Abuse of parentheses

[mrissa]

Amber and Em have been and gone, and timprov was well enough to see Amber, albeit not well enough to get up and go see Em downstairs as well. (He knows Amber much, much better, since we lived in exile California at the same time, without anybody else from college around the Bay Area. We all miss the Amber and are working with the Emily to try to get her to move here.)

I have been on the phone trying to get things figured out for timprov and am still waiting for a call back. I am exhausted, though not particularly by the phone or Amber and Em. (I'm still trying to refer to them in that order, because in college it was always "EmmanAmber," because they are that kind of best friends, and then Em went and married Aaron, so now it's "EmmanAmb--err, Aaron." And I think putting Em second is the solution to this.) (gaaldine and I were a good deal more like Janet and Molly: close, but with distinct nomenclature throughout. And also we sometimes left out a third person without meaning to, freshman year, which is why I thought of Janet and Molly in the first place.) (I think this might make me Molly. This thought pleases me. I would cheerfully whack things with a stick if given the chance -- maybe with just a wee nap first.) (But then, so would gaaldine, so that really gets us nowhere, as distinguishing features go.)

Do you know what has been upsetting me lately? (Among the things I haven't mentioned, I mean. Except I think in a couple of e-mails.) The trope that pure hearts win the day. Bah. Bah, I tell you! It's a pernicious lie, and it's particularly common in books aimed at children, and it's even worse to tell children, because they have less experience to see that it's a lie. I was glad to see Terry Pratchett take it on with Tiffany in one of her books. The things I'm doing against it seem to all be more indirect and mostly for grown-ups. (And why am I writing for grown-ups anyway? Elephino. Because something broke my brain in that direction, don't know what.) The focus on the power of purity of heart and purity of love in the latest (sixth) Harry Potter book made me roll my eyes halfway out of their sockets. Love is a very powerful thing, but so is knowing what the hell you are doing.

Three things, then: any similar messages driving you disproportionately nuts? Any thoughts on pure hearts? And anyone who was powerfully affected by the deaths in the HP books: can you explain to me why they mattered to you in the context of the series? Why they were important and either surprising or powerful beyond need for a surprise? Because they did not hit me right at all, and I know they did hit some people in the solar plexus, and I'm trying to get a handle on why.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Do I have to be spoiler-proof here? I don't think I can, entirely, but I'll try. I wouldn't say the deaths in HPVI hit me in the solar plexus, but they didn't leave me unaffected either. It certainly wasn't a surprise. And it wasn't the effect on those who died, either - they were expecting it, I think. It was the effect on a couple of those around them. In one case, it was just one more thing taken from a character who had already had several other layers taken from him, like peeling an onion (only sort of in reverse, with the most core one first). And the other case it was someone who is pure enough of love and heart - whatever you can say (truly) about it not being a protection, I guess it still upsets me a little more when it isn't.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't expect spoiler-proof at this point; everyone knows Darth Vader was his sled by now, or they can avoid reading the comments entirely.

The death of a mentor seems like one of those things that is immensely affecting in real life and basically the normal way of things in fiction, at least from my perspective.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

What about when the death of the mentor comes after the death of the parent-figure after the death of the parents?

But as I was trying to imply above, I think it's Hagrid's grief that affects me more than Harry's. For Harry it's a standard-fiction-coming-of-age-thing; for Hagrid it's the death of the only person since his father (who died when he was 12) who ever saw him as anything but either a monster or a joke.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Rowling makes Hagrid blubber all the time anyway, so that didn't affect me much. She makes Harry be Mr. It's All About Me I've Lost So Much all the time anyway, so that didn't affect me much.

What *did* affect me was what Snape went through. Snape and the Weasleys drive the series for me.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I should maybe have made it clearer that I think Hagrid and Harry's reactions in this case should have been moving to me, but I think Rowling undercut them with her previous characterization for them, and that she did them a real disservice in that. Grr Rowling. Okay, I'm tired.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In grade school, I had a friend who used to pretend that her hamster was dead to try for sympathy and attention. But she was 5 or 6 years old at the time, so her timing was extremely bad: "Herman's dead -- just kidding!" came out all in one sentence. By the time we'd opened our mouths to say, "Oh, Jill, that's so sad," we knew it wasn't. That's how I felt about Sirius Black and Harry: the "just kidding!" came way too close after the "you have family of sorts" for it to be at all effective for me. The Weasleys seem to be Harry's most accurate family-substitute, and they're safe.

And as mkille says below, if Rowling didn't make Hagrid Captain Crybaby/figure-of-fun all the time -- if Rowling didn't seem to be making him a joke -- his grief would be much stronger. Hagrid is the character I most wanted to like, and Rowling makes that very hard.