The Romance (was HBP: the Good, the Not So Good, and the Ridiculous (Spoile

[Carol]

Carol wrote:
> > >
> > > Ron still needs to be a bit unsure of himself. Yes, he'll hug Hermione to comfort her now (DD's funeral in the HBP book) instead of pulling away in terror, and he holds her hand when they're at 12 GP in DH, but he's still afraid to kiss her, mostly because he's still insecure and still envious of Harry. 

va32h responded:
> > 
> > Seriously, there's no need to summarize the entire book, Carol. We are all here because we are fans, we know what happened in the book. 

Carol responds:
Sorry about that. I suppose I'm too used to the main list. OTOH, not everyone on this list is thoroughly familiar with the books, and I like to support my points with evidence. You're free to skip my posts if you think they're too detailed, and I do realize that I overdid it with too many of them coming back to this list after being absent for two or three days.

va32h: 
> > My point was that I thought what JKR did in the book was wrong.  Ron had ALREADY moved past all these insecurities and that I thought JK Rowling made a lousy and lazy choice in regressing Ron's character. He ALREADY worked out all his insecurities both about Harry (during the TriWizard Tournament in GoF) and about himself (during the endless Quidditch saga of OoTP). <snip>

Carol responds:

I understand your feelings. I had the same reaction in HBP when he was insecure about Quidditch all over again and needed to think he was drinking Felix Felicis to play well after having shown everyone how well he could play in the "Weasley Is Our King" segment of OoP. Character development sacrificed to plot (but also intended, I think, to show Ron's insecurity as longterm and not easily remedied by one success).

va32h:
> >
> > I hate pretty much every single word in Deathly Hallows but I particularly hate the way JKR destroyed Ron. She took too many cues from the screenwriters, I think.  Book Ron - the Ron we knew for 5 1/2 books at least, would NEVER have left Harry in the forest. 
> > 
> > That was such a stupid, lazy, choice of Rowling's --- I nearly flung my book across the room in disgust when I read it.

Carol responds:

I nearly flung my book across the room after "The Sacking of Severus Snape"! But that aside, I don't think it was character assassination. JKR is doing two things with that scene, showing the power of the Horcrux (Harry has already suffered somewhat similar reactions to his scar in OoP, where he's uncharacteristically angry and irritable; it seems to me that he can deal with the locket Horcrux better than Ron can because he has his own Horcrux in his scar) *and* to lead up to the powerful scene in which Ron first proves himself a true Gryffindor by rescuing Harry and retrieving the sword and then quite literally confronting his demons and destroying them, literally and figuratively, with the Sword of Gryffindor, after which he becomes the Ron he always was--brave and funny and loyal, but now fully aware that he loves Hermione and she loves him. It's a rite of passage, a symbolic growing up that simply would not have worked if he were already fully mature and self-confident.

Please understand that I'm not summarizing again here; I'm interpreting--and explaining why I don't think her treatment of Ron is character assassination at all; instead, it's preparation for a key scene. And, of course, Ron would never have left the tent if it hadn't been for the Horcrux and would never have "deserted" Harry and Hermione if he hadn't been kidnapped by Snatchers and unable to return before they changed their location and concealed the tent from him with their defensive spells.

Carol, who hates the whole Elder Wand subplot, especially Snape's death, and the manipulative side of DD revealed in DH