Just for the record,

[fpb]

- I loved all the seven Harry Potter books, with one exception: I thoroughly hated the epilogue. I regard it not only as bad, but as unredeemable. Its message (destroy the bad guy equals live in peace afterwards) is both dangerously escapistic (was the world any safer after 1945? And what about the widespread hope of a "peace dividend" after 1989?) and plain incredible. What, nineteen years of unbroken peace? On what planet? If that is the chapter that JKR kept in her safe all those years, it should have stayed there.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, everyone who had eyes to see could see trouble coming. Indeed, the reason why the public was so happy about the Munich treaty is that everyone had been expecting war. To have an agreement signed seemed a miracle of diplomacy. And the British were increasingly aware of the fragility and overstretch of the imperial commitments. I can tell you all of this from documents of the time - books, magazines, newspapers - which I have and have read. Furthermore, the previous eighteen years had not had a single year of quiet in ten. From 1919 to 1922 there had been the constant threat of involvement in the civil wars in Russia and Turkey; the conscious British decision to stay out of these left the post-war settlement in tatters and the fearsome tyranny of Lenin in control of a colossal empire. Lenin immediately, even as he was still fighting to control the territory, committed immense resources and tens - soon hundreds - of thousands of operatives to the expansion of Communism abroad by all means, fair and foul. Continuous Communist subversion in all fields had been the background to world politics from 1917 onwards. Meanwhile Italy had fallen into the hands of a warmongering tyrant, and to appease him, Britain yelded a number of colonial territories (1925). In 1923, the German government, that had never accepted even the mild terms of the Versailles treaty, deliberately destroyed its own currency in the hope of forcing a re-negotiation. France, Belgium and Italy reacted by occupying the Ruhr; Britain took GErmany's side, and for weeks there was a serious possibility of war between Britain and France. This left a heritage of distrust and dislike between two countries that, faced with an always fearsome Germany, a surly Italy and a massively hostile and subversive Russia, desperately needed each other. In 1929, America collapsed, and Europe was left to contemplate the terrible spectacle of a capitalist economy, as it then seemed, dying. They had two good years to contemplate all the worst that a Depression could do to a country; and then, in 1931, two years later than in America, the Great Depression, having given plenty of fore-warning, struck Europe, and never lifted. The thirties were a time of constant and continuously increasing threats of war; by 1935, great powers were at war in Ethiopia, then in Spain, then in China - the war in 1939 was no more than the end of an infernal cycle, and to start the world war on Sept. 1, 1939, has always seemed to me a highly Eurocentric and narrow attitude. Ethiopia had been at war for four years by then, and China for two.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Did the epidemic of 1918 have anything to do with it? I'd like to think the loss of 40 million made people cherish life a little more. But I have been wrong before

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. You have to remember that it was a very bloody age. World War One was followed by the Russian civil war, which was possibly even bloodier (records are uncertain) and by a considerable amounts of violence in Turkey, where the ancient Greek communities were annihilated, the Balkans, Kurdistan, Arabia (the rise of the house of Saud) and Somalia. It may be that the general instability and decline in living standards caused by the war[s] may itself have encouraged the disease. However, this Spanish flu has some miraculous properties: the first mention I came across of it spoke of ten million dead, then a couple of years ago it was twenty, and now you mention forty! How can a disease be so retroactively deadly?

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

The book I read said 40, so that's my "first and best" truth. All others require "unlearning" and are therefore suspicious.

Revising statistics is pretty common - it's one of those cases of the observer influencing the observation. Like happily ever after endings, unbiased data colletion is a myth we hold too dear. We make our data dance to the tune we choose. Very arbitrary.

The other number I heard was "half a billion people infected." - so some recovered and some never appeared sick.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I am pretty well read about the Great War and its consequences, but I have not actually made any serious study of the Spanish Flu epidemic, so I cannot have an opinion either way.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The thirties were a time of constant and continuously increasing threats of war; by 1935, great powers were at war in Ethiopia, then in Spain, then in China - the war in 1939 was no more than the end of an infernal cycle, and to start the world war on Sept. 1, 1939, has always seemed to me a highly Eurocentric and narrow attitude. Ethiopia had been at war for four years by then, and China for two.

You're quite right, but the specific points I'm making is that all that Rowling said is that all is right in the personal worlds of Harry Potter and his friends. Even though Harry Potter is now an important official of the Aurors, his personal world is not coterminous with the whole Wizarding world; furthermore, Harry's standard of "bad" -- a direct personal threat from a Dark Wizard of Voldemort's viciousness and power -- is a very high one indeed.

In the intervening 19 years he may, and probably has, fought all sorts of lesser threats. And there may well be Wizards as fell as Voldemort operating in other parts of the world. Harry is not Chief Auror of the whole Earth, merely of Britain.

This is also Harry's point of view. There could be all sorts of tragedy and unhappiness going on that he is not privy to or by which he is not particularly concerned. For all we know, Ron and Hermione may be having screaming arguments every night, for example. All we know is that all is right in Harry's world. He's not being hunted by Dark Wizards of a caliber that frightens him, and he, Ginny and their children are happy, as far as he can tell.

Why begrudge the poor guy a happy ending?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Because life's not like that, and you know it.