Theory: Knight 2 King

[unplottable_mod]

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Comments

Re: I nearly forgot

[lizardlaugh]

Thanks... and, I was curious as to what you would think. :)

sbbo has some brilliant ideas, and she's convinced me some of ours were probably incorrect... I have a few ideas too, but in my haste to spread the gospel of Chess and Ron=DD, I convinved ixchelmala that, aside from certain key players, the other pieces were too open to interpretation to truly say anything definate. I mean, we had ideas... lots of ideas... but in the end decided to let other people do the work for us, lol.

The literal pieces we see are, of course, canon. Other pieces seem quite obvious if you accept the chess metaphor because of what happens in the books. Others... more difficult. The metaphor may only extend so far, and it may not be possible to figure everything out until we see the whole game played. That said... totally willing to take suggestions (more than willing, more like begging). I think there are many different interpretations, but we need more canon (and soon *sobs*). We knew that if we sat around until we were sure, we'd never figure it out to our satisfaction or anyone elses. New eyes=new info=new insight.

Now... some of these players. I could see Snape as Bishop on Voldemort's side, but already 'taken'. If you look at sbbo's explanation of Peter, it would be similar to that. Snape could also be the Rook to Sirius's Knight rather than Remus (as she also suggests). Snape is important, no question, and neither ix nor I being Snape fans, we didn't really dig into where Snape should go. Bias colors everything.

Little players like Luna and Ginny... in chess there is a move where a Pawn reaches the other side of the board and can take the moves of any other piece other than the King. Pretty much always, the Pawn becomes a Queen, as it is the most powerful piece on the board. I think it is possible for one of the 'little' pieces to do just this. If Neville isn't already the other Bishop, this could be Neville. Ginny is another possibility -- thinking back to what the twins said about Ginny. Luna... her too, possibly, she's an odd one. Another is Tonks... mostly because of the symbolism in the first name she despises. 'Nymphadora' is from the greek words for 'bride' and 'gift' = Gift of the Bride = Love. It is what saved Harry, it is the power Voldemort knows not. On top of all of that, Nymphodora (with an 'o') was a martyr who died rather than renounce her belief in Christ.

So... if you have ideas, send them on over! :D

Re: I nearly forgot

[mark356]

You could try to map the other character's roles onto chess pieces, and what you've done right here isn't bad, but I think it's not quite as essential as the discussion you had in the actual essay. As you said, there isn't a lot of detail in the chess game; JKR is no chess geek, so she did not give very many specific moves or positions. She wrote the chess scene as a storyteller, not as a chessplayer, and your essay explained how the story of the chess game mapped over part of the story of the HP series, and did so to a remarkable degree. But the chess game is only one of the stories in the HP series or even in that chapter. I would rather just say that the other characters are parts of other storylines than try to extend the chess simile to pieces that were not mentioned in the chess scene.