Chapter 23 - Horcruxes
After a throw-away scene with the Fat Lady and Nearly Headless Nick, Harry runs up to Dumblegod's office to give him Slughorn's memory. They journey into the pensieve and see the same memory as before, this time with substance instead of mist. Turns out Slughorn did tell Riddle about horcruxes and how they are created. Riddle is most interested in
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You make about as much sense as JKR does on this issue. Just kidding, you make more sense than trying to tell a classic hero's journey while removing all the parts that make it about a hero. She's left behind a contradictory, morally incoherent story for the purpose of "realism" or trying to avoid prosletyzing. If she wanted to do either of those things, I think she should have avoided writing an archetypal, heroic epic.
I think JKR has put herself in a real quandry by claiming she isn't trying to send a message with her books. A hero's journey automatically has a message, because when you invent a hero you raise certain virtues above others and cast different behaviors as vices. There are reasons why the hero is a hero and the villian a villian -- these are elevated, larger than life archetypes that are more than the sum or their parts. JKR, of course, further worsened the situation by creating a conflict of ideology within the books. Voldemort isn't just evil because he kills people. He's evil because he supports a prejudicial ideology, and selfishly seeks immortality at the price of compassion for other people. Yet, the disparity in belief systems necessary to truly cast the good guys as heroes doesn't exist. The good guys don't kill, thereboy allowing others to die. The good guys "love", but they don't act compassionately. The good guys support the rights of half-bloods and muggles in theory, but don't actually do anything better than not killing them in practice.
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