JKR, interview July 13, 2000

(x: http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0700-hottype-solomon.htm) 

"J.K. Rowling Interview," CBCNewsWorld: Hot Type, July 13, 2000

4권 발간 이후

(선/악 캐릭터에 대해)

-사람들이 흔히 선한 캐릭터는 지루하고 악인 캐릭터들은 언제나 더 흥미롭다고 말하잖아요. 유명한 어구도 있죠, 밀튼에 대한.. Paradise Lost의 작가이고.. "신은 따분하고 악마는 흥미롭다".

JK: 음, 하지만 해리는 선인이예요. 그리고 개인적으로 해리가 지루한 캐릭터인줄은 모르겠어요. 제 말은, 해리는 그만의 결점들을 가지고 있으니까요. (중략) 전 선함을 지루하게 생각하지 않아요. 

-악인캐릭터를 쓰면서 더 재미를 느끼나요? 볼드모트는 악의 정수와도 같으니까요.

JK: 네, 그는 나쁜 사람이죠. 더 재미있냐구요? 전 덤블도어 이야기 쓰는것을 사랑하고 그는 선의 전형이죠. 하지만 질데로이와 리타 이야기 쓰는것도 좋았어요. 코믹한 캐릭터들이잖아요.

-그럼 딱히 제일 좋아하는 캐릭터는 없나요?(favorite to write 인지 그냥 favorite인지 모르겠다) 

JK: 음, 네 없는것같아요. 아 두들리 쓸 때 정말 즐거웠죠. 두들리는 쓰기 정말 재미있어요.

E: Is there a sense that some people say good characters are boring and evil characters are always the more interesting. And there's the famous line about Milton and of course he writes Paradise Lost and God is a bore and the devil is interesting.

JK: Well, you see, Harry is good. And I personally do not find Harry boring at all. I mean, he has his faults. Ron and Hermione are both very good characters but they're… My voice sounds incredibly loud when we stop this train. (Laughs)

 

E: (Laughing) No, it's lovely.

JK: No, I'm not bored by goodness. I'm not bored by goodness.

 

E: Do you have more fun writing the evil characters? Because Voldemort [the sinister wizard who killed Harry's parents] is the quintessential evil character. 

JK: Yeah, he's a bad one. Do I have more fun? I loved writing Dumbledore and Dumbledore is the epitome of goodness. But I loved writing Gilderoy and I loved writing Rita. Because I just find them comic characters.

 

E: So you don't have a favourite?

JK: No, actually, I don't think I do. I really enjoyed writing Dudley as well. Dudley's great fun to write.

 

---

앞으로의 전개에 대해

E: You know, characters take on their own lives. They have their own stories. Writers often say, 'I loved that character and the most tragic part of my year last year was having to kill them off.'

 

JK: Well that's coming.

E: Do you know already who is going to die in the next books?

JK: I know all of them who are going to die, yeah.

E: And some characters we might love and you might love?

JK: I'm definitely killing people I love, yeah. (Waves to fans outside) It's horrible, isn't it? (Laughs) It is actually. I cried during the writing of that one [Book Four] for the first time ever. I cried doing the actual writing of it. It really upset me.

E: It opens with a murder and then there's one at the end, which I won't say who it is. And you cried then?

JK: Yeah.

E: But in the future there's even more…

JK: (Laughs deeply) There's worse coming.

E: Is there? There's even worse coming, isn't there?

JK: I don't know why I'm laughing. It's mild hysteria. (Looks at camera) I've got all these children peering in at me [from outside the train]. If they knew I was talking about slaughtering their favourite characters. (Waves vigorously to fans) Hallo!

 

E: People love Ron, for example. Kids think you're going to knock off Ron because he's the best friend.

JK: Kids do, exactly, because they're sharp and they've seen so many films where the hero's best friend gets it. So they think I'm going to make it personal by killing Ron. But maybe that's a double bluff… (Laughs)

 

E: Now that you know they expect it, do you give it to them?

JK: No, I decided…It's not that I sat down with a list and decided to write, 'You're going, you're going, you're going.' There are reasons for the deaths in each case, in terms of the story. So that's why I'm doing it.

 

E: Is this book as suitable for the six- and seven-year-old who loved Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?

JK: It depends on the kid, but I have to say that from the word 'go', I have never said these books were…you see, I knew what was coming. So I have proud mothers saying to me 'He's six and he loves them,' and I'm thinking, I personally wouldn't have said 'go for it' with a six-year-old. I personally wouldn't, because I knew what was coming, I knew they would get darker. The story is about a world that's getting darker. So it depends on the child. My daughter is coming up to seven. She absolutely adores them.

 

E: Even this one?

JK: She's not all the way through it yet.

 

E: This is the crucial book, because after this book, everything changes. The whole world seems to go through a radical transformation.

JK: Well, it's the end of an era. Book Four is the end of an era for Harry.

E: He's grown up. This is a right of passage.

 

JK: Exactly. He's no longer protected. He's been very protected until now. But he's very young to have that experience. Most of us don't get that until a bit later in life. He's only just coming up to 15 and that's it now. (A photographer sticks his camera against the window and snaps off a bunch of pictures.) He's very exposed now, as you know if you've read the book. If you haven't read the book, I'm not going to give it away.

 

E: But there's definitely a right of passage about being an adult… (A scuffle ensues between the photographer and security. The man shouts 'Don't push me. Don't you push me.')

JK: Uh-oh. God.

E: This is really getting tough. (The photographer angrily pleads his case to security.)

JK: My worst nightmare is that children are going to get hurt in some scramble. We've come close to that before now. Apparently the local press at our last stop, where we stopped to put water in the engine, had printed that I would be signing books there. So there's 200 kids waiting there, and we weren't signing books there. There was no security or anything. (Many fans, both young and old, are milling about outside the train. A middle-aged man presses a note against the window, which reads 'Please spare us 5 minutes.')

인권 이슈 등 관련

국제 앰네스티에서 2년간 RA로 일했었다고. 아프리카의 인권 학대들에 대해..(수단의 옵스큐러스 소녀 등을 떠올리는데 관련이 있었을 것인가?)

헤르미온느와 요정 인권회 이슈 등으로 등장하는데 이것들은 JKR의 자전적인 요소. 성인이 되는 과정이란 세상의 불합리함과 불평등함에 대해 주장하여 바꿔내는것이 얼마나 쉽지않은 과정인지 깨닫는 것 등등 언급

EVAN: You used to work for Amnesty International. Two years.

J.K. ROWLING: I did, yeah. Research assistant. Human rights abuses in Francophone Africa. It made me very fascinating at dinner parties. I knew everything about the political situation in Togo and Burkina Faso.

E: And you still do.

JK: No I don't. Not anymore.

E: But here's where it shows up: Hermione and the rights of elves. Civil rights becomes a theme in Goblet of Fire.

JK: Oh yeah. Yeah.

E: This is a real issue.

JK: Yeah, that was fairly autobiographical. My sister and I both, we were that kind of teenager. (Dripping with drama) We were that kind of, 'I'm the only one who really feels these injustices. No one else understands the way I feel.' I think a lot of teenagers go through that.

E: In Britain they call it 'Right On' or something.

JK: Exactly. Well, she's fun to write because Hermione, with the best of intentions, becomes quite self-righteous. My heart is entirely with her as she goes through this. She develops her political conscience. My heart is completely with her. But my brain tells me, which is a growing-up thing, that in fact she blunders towards the very people she's trying to help. She offends them. She's not very sensitive to their…

E: She's somewhat condescending to the elves who don't have rights.

JK: She thinks it's so easy. It's part of what I was saying before about the growing process, of realizing you don't have quite as much power as you think you might have and having to accept that. Then you learn that it's hard work to change things and that it doesn't happen overnight. Hermione thinks she's going to lead them to glorious rebellion in one afternoon and then finds out the reality is very different, but that was fun to write.

E: And you're working in these issues that, for you as a person, are obviously crucial to your life. I mean, these issues about race relations and civil rights.

JK: You know, children are interested in those things. They are. It's not just me. I think they are.

E: So, are we protecting our kids too often from those kinds of things? Because certainly in North America, there is a sense that we ought to protect our kids from…

JK: On my last tour I was there over Halloween. And I was stunned that on my hotel television…you see, my daughter was in this hotel room, and three programs in a row were concerned with 'how do we stop our children being frightened by Halloween.' Three in a row. These daytime chat shows. 'Well, make sure you watch them putting up the decorations, so they can see it's not real. Explain to them it's all for fun.' And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you are trying to protect children from their own imaginations, and you can't do that. That's how you turn out frightened children, in my opinion. You turn out frightened children by saying, 'It's not scary. There's nothing there to frighten you.' Kids will get scared and they've got to live through that and then to deal with that. You can't stop them being frightened. A happy child is not one who has never experienced fear or who has never been allowed to experience fear.

E: Fear is a healthy thing?

JK: It is a healthy thing. It's a survival thing. What then happens to the child who has been so protected that their age…I mean how could a child grow to age 14 never having experienced fear, but let's say that were possible? It would be a destroying experience for that boy or girl the first time they felt fear. You have to learn that.

E: What ought we to protect our kids from, then?

JK: We're trying to protect them from our own fears, I think, and that's not healthy. That's not good.

E: What is healthy to protect them from?

JK: Right. Obviously we want them physically safe. That's a very natural instinct. I'm the same with my daughter. My reaction to a scary book or a scary film with my daughter would be to watch it with her and discuss it with her, to be with her as she experienced it. But don't get me wrong. There are things I do not want my nearly seven-year-old daughter exposed to. There are definitely things, such as explicit sex. No, she's too young. That's like giving a seven-year-old child a loaded gun and saying 'play with that.' No, that's another issue. I mean, sex is something we do discuss but I don't want her watching certain films. I don't want her watching films where people blow each other's heads off at random. No, absolutely not. But when it comes to something that is…

E: Because it's hard to draw the line here, isn't it? Because someone could read your book and say 'well, there's murder…'

JK: People die, but do you care when they die? Do you absolutely have a sense of how evil it is to take another person's life? Yes, I think in my book you do. I think you do. I think you see that is a horrific thing. I have enormous respect for human life. I do not think that you would read either of the deaths in that book and think, yeah, well, he's gone, off we go. Not at all. I think it's very clear where my sympathies lie. And here we are dealing with someone, I'm dealing with a villain who does hold human life incredibly cheap. That's how it happens: one squeeze of the trigger. Gone. Forever. That's evil. It's a terrible, terrible thing but you're right, I know where I draw the line. Other people will draw the line in a different place and they will disagree with me.

E: But this is the author with a sense of moral responsibility. Should authors have a sense of moral responsibility?

JK: When it comes to writing the books, I operate to a different set of rules. In fact, I write what I want to write. Because of the nature of the discussion we are having, I have to analyze these rules, but when I'm writing I do not sit down and think of it like, there's my line, and here's the moral lessons we are going to teach our children. None of that ever enters my head. I write what I want to write.

E: But the story has to be written.

JK: Exactly. I write what the story is. Yes. I write what I feel I have to say.

E: It's a hard line, right? Because the story may demand something that may challenge the things, personally, that you hold dear. People have asked, 'Well, Harry's faced death and Harry's an orphan. Now that he's growing up, will he face other challenges?' Sexual challenges? There are, in fact, crushes in this book. What else? Are we going to see drugs? The issues that teens see: drugs, teenage pregnancy. These are real teen issues.

JK: Right. Drugs and teenage pregnancy, should they be discussed in children's literature? Yeah, definitely. I think there's very little that shouldn't be discussed in children's literature. Off the top of my head, actually, I can't think of anything, if it's dealt with properly. I can't think of a single topic. However, in the Harry Potter books, I don't think it's going to be very faithful to the tone of the books if Hermione goes off and finds herself pregnant at age 13. No. Because they're not that kind of books. Frankly, Harry, Ron and Hermione have quite enough to deal with without starting to dabble with illegal substances. You know, they're up against other things.

E: Wiccans, who have said 'Oh, this is fabulous. She's an apologist and she's a champion of white witches…'

JK: No, I'm not.

E: And boarding school people are saying 'See? This is why boarding schools are good.' Are you a champion of these causes?

JK: I've said this before. The only two groups of people who seem to think that I'm wholeheartedly on their side are practicing wiccans and apologists for boarding schools, and I'm not part of either group.

E: You wouldn't send your kid to a boarding school, would you?

JK: No, I wouldn't. No. There are circumstances in which I can understand a family doing it. But you might know that my daughter won't be going to a boarding school. I'll sit on her before I let her go to a boarding school. I want to keep her at home for as long as I can.

E: Some of the people that you satirize most in this book, the evil people, the Malfoys, they're very classist, they're racist against the Mudbloods. Is it fair to say that these are neo-Conservative or Thatcherite? (JK nods.) Is there a real political axe you're grinding there?

JK: I think in this book too, you fully understand… With Voldemort, I didn't want to create this cardboard cutout of a baddie, where you put a black hat on him and you say 'Right, now you shoot at that guy because he's bad.'

E: Like the Dursleys are more of a cutout bad people?

JK: Yes and no. You will meet Dursleys, in Britain. You will. I've barely exaggerated them. Yeah, Voldemort. In the second book, Chamber of Secrets, in fact he's exactly what I've said before. He takes what he perceives to be a defect in himself, in other words the non-purity of his blood, and he projects it onto others. It's like Hitler and the Arian ideal, to which he did not conform at all, himself. And so Voldemort is doing this also. He takes his own inferiority, and turns it back on other people and attempts to exterminate in them what he hates in himself.

디멘터 이야기. 본인의 우울증 경험을 토대로 만들었으며-까지는 알고있었는데 원인이 어머니의 죽음이었군 HP 시리즈 내에서 계속 언급하는것이 이타성(사랑)과 죽음에 대한 것이었는데 다른 사람을 위한 죽음이 가장 큰 이타성의 표현일 수 있으니까..하고 생각했는데 세스트랄도 그렇고 아무래도 가장 가까운 사람의 죽음을 경험해봤던 사람 아닐까 했었는데 그랬군

EVAN: Time to talk about the Dementors.

J.K. ROWLING: Ah, the Dementors, yeah.

E: The Dementors, um, they are the personification of depression. (JK - Mmm hmm.) Now, I hate making biographical links between characters and authors but that's (laughing)…

JK: You might as well. (Laughs) Go for it.

E: But there is a biographical link and we've talked about it, about a depression in your life being, not just obviously a horrible time, but something in the end that was important to your life.

JK: Um, I was depressed, um, I'd say - would it be 1994 - I did suffer a spell of what I was told was clinical depression. I don't know, I was told it was. Yeah, I was depressed for a while. I'm not ashamed of that, plenty of people get depressed and I've never suffered from it again and I got through it. But the Dementors, uh, it's so hard to trace the origin of something. I saw these things and I knew what I wanted them to do, but they became, as I really thought about what they did, I realized that's what I was doing. That's normally the way it happens with me. I don't consciously think 'And now, I will create the personification of depression' but as I'm creating them I realize what I'm doing. You know, what unconsciously is going on. So they create an absence of feeling, which is my experience of depression. It is an absence…

E: That is your definition of it.

JK: (Nods) Mmm.

E: Now, would you say for you, you know, every, lives have so many crucial moments in them, but that for you, was that a crucial moment in your life, a turning point in your life?

JK: Having a depression?

E: Yeah, I mean, was that sort of rock bottom? (JK pauses in thought.) What happened? Now this is after your marriage, right?

JK: Yeah. Yeah. It was, I think it was what you would call a reactionary depression, as in certain things happen to you, and that was your reaction, obviously. I think a lot of, I had a very turbulent few years. I moved country twice. My mother died. That was the big thing. Nothing was bigger than my mother dying.

E: Right. And you were 25?

JK: I was 25. That started this sort of train of mishaps and misadventures. I got married. We got separated. We got divorced. Having my daughter was a wonderful thing, but it's an enormous responsibility, and I was worried. I was continually worried about being that broke and, you know, and bringing up a daughter.

E: This was the thing, that your mother passed away, when you were 25, of MS.

JK: Yeah, and she was very young. She was 45.

E: And that was…

JK: That wasn't good.

E: That was the worst, obviously.

JK: That's the worst thing that ever happened to me. For sure. Yep. Yeah. It was a huge shock. In retrospect, you see, I felt guilty. I felt, well, how could you have been shocked, you could see how ill she was. But I didn't expect it to be right round the corner. It was something about the fact that she was still very young. I just thought that she'd be around for years more, and, um, she wasn't. So that was a real shock. That was horrible.

(이후는 걍 개인적인 이야기)

E: And that started?

JK: Well I think in fact, which is, or was, quite typical of me, although I did grieve, I almost, um, I didn't want to stay still and grieve. I mean, I think that's a good way of getting yourself into a proper depression. You know, refusing to feel it, just let's keep going and keep moving. So I went abroad. I actually had a wonderful time teaching abroad. It was one of the best jobs I ever did, in terms of day jobs, because I always knew that none of these were really for me. I always knew I was going to write. And I met my ex-husband and ecetera. I had a beautiful daughter. But it all kind of caught up with me when I'd left my ex-husband, because almost I had to sit still and think about what had happened. There I was, I was very broke, I didn't have a job. The first time in my adult life I wasn't working. Very worried about money, and how I'm going to raise my daughter. And everything kind of folded in at once. So yes, I did get quite depressed.

E: It seems like almost through your books you miss your mom and you're dealing with that conversation like Harry, just seeing the shadow but it can never come back.

(하다가 죽음에 대한 코멘트)

JK: Dealing with bereavement is a strong part of the books. Dealing with loss. Yes. I can't elaborate as much as I'd like to on that because I have three more books to go and this is not a sales pitch, you can get them out of the library and you don't have to buy them, I'm just saying that I will ruin future blocks if I elaborate on that too much. But it's a strong central theme - dealing with death, yeah, and facing up to death.

E: In one of the books Dumbledore says "Death is just the next step to a great mystery, the next great adventure" I think is the quote.

JK: I would like to…I'm not as wise as him. I would like to see it that way. And I do see it that way, in many ways. Death still frightens me, as it frightens most people. Because there's still lots I want to do, and I don't want to leave my daughter early.

E: That's a hard one to accept.

JK: (Nods) Mmm hmm. It's leaving people. I think it's particularly leaving your children. It's a hard thing.