Lupin's personality (WAS Re: Lupin as next Headmaster)

[marinafrants]

No: HPFGUIDX 78391

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "maria_kirilenko" 
<maria_kirilenko at y...> wrote:
> (Don't feel that you have to like Lupin less because of his 
> cowardice, though. To me, this trait is actually endearing. It 
makes 
> him astonishingly human in my eyes, even though there's absolutely 
no 
> self-identification in this scene for me at all. 

<snip>

> Aside - was JKR taking a risk in giving Lupin such an unappealing 
> negative trait? There's no questioning the fact that cowardice is 
> less likeable than hot-headedness, recklessness and a tendency to 
> show off. It certainly increased *my* affection for Lupin, but how 
> about other readers? 

It was a risk, but then JKR has never shied away from saddling her 
heroes with serious personality flaws.  (It's her villains who tend 
to lack balancing positive traits.) I don't know if the Pensieve 
scene actually *increased* my affection for Remus, but it did 
resonate strongly with his speech in the Shrieking Shack, and it 
underelined for me just how desperate for friendship and acceptance 
he's been all his life.  

I think the saving grace for Remus is that he's an emotional coward 
rather than a physical one.  We never see him cringing away from 
pain or danger, or backing down from his enemies.  It's his friends 
he gives in to.  (Thus proving Dumbledore's point about how it's 
harder to stand up to your friends than to your enemies.)  To me, at 
least, it makes him come across as sympathetic and vulnerable rather 
than despicable.  Even as I strongly disapprove of many of the 
things he's done, I sympathize even more strongly with the fear and 
pain that led him to do them.

Marina
rusalka at ix.netcom.com