"empty Harry"

[David]

No: HPFGUIDX 28434

Tabouli wrote:

> One more thing - a friend of mine went to a paper on HP a while ago 
(never mentioned this), in which the sneering academic said that HP 
was popular because Harry was an "empty" character, with no real 
personality or knowledge, into whom children could project 
themselves.  Sacrilege!  I told my friend, wishing I'd gone to cry 
her down.  What do people think of this blasphemous theory?
> 

I think it's true that we often get a very limited view of Harry's 
opinions, and that allows us to fill his mind with our own.  For 
example, we get surprisingly little of Harry's position on Hermione's 
telling McGonagall about the Firebolt - we get much more of Ron's. So 
the reader who is cross with Hermione, and the reader who feels that, 
however clumsily, she has done the right thing (In her place I would 
have let it slip apparently by accident in front of McG, and feigned 
complete surprise at McG's 'overreaction', and then said that perhaps 
it's for the best after all.  But then I'm manipulative.) can both 
put their own view into Harry's head.

It's also true that he has very little knowledge of the Wizarding 
World, and so all Muggle readers can identify with him.  Persumably 
wizard readers get really exasperated.

His famous lack of curiosity helps keep empty spaces for the reader 
to fill, too.

However, he does have personality, as we will all recognises as soon 
as we see Daniel Radcliffe make a minor slip in characterisation.

David, suspecting that Tabouli isn't telling all she thinks on this 
one