OotP Harry not a prefect & his Inner Voice

[templar1112002]

No: HPFGUIDX 115286


 > Cory again:
> >
> > Sure she could have, but she didn't.  Having Ron and Hermione as
> > prefects enabled her to demonstrate certain things about their
> > characters -- Hermione got to show that she has a backbone 
(standing up to the twins when they were feeding their joke candies 
to the first years).  Ron...well I don't know, exactly; he didn't 
exactly do a bang-up job as a prefect.  It did give him his much-
needed chance in the spotlight, though.

Feklar wrote: 
> That HG was a prefect made sense to me, both plot-wise and in 
terms of what I expect a prefect to be.  But Ron as prefect didn't 
do anything as a character or plotwise, so the purpose kind of 
escaped me.  That's why it read to me as a bit heavy-handed on the 
author's part, or as someone else said, he's a prefect b/c he's a 
main character.  To contrast, when Harry and Ron run off to rescue 
HG from the troll in SS, I didn't think, "A-ha! They are going off 
to be heroes because they are the main characters!"  That was
why they were going to be the heroes, but the authorial intent 
wasn't so obvious... Although, with Ron as prefect, I'm still not 
sure what the authorial intent is.  Maybe he'll become a responsible 
upstanding academic citizen or something.
>

***** Maybe Jo's authorial intent to make Ron prefect (and Keeper in 
the Quidditch team, too) was to give his character the opportunity 
that he had been dreaming of (and denied of in GoF): to outperform 
his older siblings' achievements, to stand out for and by himself.  

Jo gave Ron the chance to experience part of his dreams/wishes come 
true (PS: Head Boy and Quidditch Captain) and I believe that he has 
realized that the phrase "Be careful what you wish for, it may come 
true" is of wise value, he realized (or didn't he?) that 'glory and 
fame' do not come for free, they come with responsibilities and hard 
work too... I believe that Jo wanted to show us that sometimes when 
we 'complain of life being not fair' (as Ron did in GoF) it's not 
mainly due to Fate, it's because of our choices, too.

Now, the thousand dollar questions are:

1)Do we think that Ron 'performed' well with his given opportunities?
2)Did he chose to do what was 'easy' or what was 'right'?

IMO, no to 1), and 'what was easy' to 2).  Jo implies so in the FAQ 
section of her website: "...Ron got it wrong in 'Phoenix', from 
which we can deduce that he hasn't been a very authoritarian prefect 
thus far...", she also says that she doesn't believe in Fate, that 
she believes 'in hard work and luck, and that the first often leads 
to the second', and from her books she also makes us know (Harry and 
readers) that Ron's prefect opportunity was actually a fluke, it had 
been Harry's in first place, and that Angelina chose Ron as Keeper 
over two other better players mainly because he was a Weasley.

So, to summarize this, I believe her authorial intent in making Ron 
a Prefect (and Keeper) was to expose him to a 'real-life try-out', 
we will have to wait for HBP to see what Ron's balance sheet is of 
his performance in OoTP... if he is willing to work hard for what he 
wants, or if he is going to 'change' his wish-list so that he 
doesn't have to work that hard, or if he didn't learn much from this 
experience...  Can't wait to read that darn book!

Marcela