Snapedom

The idea that it's part of the general disregard for things like compassion...D. telling Harry to ignore the wounded baby...that makes sense. It is supposed to be a sort of war story, after all.

What's troubling is that values like duty, hierarchy, obedience and loyalty are never really challenged or complicated by alternative moral systems. And those are perfectly good values, but in a book that purports to represent liberal values of tolerance and equity, it's all a little jarring and reactionary.

Combined with the Calvinism, the emphasis on abstract devotion to duty makes the books very colorless and lacking in human feeling. I mean, Harry isn't a hero because he saves people (after the earlier books, he doesn't pull off too many daring rescues, anyway). He's a hero because he's willing to sacrifice himself. Oh, and because he's burning with the desire to kill Tom.

If the books really committed to a chivalrous, medieval framework of symbolism and values, this would be fine, but it's jarring and discordant next to Hermione's 'save the elves' campaign, the inclusion of ecological issues, etc.