Savior complex? (was "Harry and Tom")

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 110821

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Matt" 
<hpfanmatt at g...> wrote:

> Do you really think it is all that odd for a person to go out of his
> way to help others? 
> More generally, most of the adventures in the books begin 
when Harry is put in a situation in which he feels that if he does 
not stick his neck out to help someone (or solve a problem), no 
one will:
<snip examples>
>Rather, it's a sign of a young man who knows right from wrong, 
and is willing to stand up for what is right. <

Yes, but he keeps trying to do it in such ridiculously extravagant 
ways. He's like Don Quixote. Although, unlike the man of La 
Mancha, Harry really does have fabulous powers, he keeps 
galloping off to tilt with the windmills, imagining threats where 
none exist , while meantime the real ogres, who mostly look just 
like you and me, go about their business snickering in their 
sleeves at him. 

Take the situation in PS/SS and transpose it to the real 
world--suppose there's a  plot to steal the secret formula for 
Coca-Cola, which is, I am not making this up, guarded in a vault 
in Atlanta, Ga. You discover that a friend of yours has 
inadvertently told a  member of the gang how to get into the 
building. You try to alert the president of the company, but he's 
out of town. You find yourself talking to a VP, who doesn't take 
you seriously, mostly because you haven't told her about your 
friend. 

For most of us, this would resolve into a dilemma about whether 
to give your friend away or not (and Rowling/Dumbledore 
recognizes this by rewarding Neville.)   You wouldn't in a million 
years decide that the only way to save the formula would be to 
break into the vault and steal it yourself--but that's what Harry 
does. 

 It's excusable, because in PS/SS  Harry's an eleven year old kid 
who thinks he's fallen into a fairy tale, and that the world really
is an arena for him to demonstrate his heroism, but at almost 
sixteen, he really needs to stop thinking like that.

Pippin