Angry Harry in HBP and OotP

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 119780


<snipping almost all of Laurasia's post -- you just have to read it>
Laurasia: 
> We leave GoF with Harry feeling hopeful. He has seen death, but 
> thinks that there is no point in worrying about what is to come yet. 
> The last line of GoF is, after all: `What would come, would
> come... and he would have to meet it when he did.' Cut to the
> start of OotP. Harry is revisiting his pain, is scared and paranoid 
> and anxious about the coming war. 

Annemehr:
I admit to having finished OoP the first time feeling stunned. Though
I found Harry's outbursts painful, I didn't think of them as whiny.
Maybe it's because I interpreted Harry's state at the end of GoF
differently.  Another passage, besides the one you cited, stuck with
me: "He liked it best when he was with Ron and Hermione, and they were
talking about other things, or else letting him sit in silence while
they played chess."  Add that to: "When he looked back, even a month
later, Harry found he had few memories of the following days.  It was
as though he had been through too much to take in any more."

>From those passages, I read numbness and shock. So when I read the
"what would come, would come" line in that context it seemed as though
Harry had only the intellectual realization that the war was coming
without the emotional capacity to react. His quietude came not from
hope, but emotional paralysis.  Because of this, I spent the whole
wait for OoP worrying about what state he would be in and whether
anyone was going to see to him while he was at Privet Drive.

That aborted hug from Mrs. Weasley had something to do with it, too. 
Looking back, I wonder why I didn't see that more as a forshadowing
for OoP.

Laurasia:
> This change didn't happen over night. It happened because he was 
> isolated for several weeks when he needed support the most. Spending 
> over a month alone is enough to send anyone from hopeful to afraid. 
> 
> However, we aren't shown this transitional period.

Annemehr:
I agree with you, I think JKR skipped what could have been a good
transition, and I don't think it had to be boring. She's good at
telling a lot with a few words if she has to.  She did, in fact, tell
a lot about that month in retrospectve form, but just fleshing out a
scene or two in "real time" would have been very effective.  Perhaps
Harry could have woken from a nightmare about Cedric, got his
Voldemort-free Daily Prophet, and fired off a letter while we were
inside his head getting acclimated. A page and a half, maybe. 

<gigantic snip>

Laurasia:
> Angry!Harry *was* consistent. The lists of 
> everything that Harry had to face up until that point are completely 
> valid. If only I could have been shown the change, not just told 
> about it after it had already happened. 
> 
> This brings up a debatable point: should we treat HP as a one giant 
> book, or should it be read as 7 separate books? 

Annemehr:
I think you are right to see the series as one story.  I remember JKR
saying she began by trying to allow readers to read the books
independently; thus the recaps of characters and events taking up
large percentages of the first chapter of the early books.  But at
this point, trying to make the plots stand alone is going to distort
the overall tale. GoF was not as independent as the first three, and
the plot of OoP is nothing without the other books. I think it is
necessarily the same with Harry's character.  He needs to grow from a
basically normal boy into a young man capable of vanquishing
Voldemort, and he has to do it believably. It's quite a long way to go
and the journey will necessarily be split up over separate books.

So, I understand your point.  I can see how you could read more hope
into the end of GoF than I did, and I also wished for OoP to begin a
bit earlier in the summer.  Come to think of it, I wished for a little
more of what went on in Harry's head when he sat by the lake at the
end of OoP. I'm guessing Jo didn't write it because it was not so much
that he was thinking anything, but more just succumbing to the pain,
because after that he didn't seem to be fighting it as much anymore. 
After that he was able to be with his friends again. But I'm by no
means certain.

[/rambling]

Annemehr