Look forward to your additional response.Originally Posted by islandclimber
^^
great essay drkshadow!
I'm going to try to reply to some of the points raised within, in the next few days when I have a little more free time, mostly on the racism allegory, the complex use of love as a theme, and well the literary techniques such as deus ex machina being necessary due to aesthetic purpose (which I have a mixed view on)...
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Doesnt Dumbledore suggest to them the use of the time traveling later when Harry is recovering ?
The whole time-turner bit is ridiculous though - if they can go back in time, why don't they enlist Arnold and send him back to kill Voldemort's mother?
Doesnt Dumbledore suggest to them the use of the time traveling later when Harry is recovering ?
Yes. The implication is that Hermione suspects it s herself, and confims it whilst at Hagrid's house.
The whole time-turner bit is ridiculous though - if they can go back in time, why don't they enlist Arnold and send him back to kill Voldemort's mother?
They're British JBI! It just wouldn't be cricket!
Then she is a bit dumb isnt? She thinks it is her, the only explanation is the time travel, yet she needs Dumbledore to suggest the use of the device to solve their problems? It is, as JBI suggests, a "stuff ex machina", the consequences of it is existence is not well developed, just placed in the book, hence why the characters are able to act a bit odd...
Not really. The device if I remember correctly takes you back in time by the hour. You want to go back three hours, you need to flip the thing 3 times. You want to go back 24 hours, you need to flip it 24 times. You want to go back 20 years: 20 x 365 x 24 = you'd have to turn the freaking thing 175,200 times!!!
If I also remember correctly there is no reversing the process, no returning to the future. To return back to "real time" you have to wait to catch-up to point in the present when you used the device to travel back. So you travel back 20 years, you have to live 20 years in the past before returning to the point in time your originally left.
Putting the inconveniences of the devices aside. As if already predicting your exact criticism of this magical object, Rowling has all of the Ministry's time-turner destroyed prior to them realizing that Voldemort has returned. So as far as they are concerned Voldemort is dead, and there would be no real reason to attempt to send Arnold back and kill him Terminator style. And when they do realize he's truly back and not dead, well, they no longer have the damn things.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Cranking something that many times if you are a wizard and can crank by magic? OR better yet, why didn't they crank it years and years before? but it makes no sense - they don't even treat the paradox - think of it as mediocre imaginings - they have a time macine, but don't use it - I'm sure Arnold wouldn't object anyway.
Sounds more like weak criticism than mediocre imaginings, for the reasons I already stated one post above yours, especially the second point which you conveniently didn't address; the fact that the spell that murders in the Magic World is illegal, so why it would be legal to murder an innocent boy prior to his committing any crime by time-traveling is beyond me (also undercutting that whole theme of moral choice that I mentioned); when only Dumbledore seems to know Voldemort's previous identity as Tom Riddle, and he doesn't seem like the murdering type; and how the time travel motif to kill Hitler or John Connor or whomever would equate to superior imaginings by copying the direction of every other single time travel story is beyond me.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Then she is a bit dumb isnt? She thinks it is her, the only explanation is the time travel, yet she needs Dumbledore to suggest the use of the device to solve their problems? It is, as JBI suggests, a "stuff ex machina", the consequences of it is existence is not well developed, just placed in the book, hence why the characters are able to act a bit odd...
No mate. She has to go through events to realise why she has to go back in time. Why are you bothering to try to criticise when you clearly don't know the story? Why am I bothering with this thread? Drkshadow is clearly answering you, Mortalterror and JBI's criticisms with reasoned answers based upon the text and films. Drkshadow's done a really good job against puerile objectons. Well done Drkshadow. More than a match.
Eh, who said I do not know the story?
Mortal Claims the behaviour of Harry and Hermonine in the movie is strange, since she dismiss something in a magical wood quite quickly while they are usually curious.
You claim he thought it was herself, so she just avoided the meeting, since it was forbidden.
Then I just asked about Dumbledore having to suggest the use the time travel device, so: either Hermonie had no idea about being herself, otherwise she would already know that she would use the time travel or or, if she knew, she would be rather dumb to not consider the use of something she just saw in pratice.
Of course,Mortal is talking about the movie, so you saying that in the book it made sense is a bit irrelevant, a movie is a work on his own, if the movie fails to fullfil his information, it is not good (altough I remember the movie actually explains the impossiblity of meeting). Which just means: the behaviour of Hermonie was badly portraied because the idea of time travel was far from being well used, as it is a plot device, just scattered in the narrative. Rather typical in Harry Potter.
I wonder how this equate not knowing the works or how answering "It happens because it is how it happens in the book" style of answer is anything to be praised.
What's the point of setting someone up with a question if you do know the book/ film? I still think your criticisms ae rubbish. The film works, the books work. It is a narrative technique that allows the story to be played out according to Rowling's plan for the story. You seem to think that a personality flaw in a charater makes it a bad piece. Aren't character flaws part and parcel of fiction?
Rambo IV works too. And it is not a character flaw, it is a narrative flaw, but hey, the movie Works!
I was merely joking with that - but think of it this way - they could have gone back and given his mother a box of condoms - the possibilities are endless.
I don't really understand the debate, the time-turners are all destroyed by the time Voldermort comes back. Dumbledore tells Hermione to use time travel as a way of "giving her permission to use it". Hermione had kept it a secret in order to keep a promise that she had made to her Professor not to tell anyone of it (Since they are to be used only by the ministry). Dumbledore mentions that she use it in a way of allowing her permission, as well as conveniently spoiling a secret of Hermione's.
EDIT: now to speak for Science fiction. I do not think it is possible for anyone to go back that far. This is not because the time-turner does not allow it to be done, but because as people have eluded to, a person traveling through time has to go through the events up until the present without being seen. The reason they cannot be seen is evident in that if they were to be seen it would destroy the fabric of time. Unlike Terminator or a typical time-traveling device, there is no way to go back to the present, it has to be "re-lived". It seems plausible that the reason the ministry does now allow them to be used, and keeps them tightly secured in the ministry, is because of such things. Had the professor, or dumbledore, or hermione been caught using the time time-turners, they surely would've been arrested on-spot.
Last edited by Mathor; 08-11-2009 at 08:32 PM.
I'm losing all those stupid games
That I swore I'd never play
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