The character I pity the most

[charisjulia]

No: HPFGUIDX 35503

 
Devin wrote:
> > >I think I can safely say that the character I 
> > > really feel sorry for is Frank Bryce.  
> 
And Cindysphynx replied:
> > But I guess the character(s) I feel most sorry for are the 
Diggorys. 
"judyserenity" wrote: 
> I'm with Devin here.  Frank Bryce's plight really gets to me.  It's 
> not so much how he died -- he was 76 or so years old -- but the 
> lonely, tortured life he led.  There's nothing to suggest that 
> *anything* ever worked out in his life, and he really wasn't to 
blame 
> for any of it.
> 
> I don't feel so bad for Cedric, because although he died young, he 
> seemed to have had a happy life up until that point.  I think an 
> unhappy life is worse than an early death.
> 
> I do feel bad for Cedric's parents.  By the way, it seemed to me 
that 
> JKR wrote Amos Diggory is a rather unsympathetic way, gloating to 
> Harry about how Cedric beat him in Quidditch and such.  I wonder if 
> JKR was trying to soften the blow for readers when Amos loses his 
son?


Well, I'd have to agree with Cindy here. I pity Cedric far more than 
any other character we've seen in the books up till now. Yeah, of 
course I feel sorry for poor Frank as well. He had a lousy life 
through no fault of his own. The village was unfair on him and those 
rotten kids cruel. But, see, at least Frank * had* a life. Cedric was 
robbed of his far too early on. He was just seventeen, he wasn't even 
out of school, he'd seen nothing of the world. And this is made even 
more tragic by the fact that he had promise. He was, as Dumbledore 
puts it, "good and kind and brave" and there is reason to believe he 
could made something of his life. But even if we could suppose that 
it would not have been so, even if we could know that his life would 
have ended up something like Frank's, miserable, uneventful for the 
most part and lonely, even then it would be tragic because, you see, 
* he never knew*. What makes Cedric's death so much more lamentable 
in my mind than Frank's (although every death is sad) was not how he 
died or why or at what age, but that he died not knowing, not knowing 
the world, himself or what he could make of himself.


As for the Diggorys, I feel for sorry for them as well. And it 
doesn't make it any easier for me that Amos could sometimes be a tad 
obnoxious. They lost a son and that is terrible. But Cedric lost 
Life. And that is everything.


Charis Julia, now rather worked up and teary.