Austen and Why tiny, tiny Parallels DO Exist for R/H and/or H/G (was a large number of varied things)

[heiditandy <heidit@netbox.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52462

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214 
<dumbledore11214 at y...>" <dumbledore11214 at y...> wrote:

> I am sorry, but Draco at this point is very underdeveloped 
and "very 
> black" character for me.
> Would you agree with me that some Snape's actions are clearly 
shown 
> in canon to have positive motivations?
> I cannot say the same about any of Draco's actions. 

You really can't think of anything? You really don't think that 
telling Harry, Hermione and Ron to get out of the way of the Death 
Eaters was at least a considerate thing to do? Look at the action 
and tell me what on earth was mean, nasty or horrible about it. 

> No, I don't mean 
> the interpretation by the reader what Draco could have thought 
when 
> he was for example insulting Trio on the train or when Hagrid was 
> almost fired and Buckbeak almost executed thanks to his plotting.
> I am trying to remember anything, something "100% nice", which 
Draco 
> did so far and my memory goes blank.
> So,in my opinion portrayal of Draco cannot be compared with Snape 
in 
> any way. I think Rowling did a much better job with Snape.

Now, I agree with you that Draco is underdeveloped as a character. 
He has considerably less page-time than Snape. 

But Snape is also a grown man, who's had at least (approx) eighteen 
years to grow up and change and fully develop his personality. We've 
never seen him explicitly do something good without a selfish 
motivation - Dumbledore says that he tried to save Harry's life in 
PS/SS because he felt like he "owed it" to James, so what is 100% 
nice about that? 

And I am not looking purely to reader interpritation of nothingness, 
as you seem to be insinuating here. I can't see anything nice in his 
complaints about Buckbeak, although I do think that part of the 
reason for his original injury does lie qith Hagrid's exposing 13 
year olds to a creature giving a "5 for dangerousness" in Fantastic 
Beasts (but that's a separate issue). 

However, I don't think (and now we've moved completely away from any 
comparisons between Draco and Darcy to a pretty much unrelated 
issue) that he's a "black" character in the same way that, say 
Pettigrew or Crouch are. JKR has had too many occasions, which she 
has taken advantage of, to show him in a sympathetic or at least a 
sympathyzable light. She's given him a controlling and criticism-
spouting father who he doesn't speak in front of when peers of 
either of them are around. She'd had him physically abused by a 
dangerous "professor". And she's had him do something which cannot 
be construed as malicious in the obvious result, namely warning the 
trio in the woods at the World Cup.  He's failed at things left and 
right. Now, it's possible that she's done this to knock him and his 
type down, and knock him down further with each book. 

Or she's done quite the opposite. 

We don't know which yet, do we?

Heidi