I think that for a lot of people, there's a bit of a contradiction -- or an apparent one -- between her use of that framework and then her having the characters within it behave in ways we don't associate with that framework. In the heroic framework, heroes usually behave -- or are depicted as -- without flaws such as bad tempers or petty jealousy or insecurity.
In DH, the characters behave about 90% of the time as people with massive feet of clay, especially those we've come to view as saintly, in the sort of hyper-realistic and grim fashion associated with certain types of gritty modern fiction. But they operate within the black-and-white heroic framework, where there is no character growth, only toughening. This sets up the contradiction, or rather the dissonance, that many people apparently feel.
And boy, do they feel it. And not just because Snape got zapped, either -- though really, the people who have the most problems with DH tend to be the ones who are the most fervent Snape fans. (Interesting, how few people clamor for Lupin's revival. Yet lots of folks -- myself included -- were hit hard by Snape's demise, to the point that we started writing fanfic to either give him a nice afterlife or keep him from dying in the first place.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-30 06:39 pm (UTC)I think that for a lot of people, there's a bit of a contradiction -- or an apparent one -- between her use of that framework and then her having the characters within it behave in ways we don't associate with that framework. In the heroic framework, heroes usually behave -- or are depicted as -- without flaws such as bad tempers or petty jealousy or insecurity.
In DH, the characters behave about 90% of the time as people with massive feet of clay, especially those we've come to view as saintly, in the sort of hyper-realistic and grim fashion associated with certain types of gritty modern fiction. But they operate within the black-and-white heroic framework, where there is no character growth, only toughening. This sets up the contradiction, or rather the dissonance, that many people apparently feel.
And boy, do they feel it. And not just because Snape got zapped, either -- though really, the people who have the most problems with DH tend to be the ones who are the most fervent Snape fans. (Interesting, how few people clamor for Lupin's revival. Yet lots of folks -- myself included -- were hit hard by Snape's demise, to the point that we started writing fanfic to either give him a nice afterlife or keep him from dying in the first place.)