Harry's emotions his strength or his weakness? WAS: Re: Dumbledore's pleading

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 141549

> Carol: 
> > And Snape may not understand Harry at all, but he understands
> > Voldemort and the Death Eaters and what is needed to defeat 
them. He
> > is not asking Harry to operate on cold intellect, which would be
> > completely out of character. 
> <SNIP>
> Alla:
> 
> Sorry, after Snape speech in OOP I think that is precisely what he 
> asked Harry to do. "Fools who wear their emotions on their 
sleeves"( 
> paraphrase). 


Magpie:

Actually, while I agree that Harry is presumably not supposed to 
develop the kind of distaste for emotion Snape implies here, I don't 
think "not wearing your emotions on your sleeve" is the same as 
operating on cold intellect or getting rid of your emotions.  It's 
more a warning not to hand weapons to others.  

But still...I'm troubled at these implications about Snape vs. 
Harry.  Not in canon, because I haven't yet seen where it's going 
there, but in this kind of discussion.  Occlumency is not, I don't 
think, the key to anything for Harry as he can't do it and that 
seems to be fine.  But Snape's parting shots do still sound like 
something Harry will have to learn in his own way--he's got to have 
something left to learn about his personality in the last book, 
after all.

I agree that Harry's love is the thing that saves him etc., and 
since this is JKR's book she's going to control what defeats evil, 
but there's only so much moral weight you can give to something 
that's strictly tempermental before you lose credibility.  Harry is 
openly emotional because that is his natural temperment.  He can't 
hide his emotions for the same reason.  

Harry is our hero and so it's his personal strengths that will see 
him through, and the author has probably chosen a personality to 
which she herself most relates. The villains, by contrast, do happen 
to be more able to compartmentalize, but it can't come completely 
down to temperment. That would be like a person who is very 
athletic, for instance, saying, "Well, I'm athletic because I'm 
healthy and love life and therefore good.  Bookish people are 
therefore afraid of life and unhealthy and therefore bad."  You know 
what I mean?  Any temperment can be good or evil, the trick is to 
make the best of your strengths, and seek a balance. It's just that 
our hero is going to be dealing with his own strengths and weakness, 
so that's what we're going to see.

The moral of OotP is not that Harry must learn Occlumancy, but 
Voldemort still uses Harry's nature against him--and he's able to do 
this because Harry is still not mature, imo.  Harry could not and 
should not ever become Snape, but he's not yet perfect himself. 
Given that the four houses represent the four elements, a balance 
between the basic natures of each seems implied in the story.

In fact, Slytherin is the house of water, and water is emotion, not 
fire. Fire is Will.  I do think a strong will is Harry's nature--
look at his ability to throw off Imperius.  A mature Harry would 
have not been as vulnerable to Voldemort in OotP not because he'd 
lost his emotions but because of his strong will to resist being 
dominated.  Harry's inability to compartmentalize fits nicely with 
that--he is not a fragmented person. He is always whole and so 
directs his will.  Therefore when Voldemort manipulates Harry's 
emotions Harry confuses the two and his will is manipulated to do 
what Voldemort wants--that's exactly what happens.  

The Slytherin books (CoS and HBP) deal with love most openly.  If we 
were talking about cold intellect, that would be air and Ravenclaw.  
(I do know the danger of basing things on some sort of outside 
magical system, but the author has openly said the houses correspond 
to the elements and I'm only saying things I see supported in the 
books themselves.)  Slytherins may therefore be able to manipulate 
their emotions, but this does not have to imply giving them up.  
Their emotions do not contain the exact type of danger because they 
are compartmentalized, they don't have the Will that Harry does.  
Draco is the character JKR describes as a natural Occlumens (Harry 
is natural thrower-off of Imperius), yet he's not without emotion at 
all.  In fact, his story in HBP seems to be partially about his 
freeing emotions he has unhealthily repressed with is own Will.  

I'm not making Draco and Harry equals here in the text here, but HBP 
did give them both tasks during the year.  Harry did need to learn 
to consciously use emotions to support his will (like when he uses 
his dead mother to manipulate Slughorn) more in this book, and not 
allow his emotions to dominate his Will.  (Harry's emotions want to 
jump Ginny early on, but he controls them.  It is only when his 
entire self gives the okay that he acts on those emotions, setting 
his Will to getting the girl and of course succeeding.)  The other 
kid, Draco, is encouraged to free the emotions he had repressed by 
Will. In both cases the dominant strength of the house (Will and 
Emotion) is the dominant strength of the boy, but only when used 
with the support of the other elemental strengths.  It's not that 
Harry has to change his nature.  On the contrary, to truly be 
himself is to claim his true strength, his Will, and connect to all 
the other elements of his personality through that.  His emotions 
will always give strength to his will; he just can't let them 
*replace* his will.  Draco and Snape have so far been weakened the 
opposite way, I think.   

So Harry does have to learn a bit from Snape there, but Snape has to 
learn from Harry as well.  Harry, I'm confident, will learn what he 
has to learn.  Snape quite probably won't.  So far he hasn't, so he 
has not grown. He's still as Slytherin and so emotional as ever, 
driven by hate, but he's also still trying to repress it.

-m