Eros and Thanatos(Re: Is Harry gay?)

[iris_ft]

No: HPFGUIDX 55501

Hi listies,


Harry, cet obscur objet du désir (especially when you wait for the 
fifth book of his adventures)...
Is he gay? Well, I don't know; that's his private life after all.
However...
When I started reading JKR's books but didn't know already that 
HPfGU existed (I was such an ignorant...), I used to lurk through 
the web looking for some information about the Harry Potter series 
and happened to visit several sites that presented the story from a 
gay point of view.
I' m not sure there's canon evidence about that interpretation of 
the books; however I have to confess that JKR's way of writing 
allows it.

First, she's a fine observer of teen age psychology, and she uses it 
logically in her books.
It's particularly clear in GoF, when she describes the relationships 
between her young heroes and their respective behaviours. We can see 
that Harry is a very realistic representation of a fourteen years 
old boy: the way he scamps his Divination homework (UK edition, p 
195), his fantasies about becoming a famous Quidditch player or 
about winning the Triwizard Cup (see pp 169-170), his 
procrastination when he has to work out the golden egg's puzzle (p 
342), the way he plays with Ron during the Transfiguration lesson 
(p336); well, all of these sequences are the perfect illustration of 
the classical behaviour of a boy teenager of fourteen. 
That's also what we use to call "the awkward age", with it's silly 
but necessary laughters (think about the confrontation between the 
Weasleys and Dudley at the Dursleys's), and its need for a group in 
which you can elaborate your own forthcoming personnality. It also 
appears in the book, for example when JKR describes the boys's 
dormitory at their arrival at Hogwarts (see pp 169-170); there are 
several stereotypes of what you can find in a teenager's world: 
posters of the models they need to grow up (Victor Krum,West Ham 
football team or the Chudley Cannons), and of course, friends.
If you observ teen age boys, you can't deny that they don't mix 
easily with girls. Put them all in a refectory, for example, and you 
will see that there are  tables of girls from one part, and tables 
of boys from another one. A psychologist I worked with told me that 
it was a kind of a protective attitude. When you are only fourteen, 
when your body is changing so fast that sometimes you don't even 
know how to deal with it, searching a conforting group is a 
reflex,and you naturally turn towards the fellows of  the same sex: 
it's a kind of a protection, because generally you share with them 
the same preoccupations, the same fears and expectations. You feel 
more secure with them, because you are not ready yet to deal easily 
by the opposite sex.
Harry isn't an exception to this rule, so that's why he prefers to 
be with Ron rather than with Hermione, that's why during the second 
task Ron plays the part of "what he'll sorely miss".
It doesn't mean, in my opinion, that Harry has a crush on Ron. Ron 
is simply a boy like Harry, a peer, someone Harry thinks he can rely 
on, his best friend , his teen age brother in arms.
Concerning the girls, they start interesting him, but more 
particularly, they impress him. He doesn't already know how to deal 
by them, because he is already immature. See the whole chapter 
of "The unespected task", and especially pp 338-339, when the girls 
are nearly depicted as if they were menaces!
That's simply because Harry is still a kid, even if he has a 
terrible doom. He still needs to play, to take his time of growing 
up and learning, to behave as if he was a normal boy. The following 
of the novel, thanks to that realistic painting of Harry as an 
average teenager, takes much more strengh. The scenes in the 
graveyard seem all the more unbearable because the victim of such a 
barbarity is simply a kid whose only purpose is growing up and 
living as he diserves to do. 
So, I don't think that  the way JKR describes Harry's feelings 
towards Ron and the girls can suggest that the kid is gay. It's only 
a very fine painting of an average boy teenager, and a way of making 
Voldemort's inhumanity stand out.

But we mustn't disregard, however, the possibility of homosexual 
connotations in the way JKR describes some situations or characters. 
For example, Lockhart looks rather effeminate in the way he dresses 
or combs his hair; and does he run after Harry only because the kid 
is famous and could provide him with more publicity?
There's of course Colin's sollicitude, and Draco's intent to become 
Harry's friend.
Some wrote (forgive me, I don't remember who exactly) that Draco was 
in a way obsessed with Harry, and that it could be a clue that he 
had a crush on him. Maybe. But in that case, we must say the same 
about Snape, whose behaviour towards Harry looks strangely like 
Draco's.
By the way, what was there between Snape, Sirius and James when they 
were students? And between Remus and Sirius, who as animagi look 
strangely the same? Why did Snape hate James, Sirius and Remus? Why 
did he joined Voldemort? 
And what can we think about Barty Crouch Jr's feeling towards the 
Dark Lord? Did Snape feel the same when he was a Death Eater?
How can we interpretate the scenes in the graveyard? Why does 
Voldemort use to the verb "to conquier", that belongs both to the 
vocabulary of war and the vocabulary of love?
And Harry's dream of being rapted by an eagle owl and led to 
Voldemort; is it an allusion to Ganymede, the young mortal that Zeus 
as an eagle rapted so he would become his lover?
Okay, these are only hypothetical perspectives. We don't have any 
canon evidence to say that one of them would lead to something.
But there's one thing we can't deny; JKR is a master in the art of 
suggestion. And everybody knows that suggestion is one of  the bases 
of erotism. We can't deny either that the Harry Potter series deals 
with death, and that many times Thanatos and Eros are companions.
They are also Harry's companions. Harry, the Boy Who Lived thanks to 
a woman who gave him protection combining in her sacrifice love and 
death. Harry, the boy that Voldemort WANTS DEAD. Maybe one of the 
reasons this kid fascinates so many people is that he has love and 
death walking by his side. Just like Hamlet, or Don Juan...

Well, well... Maybe I'm completely wrong, and I'm just too 
influenced by my job (one can't spend all the week working with 
teenagers without trying to understand their behaviour) or by my 
fascination towards baroque civilisation.
I'd just like to finish saying, but that's an evidence, that the 
Harry Potter series is a great artwork, whichever point of view you 
take on it.

Pax vobis, and forgive me if all of this was given yet a commentary,

Iris