In Charge of Invisible Books of Invisibility
Posts: 1,153
Joined: 12:36am January 18, 2008
Location: Waterloo, ON - getting Butterbeer for Hagrid's "Support Harry Potter" party
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QUOTE(Cassy V @ Aug 6 2008, 08:04 PM)  Another great discussion.  I just wondered if you've come across these quotes from JKR (sorry if they've been posted already & I've overlooked them!)... QUOTE Much of Rowling's understanding of the origins of evil has to do with the role of the father in family life. "As I look back over the five published books," she says, "I realize that it's kind of a litany of bad fathers. That's where evil seems to flourish, in places where people didn't get good fathering."
(Grossman, Lev. "J.K. Rowling Hogwarts And All," Time Magazine, 17 July, 2005.) And later... QUOTE JKR: When I sketched out the books, Mr. Weasley was due to die in Book 5.
MV: So what happened there? Why did he get the reprieve?
JKR: Well, I swapped him for someone else, and I don't want to say who, for the people who haven't-- read. But I-- I made a decision as I went into writing Phoenix that I was going to reprieve Mr. Weasley and I was going to kill someone else. And if you finish the book, I-- I expect you probably know and someone else who is a father. Because I-- I wanted there to be an echo of-- of Harry's loss of parents. And you probably know who I'm talking about if you've finished the book. But-- so there are two characters who are killed instead in Seven. So Mr. Weasley did get attacked, as you know, in Five. But he would have died if I'd have stuck to the original plan. But he survived. I had to keep him alive partly-- partly because I couldn't bear to kill him.
MV: But there were two that weren't supposed to die that did end up dying.
JKR: Yeah, yeah. I swapped them for Mr. Weasley. But they didn't then die until Seven.
MV: So as an author, then, there were certain characters you couldn't bear to part with?
JKR: If there's one character I couldn't bear to part with, it's Arthur Weasley. And I think part of the reason for that is there were very few good fathers in the books. In fact, you could make a very good case for Arthur Weasley being the only good father in the whole series.
(Vieira, Meredith. "Harry Potter: The Final Chapter" Dateline (NBC) , 29 July 2007.)
This is very good stuff to bring up, but I think the important thing to note here is that Jo says that Arthur is (arguably) the only good father, not father figure. Besides the fact that Jo herself said this, it's not really hard to see why this true; other than Arthur, the only fathers that we see/hear much of are Lucius, Amos, Barty, Vernon, Remus, James, Frank (Longbottom), and Tom Senior (I think that's all of them - feel free to add more to the list  ). Each of these fathers have either been pre-maturely robbed of their paternal responsibilities, made terrible paternal decisions during a reasonable tenure as a father (or, in the case of Tom, before their offspring was even born), or (in the case of Amos), been portrayed as little more than mediocre (I think we can all agree he wasn't exactly an ideal father).
That being said, every character that has been portrayed as a good father figure (Arthur, Hagrid, DD, Sirius, Remus, etc.) was not necessarily an actual father. Interestingly, Arthur is the only good father and father figure - Remus was not necessarily a good father for Teddy (before Teddy was born, that is), but for Harry, he was a rather commited father figure.
On a related note, I think that pretty much the same can be said about good mothers and mother figures: Molly is pretty much the only good mother besides Lily (although Lily's maternal role is very much in league with James' paternal role as neither were able to spend much time as parents), and she is both a good mother and mother figure.
QUOTE(momwitch @ Aug 6 2008, 11:05 PM) I see your point, HPG2, but I have a hard time limiting (or attaching ) a definition to Love. I've long been interested in the Buddhist interpretations of ideas such as love, compassion and non-attachment, and in looking to broaden this conversation, came across this page which covers all of these concepts in a pretty straight-forward approach. I especially enjoyed the little anecdotes.
Hmm, I didn't read through that page from beginning to end, but I did notice a vast difference between the Buddhist definition of attachment and the one I gave. The Buddhist definition is much more heavy than mine (i.e. the attachment they describe is a much closer and stronger one than I was trying to convey).
Also, I agree that giving a definition for love is very limiting to it's meaning (being unable to precisely define or describe love is exactly what makes it so sacred), so perhaps "definition" was the wrong word to use here. I was merely trying to describe the fundamental aspect of what love (in general) means. Love comes in many, many forms (which is partly what makes it so difficult to define or describe), but the one thing that I find is common to all of them is that they all involve some level of emotional attachment (i.e. a one-way emotional connection, given by the person doing the loving). Of course, this does nto come remotely close to defining or describing it properly or fully, but I do think helps identify the fundamental essence of love in the simplest meaning of the word.
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"Tell me why, why must we fight?
And why must we kill in the name of what we think is right?
No more! No war! 'Cause how do you know?"
-- P.O.D. - from their new album When Angels and Serpents Dance --
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Jul 1 2008, 01:15 PM
