"empty Harry"

[Janie]

No: HPFGUIDX 28439

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "David" <dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
> 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 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.
> 
> 
> However, he does have personality, as we will all recognises as 
soon 
> as we see Daniel Radcliffe make a minor slip in characterisation.
> 
Well, i don't know what to think really. Harry has his own 
personality but it isn't portrayed as well as ron's or Hermione's. we 
see them through Harry's eyes, and so in some respects we only get 
Harry's opinion of them (Draco for example has a totally different 
view of them!) IMO Harry has been left as a kind of 'empty' 
personality so that we can identify with him, and put ourselves in 
his place, fighting the Dark Lord and everything else. Has anyone 
else noticed that the same effect seems to happen with Voldemort, 
that if you try you can put yourself in voldemort's place, even 
though the books are written seemingly from Harry's point of view?

janie, who thinks there's more than meets the eye to this topic!