzej,
Re: the Guardian piece: Ugggghhh...
Yeah, I really feel like my arm was being "twisted" by Disney when I watched the movie.
There are at least 70 things wrong with the article. We should remember to pray for whoever penned it, sounds like he/she lives a very depressing life.
Jo, thanks :)
and yes, as far as I am concerned, you may link away.
And I am glad for Pauli's comment to balance my own - that we should pray for people. I think Rowling's comment on the "it's a rough literary world out there" applies to all areas of life ... it's a rough world with a lot of confusion and pain in it.
I would have posted this comment sooner but I wanted to get that post on "Chiasm and Love" out before it slipped my mind and I was also in the middle of a big long pirates comment on that post, that I wanted to get out before I forgot :)
have linked.
(in an entirely uncool untecho way)
jo
Sorry to butt in, but I just read that article about Narnia. Oh my goodness, what a bitter, sad person! There aren't even words to express how ignorant and insulting most of her words were.
I wonder has she stopped to think that maybe there's a reason for Narnia being the 2nd-best-selling books of the century? And for so many people loving it so much?
You're very right, Pauli, about praying for her - though I'm sure she'll hate you for it (after all, nobody "asked" to be saved did they?).
She even felt the need to take a stab at how clean the steam-train was. Far out. I'm flabbergasted. How does that kind of writing get published?!
I really didn't want to sound overly pious when I suggested prayer for that person. Coming from someone who forgets to say his own prayers often, it's fairly hypocritical, but oh well. It was just "stream of consciousness", I don't know what else will help such a person to attain the slightest bit of happiness in this life, let alone eternal salvation. Certainly not reasoning; I didn't notice how "clean" the train was, for example. I think a psychologist could pull a lot from this rant, there's quite a bit under the surface here.
Regarding "asking for salvation": a small baby doesn't "ask" to be saved from a burning building; later when he grows up he learns to be grateful to the fireman who risked his life to effect this salvation. It seems to me that a lot of "progressives" want to deny the existence of childhood, especially spiritual childhood and of course the Christian idea of the fatherhood of almighty God.
Very well said, Pauli. I really like your "childhood" point.