JKR characterizations--oversimplification?

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 115292


> Pippin:
> That's just the issue, really. Sirius makes a huge point of saying 
> that *he* would have been willing to die for his friends rather 
> than betray them, and I believe he spoke out of personal 
> conviction, but when push came to shove, he tried to jigger 
> things so he wouldn't have to make the choice. 

Jen: Purely out of curiosity, did you believe Sirius was trying 
to 'jigger things' to get out of making that choice when you first 
read his story in POA? My first reaction after reading POA, was 
along these lines: "Man, that guy got a raw deal. First one of his 
friends framed him as a traitor, then he was thrown into this 
bizarre Wizard prison with no trial, no hope of survival *and* he 
wants to take care of Harry now. This dude sounds OK." In GOF he 
appeared to be taking up where he left off in POA, attempting to 
help Harry in his own imperfect way while on the run from the law.

(As a big aside, I'm purposely not talking here about whether Sirius 
was a good godfather, or a good influence on Harry or any of the 
like. I'm simply trying to sort out what motivations I ascribed to 
Sirius at the time of my inital reading.)

With OOTP, most of the characters acted in ways that surprised and 
dismayed me at times, so I lumped Sirius in with Molly, Harry, Percy 
Dumbledore and Snape as exhibiting some of their negative 
characteristics to the extreme. And of course, with the addition of 
Umbridge and Fudge acting so corruptly from their positions of 
power, they overshadowed the negatives of the Order members in my 
mind.

But NOW, in retrospect, and with the addition of JKR's 
summation....well all I can say is her summary wasn't the *main* 
thing I read into the character. I didn't see that the *main* 
motivation on Sirius' part was to merely be a spouter of philosophy 
with no follow-through. Now that JKR is sharing her beliefs about 
Sirius as a character, I have no choice but to accept it. It taints 
the character for me though, and makes me wonder what else I'm 
reading differently from how she intends it; what other characters 
have different motivations from those I've assigned so far? 


> Pippin:
> Murder is against Sirius's personal philosophy, but he's willing 
> to murder Pettigrew (he calls it that) to get revenge. 

Jen: When Lupin and Sirius calmly rolled up their sleeves to murder 
Peter, they appeared to be veteran fighters who were trained to 
injure and kill. My personal philosphy is they were making the wrong 
choice, as they weren't in the middle of a war anymore and Peter 
should be handed over to the justice system, such as it is. But 
unless I'm forgetting a canon point where Sirius stated he was 
opposed to murder (and I know you will be able to quote me one if it 
exists, Pippin!) I definitely had the feeling Sirius and Lupin had 
killed before.

Pippin:
> Harry himself observes more than once that he's getting mixed 
> messages from Sirius, so I'm not sure how you can say that this 
> isn't carried out in the books. 

Jen: Hopefully my first answer speaks to this. It's not so much that 
now, after reflection on JKR's thoughts, that I can't *possibly* see 
Sirius in the way she presented him. It's more that I'm disappointed 
by it and feel a certain sense of trepidation about future books and 
my own abilty to perceive where JKR is headed with certain 
characters. Other people enjoy that feeling more than I do ;).