What JKR Finds Important

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 116034



Antosha wrote :
" Harry IS emotional in the first four books--very emotional."

Del replies :
I kinda disagree. Many of your examples are examples of times when
*anyone* would have been emotional : when faced with slander or death
for example. 

I agree there are times when Harry finally reacts like someone really
emotional would *in my idea*. When he finds the Mirror of Erised for
example, and he keeps going back to it three nights in a row, all
night long. Or when he's betrayed by Hermione over the matter of the
Firebolt in PoA. Those are times when he didn't have to react so
strongly, and yet he did. I liked those times, even if they upsetted me.

About OoP. Antosha, you explain very clearly why Harry should indeed
be disturbed. My only problem is that Harry *starts the book* already
disturbed ! He was NOT disturbed at the end of GoF, we had no sign
that he was going to change so dramatically. And then we start OoP
barely a month later, and suddenly Harry is being unfair to his
friends, he's bullying Dudley, and he's being generally extremely
moody and bad-tempered. This is not necessarily unrealistic, but it
prevented me from getting into the book, because I felt it wasn't the
same Harry anymore. It wasn't the Harry I left in GoF.

I would have loved it if End-of-GoF!Harry had *evolved* into
Angry!Harry throughout the first chapters of OoP. I would have
followed him through the transformation, sharing his annoyance at
being mistreated more and more. But I was given no such chance. Right
from the beginning, Harry's temper is boiling and he's over-reacting
to everything. I never got to jump into his head, and things only got
worse as the pages went by.

As I said in another post, this was *my* problem, I'm aware of that.
But it does seem like I wasn't the only one having that problem (makes
sense : I'm not *that* special ;-)

Del