Harry's anger (was Re: Draco's anger.)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 122320


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Jocelyn Grunow <aandj at l...> 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, at 05:39 am, Geoff Bannister wrote:
> 
> > Yes, but to extend on what I wrote above, when we become men (and
> > women) we still allow ourselves the leeway to behave badly on
> > occasions - sometimes deliberately, sometimes without thinking or
> > realising that we have.
> >
> > Where we learn and grow is by reflecting on the fact that we did
> > fail - ourselves if no one else - and try to use our experience in
> > future situations.

Jocelyn:
> Yes!  We may aim at perfection, but most of us (all of us) are 
nowhere 
> near attaining it.  Where we FAIL to learn and grow is if we deny 
that 
> it was a failure on our own part at all - when we blame the other 
> person for 'forcing' us to behave this way.

Geoff:
I think, Jocelyn, that we are saying the same thing in reality. I 
said that where we learn and grow is by realising that we failed.... 
You said that we fail to learn and grow if we deny a failure. These 
are two sides of the same coin.

Harry has a clear realisation of what has happened...

'He had no desire at all to return to Gryffindor Tower so early, nor 
to tell Ron and Hermione what he had just seen. What was making 
Harry  feel so horrified and unhappy was not being shouted at or 
having jars thrown at him; it was that he knew how it felt to be 
humiliated in the middle of a circle of onlookers, knew exactly how 
Snape had felt as his father had taunted him and that judging from 
what he had just seen, his father had been every bit as arrogant as 
Snape had always told him.'

(OOTP "Snape's Worst Memory"  p.573 UK edition)

Harry is not denying a failure. He is trying to come to terms with it.

He does try to justify it later... 

'He felt as if the memory of it was eating him from inside. He had 
been so sure his parents were wonderful people that he had never had 
the slightest difficulty in disbelieving the aspersions Snape cast on 
his father's character. Hadn't people like Hagrid and Sirius told 
Harry how wonderful his father had been?'

(OOTP "Careers Advice" p.575 UK edition)

The first thing that happens in a case like this is that you don't 
want to believe what you have heard and a see-saw goes on in Harry's 
mind balancing out the different views.....

'(Yeah, well, look what Sirius was like himself, said a nagging voice 
inside Harry's head.... he was as bad, wasn't he?)'

(ibid. p.575)

'Harry tried to make a case for Snape having deserved what he had 
suffered at James' hands; but hadn't Lily asked "What's he done to 
you?"

****

Harry kept reminding himself that Lily had intervened; his mother had 
been decent. Yet the memory of the look on her face as she had 
shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else; she 
had clearly loathed James and Harry simply could not understand how 
they could have ended up married.

****

For nearly five years, the thought of his father had been a source of 
comfort, of inspiration. whenever someone had told him he was like 
James, he had glowed with pride inside. And now... now he felt cold 
and miserable at the thought of him.'

(ibid. p.576)

Harry is an adolescent. At this age, we have heroes; we have role 
models and we have uncertainties about ourselves. It is a shattering 
experience when one of our guides proves to have feet of clay. 
Although canon doesn't record it, I'll lay odds on Harry going off 
for a quiet cry somewhere. The worst outcome of this confrontation 
with Snape because of his stupidity in looking in the Pensieve is the 
undermining of his images of James and also Sirius. How can he, as a 
young person finding his way in life, screw himself up to approach 
Snape? If Snape had any feeling for the problems faced by his classes 
at this age - particularly remembering his own rocky progress - he 
would make himself more approachable and not assume the role of a 
fearsome taskmaster. 

Harry has failed. He knows that he has failed. He feels that his 
father has failed. What he really needs is someone who can take him 
forward and show him how to learn from that failure and rise above 
it. Sadly, that someone is not Snape because he himself has never 
overcome his own probelms with the Marauders.