Why to Like and Not Like OoP

[m.steinberger]

No: HPFGUIDX 71106

This post also responds to > > > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com,
"newdella"
> <Rosebeth710 at h...>, but first:

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Melanie Black
<princessmelabela at y...> wrote:

I want you all to think back to when you were a teenager?  15 is one
of the hardest years I think I ever had in my life.  I was very
cruel.  I yelled a lot.  I did not think anyone cared about me.  I
felt alone.  I felt like everyone was out to get me.  That everyone
secretly hated me even my friends.  I closed off people who cared
about me....I was highly egocentric.  I may be exaggerating a
little...but the point is as an adult I realize how I was.

Doesn't that sound a bit like a little boy wizard we all know?  I
mean their is not one person in this room who can tell me they have
never gone through a point in their life where they were jsut plain
angry.  I know that we all have if we are honest with ourselves.
This was Harry's year to get angry.  To me it makes it more
realistic.  And lets face it, Harry has a right to be angry...on many
levels.  And it's not like the people in his life are not hotheaded.
I mean almost all of the Harry Potter adults get things done, express
their feeling through anger.  The only exceptions that I can see are
Arthur and Remus.

If people are annoyed about the way harry was acting...I would like
them to take a trip down to their local high school and watch soem of
the 15 year old boys there.  Compared to the ones that I tutored this
past school year, Harry is an absolute angel.

~Melanie

Were you are nice as Harry from age 11-14? If so, I'll eat my proverbial
hat. And were you raging at the kind of suffering that Harry's been through?
I won't even offer hats on that one. I think Harry should be either less
angry or more crazy, that's all.

The Admiring Skeptic

> > > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "newdella"
> <Rosebeth710 at h...>
> > > wrote:
 >
> > TAS: The a and b I offer Harry are a - keep your emotional
> immunity, which
> > seems in HP1-4 magically limitless; or b - crack up in any of a
> dozen
> > interesting ways, including your f. In OoP, Harry isn't cracking
> up, he's
> > just venting what seems to be a moderate amount of ordinary teenage
> anger
> > and frustration. Basically, he's acting like a petty, self-
> indulgent brat,
> > which isn't one of the many normal ways I know of for reacting to
> pain,
> > hurt, and trauma, especially when it's part of a long series of
> traumas
> > which did not inspire such a reaction before. I don't want you to
> answer
> > this if it's not comfortable, but when you were coping with your
> trauma, did
> > you act anything at all like Harry?
> >
> > And thanks to all for some good discussions!
> >
> > The Admiring Skeptic
>
> Well, basically the answer to your question, did I act like Harry?
> Yes.  I had a series of life altering events that if I could have
> dealt with one at a time it would have been much easier.  However I
> got them all in a short period of time.  Did I become a petty, self-
> indulgent brat?  Yep.  Took everyone in my life for the ride with me
> too.  It wasn't pretty and it wasn't easy, but now on the other side
> of it, I'm better for it.  And the people in my life understood, much
> the way Ron and Hermione do.
>
> The thing is this, Harry has all this pain and anger inside and he
> needs to get rid of it.  To make things worse he can't confront the
> sources of these emotions.  So he takes it out on whomever he can,
> namely, Dudley, Ron and Hermione.  Now, Dudley is a mistake because
> nothing can be gained from it.  Ron and Hermione are different.
> Being friends with someone means you take the good and the bad.  No
> matter how loud he yelled they were still there.  Their actions told
> him over and over that that were still his friends and would continue
> to stand by him.
>
> Okay, I got a little off topic.  The other thing I wanted to say is
> that Harry has no idea how to properly deal with all of these
> emotions.  Look at how he reacts to Molly's hug at the end of GF.
> Now, it's a month later and he has no clue and he's all alone.  Also,
> previously, in the books he had one traumatic event at a time to deal
> with. In the graveyard scene the list is huge.  And now he's forced
> to deal with all of that at one time, much the way I did.  I believe
> that if Harry had faced any one of those events one at a time he
> would have handled much the way he has in the past.
>
> One last thing, we do have to remember that Harry is 15.  So on top
> of the trauma that he's dealing with he also has the hormones.  Let's
> just set that rollercoaster in super high speed and see what
> happens.  As for me, well I'm twice as old as Harry and was able to
> keep things a little more in check.  But that is something that comes
> with age and experience.  If LV's rebirth happened to Harry at 30
> rather then 14 we would see a different emotional response to it.
>
> Alright, sorry that got so long.
>
> Rosebeth

One last try: Are you sure that you didn't act *worse* than Harry? Of
course, from the inside maybe you felt that you weren't acting so bad, but
looking at it as an adult, how far gone were you? Harry's not messed up
enough to be expressing what he's gone through, IMO, nor is he repressing it
all, so where is he coming from? Unreality has been my answer till now.

The Admiring Skeptic

P.S. Please respond offlist, too, because I'm not going to be checking the
list for a while.