How come these folks all think that character is really dead. It is not of course. It just needs to be seen as dead to be able to fullfill its next task.
We will see it back in the seventh installment.
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July 19, 2005
HBP
Comments
Hmm. Like Spock’s death and resurrection? Two Rowling resurrection possibilities: haunting and or time travel, already introduced in previous HP tomes.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jul 19 2005 19:01 utc | 1
I believe the character is well and truly dead. JK Rowling has been very consistent about not dealing with the topic of death in a patronising or unrealistically hopeful way. To bring this one (or any) of her characters miraculously back to life in the next and final installment would trivialise the loss of other characters and send the message that life is not so precious and fleeting as it is… and that “heros” need never worry because their benafactors will always come to their aid in the end. This is not to say that the character’s new portrait might not be consulted for advice, but this seems to me to be a literary device for internal memory and reflection.
Some people might question how appropriate it is to broach the topic of the loss of loved ones in the context of children’s literature. I think these people are more in need of protection from unpleasant truths than the children are. Especially in these particular days, it is a very good message, I feel, to demonstrate that life is never something to be taken for granted and that many of our decisions and actions carry with them very lasting consequences. I applaude her for the way she has handled things so far.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 19 2005 19:09 utc | 2
Thought -provoking question, cloned poster.
Myself, I’d head first for Minoan Crete, out of sheer curiosity.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jul 19 2005 19:22 utc | 4
More like when would you go, I suppose…
… as a former history student, this question isimpossible to answer. I think I’d like to go back and check out England from King Arthur through Elizabeth I, just to see how they farmed, because Im into that stuff.
I do believe that character won’t come back except, as a previous poster mentioned, in the portrait.
Though his pet… hmmm.
Time machine? ah, what a delicious idle fantasy. I think perhaps one of the pre-hominid eras… but that might be because of reading The Many-Coloured Land and the rest of the weird Julian May oeuvre in a couple of obsessed weeks one year. ok, it might be a bit of a struggle on the food front, but there were whole geological ages where the climate was pretty mild and the local fauna unlikely to eat you, at least. and just imagine, no human beings to be afraid of… no bosses. warlords, armies, crazed ideologues or charismatic prophets stirring things up.
if I had to hang out during hominid-dominated times, I think I’d fancy the 400 yrs of relative peace and prosperity around the Black Sea (cf Acheson’s eponymous book on this era) when a multicultural, tolerant, prosperous society actually held its own for a while. Minoan Crete also definitely a possibility 🙂 I confess I should like also to have had a peek at the Library of Alexandria. and most bitterly I wish I could have seen the Antarctic, Arctic, or S Pacific — or the N American forests and prairie — or the African savannah — before the haole fished and shot and poisoned most of the other life forms. the richness of life that C18 and C19 explorers wrote home about (even as they were paving the way for its decimation), I sure wish any of us could have seen that.
if the time machine came with an invisibility cloak (or Ring of Power) as well, then the range of neat places to visit surreptitiously is enormous… the Aztec and Mayan empires at their zenith. the Anasazi ditto. it would be quite something to see the Mongol Horde heading West over the steppe. or to lurk invisibly and watch the first Polynesians land on Hawai’i… but O the temptation to intervene…
more modestly I wouldn’t mind retreating to the 70’s for a while, at least for a vacation. ’68 to ’74 would be favourite.
Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 19 2005 23:33 utc | 6
Idle fantasies involving time travel, eh…?
Well… I suppose I could dedicate years to the study of dead languages and then visit the library at Alexandria to peruse the papyrus. Of course, my fantasy would end up with my glasses falling off the end of my nose and breaking while I shout “It’s not fair!” to the heavens… and at that point in the fantasy Rod Serling would appear to inform me that I am being sued for violation of some intellectual property laws.
Pfeh. This highly derivative fantasy isn’t working out well at all. Still… at least Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize didn’t make an appearance in this one.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 20 2005 0:02 utc | 7
the only agents with access to proper timetravel are Terminators .. not siteseers.
Posted by: bianco | Jul 20 2005 0:36 utc | 8
heheh Why do y’all want to go back in time? We know what’s happened there. Well pretty much anyway. I’ve always considered the neatest thing about time travel would be to go to the future esp since your prescence could stuff the past. For example who could go back to 72 and resist the temptation to step on the Yale coke with a spot of strychnine, after all in 72 I don’t think I was quite so earnest about not taking any life even a flea’s. The results could be disastrous eg Gore or McCain presidency.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 20 2005 2:02 utc | 9