Is Harry feeling guilty for being alive ?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 117524


Alla wrote:
> 
> 
> Subconscious survivor guilt? Quite possibly. I always thought that 
> guilt (for the most part imaginary one) is a very large part of who 
> Harry's character is. The question I have again is when did it start 
> and how subconscious is it?
> 
> Harry does not remember how his parents died (unless you want to 
> argue of course that he really remembers more than green flash and 
> flying motorbikes). Dursleys, no matter how horrible they are, never 
> blame Harry for his parents death. How would he know? 
> <snip> 
> So, in short my position is that guilt is there, just not developed 
> from the early childhood. I think that his guilt over Cedric's and 
> Sirius' deaths is MUCH stronger that any guilt over his parents 
> death.

Carol responds:
I think that Del (who suggested the survivor's guilt idea) is on the
right track regarding Harry's reluctance to talk about his family.
Survivor's guilt doesn't require the other person's death to be the
survivor's fault. All it requires is his surviving the event that
killed the other person. So even as a child who thought that his
parents died in a car crash, he could have subconsciously felt guilty
for living when his parents died, a guilt that would have been
reinforced by all the hero worship of the Boy Who Lived. (Imagine how
Harry felt when he found out that people were *celebrating* his
triumph over Voldemort when he didn't even do anything except get
zapped in the head by a killing curse that somehow bounced off him,
celebrating when his parents had just been murdered.

Also--and please don't think I'm cold and unfeeling--I don't think his
parents are *real* to him. He never knew them; they're just names.
Yes, he stared at them longingly in the Mirror of Erised, but what he
wanted was a loving family, a sense of belonging, and now he has that
both with the Weasleys and at Hogwarts. I found his reaction to Rita
Skeeter's question about his parents (GoF, "Weighing of the Wands")
strangely disturbing: " (Am. ed. 306) Harry was reeling really annoyed
now. How on earth was he to know how his parents would feel if they
were alive?" Those two sentences caused me to realize that Harry's
parents are strangers to him. He never knew them; he seems not to want
to know them. Survivor's guilt would be a reasonable explanation.

I agree with you that his guilt over Cedric's death is stronger and
almost fully conscious, though it appears in his dreams as well. That
guilt, combined with all his other concerns (and just possibly
Voldemort manipulating his emotions) seems more than sufficient to me
as a reason why he doesn't ask Black or Lupin about his parents and is
so upset when Moody shows him the photo of the Order. The glimpse in
the Pensieve stirs his curiosity briefly and he does talk to Black and
Lupin about it, but both of them seem to be trying to cover for James,
to make him better than he really was. It's not surprising that he
puts both his parents out of his mind after that.

Maybe the death of Sirius Black will help Harry to form a stronger
bond with Remus Lupin, but it will take time for Harry to recover from
Black's death. His survivor's guilt will be stronger than ever because
this time some of the responsibility really is his.

Carol