Why you'll never see "The Science of Harry Potter"

[prog]

A background process I didn't realize I had going returned a value yesterday and told me the point at which the last Harry Potter novel soured a little on me, preventing it from being really great. It was when Hermione, by way of example, explained that if she stuck Ron with a sword, his body might break and die but his soul would remain whole (and commence along whatever post-mortem processes souls go through in HP-land).

This was a girl who, at Hogwarts, shared a building with highly visible ghosts, and had helped battle creatures that quite literally ate souls, and I have never had a problem with any of that. She was also a master spellcaster, breaking real-world physics many times a day while practicing; fine. Despite all this, to hear her so matter-of-factly deny materialism, to do so in a by-the-way where I can't even recall what point she was making? It was like hearing someone you thought you knew well, maybe even someone you considered a friend, suddenly make an analogy based on an implicit belief in young-earth creationism, or in the inevitability of the Rapture. That harshed my enjoyment more than a little, I think, and it never really recovered.

No, it doesn't make much sense, in the greater context of the work. But that's the answer I got!

Comments

[brentdax.livejournal.com]

It's long been clear to me that the HPverse has a separation between body and soul. Don't forget that the whole plot of the last two books revolves around Voldemort taking bits of his soul and attaching them to various "bodies". (For that matter, if you get into some of the underpinnings of HP magic, like alchemy, you find a three-way split—mind, body, soul.)

I'd say that Hermione has been given some pretty clear evidence of dualism, which makes it very forgivable to me, but I sort of wonder if she was a dualist before she got her Hogwarts letter. Granted, most almost-twelve-year-olds are, but if anybody wouldn't be, it'd be her.

(For that matter, it's almost a wonder that most Muggle-borns aren't like Luna, happy to believe almost anything with no proof. After all, they spent their first eleven years of life disbelieving in magic, right? But now I'm really going off on a tangent...)

[prog.livejournal.com]

I like dr_atomic's sense in a previous comment of more "abstract" mentions and instances of souls / life force / what-have-you in the books, which I found inoffensive and (as with Horcruxes and their creation) even compelling. Hermione's statement seemed startlingly pat, not quite congruent with all that more fantastic stuff. And yes, the fact that it was her saying that line added to the disappointment.

Never really considered whether Hermione was herself a dualist, versus merely describing her knowledge of how her world worked. I get a sense that there's little room for existential philosophy in the wizarding world. Things just are...

But then again, when one's POV is a bunch of kids with other stuff on their minds, maybe one doesn't really have a full scope on such things.