07-22-2007, 10:29 PM
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#82 (permalink)
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Walking is Still Honest
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Famous
Spoiler: The thing that strikes me - Dumbledore is the WORST villian of all. At least Voldemort did not seek to hide his bad nature, Dumbledore was a villian AND a hypocrite. His sister's blood was upon him (of course it was he who cast the killing blow - why even merit such lies as "it might have been me, I dont know" with consideration); he threw Snape to the wolves (he KNEW what it meant to ask Snape to kill him when he was the holder of the Elder wand) and callously betrayed Snape's grief over the death of Lily and tormented him with it; he betrayed Harry and lied to him from the start - sending a boy to do a job which he was not man enough to do.
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Spoiler: Beyond what Lazereth said, I'm just puzzled at the idea that hypocrisy automatically puts Dumbledore on a lower level than than the mass-murdering genocidal Voldemort. Even if Dumbledore could have been accurately described as a two-sided unrepentant asshole to the moment of his death... even if Voldemort was always honest about his evil motives and deeds... no, not at all, Voldemort's still worse and it's not even remotely close.
I'll probably sound like a broken record by now, but... as far as evils go, hypocrisy is HUGELY overrated. It's a logical flaw, so it can be much more compelling argumentatively to shout "Hypocrite!" than "Jerk!", but hypocrisy itself rarely if ever compares to the moral flaw under the hypocrite's mask. It can even, relatively speaking, be a good thing. To paraphrase Gandhi - or was it Gore? - it's better to be a hypocrite than to be consistently wrong.
Back on topic: I really enjoyed Neville's triumph, I was really hoping he'd have a shining moment and Rowling delivered. I liked the glimmer of humanity still strongly showing itself in Narcissa Malfoy. I liked that Snape's story was exactly as I - and probably the majority - had suspected it would be. Sometimes the expected is just too good to trade in for the unexpected. And finallly, I liked the revealed Dumbledore who wasn't Godlike or saintlike, who made both tactical and moral mistakes. He seemed more interesting and convincing that way.
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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.
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