Harsh Morality - Combined answers

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 121233


> Valky wrote:
> "When "Seamus Finnigan and the Injustices of 1995" is published I am 
> sure that the tables will turn and the onesidedness of it all will 
> lean the other way. ;P"
> 
> Del replied:
> That's the problem : the one-sidedness. Where there's one-sidedness,
> there's unfair judgment. Saying that the books are one-sided but that
> they don't pass unfair judgment on secondary characters is a bit of a
> contradiction in my mind. The HP books do pass judgements on the
> characters : Harry, being the hero, is good, and everyone else is
> judged on whether they are sympathetic to Harry or not. It's not what
> the characters do that matters, it's whether their actions make Harry
> happy or not.

Carol responds:
Del, I understand perfectly what you've been arguing and why it
bothers you. But I think you may be underestimating other readers'
ability to detect and be wary of an unreliable narrator who shares the
perspective and prejudices of the POV character. We have to look
beyond the narrator to the characters themselves, the actions and
words of the characters without the filter of Harry's perspective and
judge for ourselves. I happen to be sympathetic toward a number of
people whom Harry judges harshly (Snape; Percy; Marietta; Seamus; Ron
and Hermione when Harry is fighting with them; Neville, Ginny and Luna
as nuisances who will just get in his way at the MoM) because Harry
constantly sees only part of the picture. Not that these characters
aren't flawed. Everyone in the novel, including Harry and Dumbledore,
is flawed. And Harry's perspective is seriously flawed. (It was a
relief to see his reaction to the Pensieve scene, to see him
momentarily feel sorry for Snape and question his former view of his
father and Sirius. It was also a relief to see him feeling compassion
for Luna at the end of OoP. And he did forgive Seamus, which was
clearly the *right* thing to do in JKR's view and in that (I think) of
most readers. Harry (and hence the narrator) still doesn't fully
appreciate Luna or Neville or Ginny, but JKR has left room for hope
that he will. Snape and Percy and Marietta, maybe not. But that
doesn't keep some readers, including you and me, from seeing their
side of the story to the extent that the limited omniscient
perspective allows it. Remember Percy wading out into the water to hug
Ron after the Second Task in GoF? That, I think, was the real Percy,
and I hope we'll see him again.)

I think we're meant to see the contrast between Harry's (and the
narrator's) perspective and "reality" as we, the readers, construct it
based on our reading. (More so for adults than for children, but even
an eleven-year-old will express annoyance with Ron and Harry for their
continued spat in GoF.) I'm hoping that those two perspectives (the
reader's and the narrator's) will come closer together in the sixth
and seventh books as Harry starts to look more closely at other
people's needs, feelings, and values rather than always thinking about
his own needs and burdens. Yes, he has a heavy load to carry, but he
is not always right in his actions or judgments, and I hope he comes
to realize that in the next two books. And I also think we're meant to
see certain characters, notably Sirius Black and Severus Snape, as
"gray" rather than "white" or "black" (in the sense of Good and Evil).

Carol, heartily wishing she'd never brought up the question of "innate
goodness" as JKR perceives it