See comment below regarding dementors. When I read those passages it suddenly clicked for me what the whole thing was about. Easy to miss though, it's not as if they are advertising it.
This is a story where our hero is the heir to an ancient tradition of seeking immortality, where the most vile creatures in the universe are afraid of him because he thinks death sucks, and who spends the entire ending trying to heal a cryogenically frozen person and bring immortality to the masses.
It's not "easy to miss". The author beats you 'bout the head with his ideology. It's heavy-handed even for something explicitly didactic.
