Is Draco's Character Arc complete?

[elfundeb2]

No: HPFGUIDX 114647


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dzeytoun" <dzeytoun at c...> 
wrote:
> 
> I was thinking this morning about Draco.  Lot's of people have 
> expressed dismay a the lack of development of his character.  JKR 
has 
> expressed dismay at his popularity among fans.  Some have even 
> speculated that JKR will kill him off in the next book just to 
squash 
> what she sees as a perverse and unhealthy movement.

I doubt JKR would stray from her plan just because she thinks 
Draco's popularity is unhealthy.  Especially if, as I've always 
suspected, too many Draco fans are enamored of Cassandra Claire's 
Draco, and not JKR's. 


> I don't think she would kill him off just for that reason, but I 
do 
> wonder if Draco's usefulness to the story has rather run its 
course.  
> He was, well, pathetic in OOTP.  After setting him up as a great 
> rival with the prefect thing, he essentially disappears through 
most 
> of the book and when he does appear again it's not easy to take 
him 
> very seriously.  

Draco ranks far down on the list of Harry's antagonists.  From 
Harry's perspective he has indeed become irrelevant; Harry's 
principal antagonist is Voldemort.  Nevertheless, Draco does have a 
rival in canon, and the prefect story arc sets it up:  his nemesis 
is Ron.  

I also don't believe that he'll die.  To kill him off would be an 
acknowledgment that Draco had little, if any, narrative function.  
Because what did he add?  A few silly confrontations?  A chance to 
show Snape's favoritism?  His lack of development to date can be 
another way of emphasizing that Draco still has a lot to learn.  His 
swagger is such that not even the prospect of a prison sentence for 
his father had any effect.  And he has no means to learn those 
lessons as long as he is allowed to play the part of rich bully with 
a trail of sycophants.     

Long, long ago (2002) Elkins wrote a post entitled (I think) "Draco 
Malfoy is Ever So Lame.  And Dead, Too" which I cannot find but 
which, as I recall, I agreed with except for the "dead" part 
because, in my view, killing an unrepentant Draco would be 
pointless.  Since I don't believe he will jump ship and join Harry 
et al., either, the only alternative is that Draco will be left 
alive at the end of the series but that his family's support of 
Voldemort will have cost him so much that he'll be left to grapple 
with the consequences of his own choices.  I think leaving Draco in 
grey at the end would be much better -- and mor believable -- than 
either the black solution or the white.

Debbie
who finds Draco so tedious that she can't believe she's actually 
written a post about him