Ron's Alleged Jealousy

[dicentra63 <dicentra@xmission.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52781

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "gwendolyngrace
<gwendolyngrace at y...>" <gwendolyngrace at y...> wrote:
> 
> What there is is a deep, often bitter, defeatism, that sometimes 
> leads him to lash out - "Why is everything I own rubbish?" and the 
> like. Would he come to blows with Harry over it? Not really, I don't 
> think so.... [T]here is 
> evidence in the book that points to Ron feeling the odd-man-out, 
> especially when also compared to his brothers. "I hate maroon," 
> and "She always forgets I don't like corned beef," for example. 

This I can agree with -- completely.  Ron isn't happy with his
circumstances, but he'd feel that way even if he'd never met Harry.  
> 
> But it's completely understandable that on occasion, he'd be a little 
> petulant regarding Harry's continued prosperousness, even though he 
> knows at a deeper level that Harry really doesn't have it all that 
> easy. 

Yet this is much different from asserting that Ron is a fundamentally
jealous person.  The tacit consensus on the list has been that Ron's
envy is much more intense and pervasive than what you've described. 
Nearly everyone has interpreted the Rift as evidence that Ron has some
*serious* problems with Harry's fame, and that the Goblet was just one
time too many, as Hermione surmised.  

In this light, the Rift makes Ron look extremely shallow and
vindictive.  It paints Ron as a person who is capable of punishing
Harry by abandoning him when he's under the most pressure and feeling
the most alone.

That assumption has backwashed over all of Ron's other moments of
"petty envy" and brought them into higher relief than they would have
otherwise been. "Ron is jealous of Harry" is an oft-cited reason for
not liking Ron.  The truth is that "Ron hates his life (and who
wouldn't?) but he's got that agape thing going for Harry."

C.R.A.B., people, C.R.A.B.  Cut the poor kid a break.

> So no, I don't think he'd plot Harry's ruin a la Salieri, but
neither > do I think he's 100% completely comfortable with the dichotomy, 
> either.

Nope, he's not.  For that matter, neither is Harry.  But Harry isn't
afraid of being odd-man-out the way Ron is because Harry doesn't have
a fistful of older brothers to compete with.  That Harry lied about
putting his name in the Goblet is perfectly plausible to someone who
has already been left in the dust countless times.

Ron found "Harry's abandoned me" easier to believe than "Someone's
after Harry" because when something odd happens, projecting your worst
fears onto the situation is the path of *least* resistance, not
greatest.  It's easier to see a situation as "here we go again" than
as something unfamiliar.  I know whereof I speak.

--Dicentra, for whom the glass is always half-empty