Interesting Article

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 46343

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "James P. Robinson III" 
<jprobins at i...> wrote:
>          The author of this article 
(http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073627)  makes an interesting, if 
negative, appraisal of Harry, his abilities and  his character.  His 
final assessment is that Harry's choices, despite what 
> AD says, are not as important as his involuntary qualities 
(innate  abilities, instincts, inherited wealth, birth, etc.).  
Interesting reading, although I have trouble buying the thesis 
completely.<<<<

The Slate  article fails to distinguish between a real-life 
phenomenon: the  real-world popularity of a fictional wizard 
called "Harry Potter," and a  fictional one: "Harry Potter is a 
popular wizard." 

 It's hardly difficult to show that Harry doesn't deserve all 
the adulation he gets in the wizarding world, or that he owes 
much of it to involuntary qualities.  The books themselves make 
that point constantly. It is an entirely different matter to claim
that the character "Harry Potter" doesn't deserve the readers' 
attention for the same reasons.

Yes, Hermione is smarter and Ron is just as brave, but they 
don't serve as mediators for the reader. Hermione's values are 
Muggle (in the very best sense)  to the point where she 
occasionally forgets she's a witch, and Ron, of course, is a 
wizard through and through. It's Harry who constantly hesitates 
between  the rules of the wizarding world and what he thinks is 
right. These are the choices which are important.

 In each book Harry is presented with  dilemmas in which he 
must choose between the values of the wizarding world, 
expressed as Hogwarts rules and the advice of his elders,  and 
those of the   Muggle (real) world which he has internalized: not 
what the Dursleys would do, of course, but whatever he's picked 
up from school, television and books. Stuck in his closet he is 
like one of Plato's cave-dwellers--all he knows of the real world 
is a shadow.

In each case, the Muggle choice is the right choice, or so 
Dumbledore insists: deciding to go after  the Stone, entering the 
Chamber, sparing Pettigrew, returning Cedric's body. 
Dumbledore often tells Harry he's done what James would have 
done. But James was a rebel too. 

Of course there's some wish fulfillment in Harry Potter: who 
wouldn't want an invisibility cloak or a flying broom or the ability
to talk to snakes? But wonderful as they are, his fantastic 
abilities and possessions never do anything but catapult  him 
into situations which are beyond his level of competence as a 
wizard, and from which, of course, he needs to be rescued. One 
can detect, from far away, the cautionary tales of E. Nesbitt.

Pippin