Average Harry?

[naama_gat at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 18841

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Ebony wrote:
> 
> > Perhaps I'm just not seeing the problem with giftedness.  
> 
> I have to run and don't have time to hunt up Jim's post, but I 
don't 
> think it claimed Harry needed to be average or that he wasn't 
gifted. 
>  The whole objection to Uberharry (on which I can and will deliver 
an 
> eloquent and longwinded dissertation when I get the time) doesn't 
> rest on the claim that he isn't gifted.  Of course he is!--as you 
say, 
> he's not at all average in his flying/Quidditch talent, in his 
> "emotional intelligence," etc.  The real question is whether he is 
> Everyman or Other.  I plump for the former and I hope and believe 
JKR 
> will also.
> 
> Amy Z
> 
> P.S.  Frodo is not at all average either.  He has extraordinary 
> integrity and courage.  But he's still Everyman.  JMHO.
> 
> P.P.S.  I actually think the real issue is more about the concept 
of 
> destiny than anything else.  I don't believe in destiny, I don't 
> find it an interesting concept, and I wonder if a search would turn 
> the word up anywhere in the four books.  But no time now.  I shall 
> return . . .


I agree with every word, Amy. 

As I see it, both Harry and Frodo (and Sam, of course) are ordinary. 
Regular people. Gifted maybe, but not extra-ordinary (the Other, as 
Amy put it). Yes, they achieve great things, but it's presented, IMO, 
as a fulfillment of their potential. The transformation they go 
through is not a transformation of substance. They remain who they 
really are the whole time. For us, the readers, it's a change of 
perception. From viewing them as ordinary, we view them as 
extraordinary, but - and that's the great thing - without losing our 
original conception of their ordinariness (they reamin Everyman in 
our minds). 

I think that that is the true experience of magic - seeing the 
extraordinary *in* the ordinary. Like when you look at a view you see 
every day, and suddenly, because of a change in the light, or a 
moment of quiet, you realize that it is glorious. For one fleeting 
moment you sense that there is no such thing as the mundane. 
(To Ebony - it's not like finding the one four-leaved clover, more 
like suddenly realizing that they are ALL four-leaved.)

For me, that's the main appeal of JKR's vision. The magical is not 
beyond - long ago or years from now, in far lands or deep within the 
sea, in an alternative universe or in Alpha Centauri. It's right 
here, under our very noses - you just need to cross the right barrier 
at the train station, enter a grungy little pub, just look at things 
properly - and it's there.


Naama