[HPforGrownups] Re: Depression and Harry in OotP

[rebecca]

No: HPFGUIDX 110820


From: "Shaun Hately"

> Shaun wrote :
> "I was perfectly capable of pleasure. I sought it out. And I found
> it. But *unless* I was actively enjoying myself, I rapidly slid into
> depression. And that's what I see in Harry. His 'default setting'
> seems depressed to me."
>
> Del replies :
> I guess we just don't see Harry the same way, because I don't see that
> his defaut setting has changed from the previous books. In my eyes, he
> has only added an alternative setting : anger. But when he's neither
> angry nor happy nor anything special, I just don't see that he's
> depressed. At least, no more than he was before OoP. Now if someone
> wants to make a case that Harry's been suffering from a sort of mild
> depression right from PS/SS, that's another thing entirely and I might
> agree.

charme:

I'm with Del: I don't agree that Harry is "depressed" although I understand
what you both are trying to say.  Harry is a teenager.  Teens get angry, get
happy, and have massive mood swings either way.  In other words, it's all
about opposites and "twos" in these books a lot of times, isn't it?  I also
am reminded of the the constant phrase you hear from teenagers, and you hear
from nearly all of them:  "That's not fair!"  It happens when they start to
realize the difference between normality and exception in a social sense.  I
think that's where Harry's anger stems from - in the beginning of OoP, Harry
thinks it is unfair that DD tells everybody but him what's going on, and
when he arrives at GP, he pretty much flips out on Ron and Hermoine, doesn't
he? He's got an ego about it, too:  who saved the SS?  who killed the
basilisk?  who fought off the dementors?  It's all about "me" in his sense,
wouldn't you say?  Typically normal teen behavior.

Teen anger about the perception of unfairness, lack of respect, the "me"
factor  is nothing new, and IMO, completely in stride with JKR's depiction
of Harry as an exception who is coming (then does at the end of OoP) to
accept he IS different and his fame and destiny are not in the general
normality for anyone else he knows.

charme