The effects of the Dursleys on Harry (Was: Dumbledore on the Dursleys in OotP )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 151094

Carol earlier:
> <SNIP>
> Opinions on how those first years shaped him, anyone? Is he or is he
not better fitted to be the savior of the Wizarding World by having
lived with the Dursleys for eleven years? Did he or did he not develop
the qualities I specified an/or other strengths and virtues through
living with the Dursleys? <snip>
> > Again, I'm talking about the *character traits* he acquired
through sleeping (not living!) in a broom cupboard for eleven years, 
having to do chores while his pampered cousin watched or played with
his toys, wearing hand-me-downs, not getting quite enough to eat, and
being frequently yelled at and ordered around. Not an ounce of
timidity in sight, and, oddly, perhaps, no inclination to become a
bully himself.
> > Whatever faults he may have, I think we all agree that he has some
noble and heroic qualities, and those qualities must have developed
either *because of* or *in spite of* his upbringing by the Dursleys.
> > If there's a third option, I'd be indebted to anyone who points it
out.
> <SNIP>
> 
Alla responded:
> 
>  No, I don't think that his living with Dursleys shaped him to 
> become a better saviour of the WW, I really don't. I think that the 
> third option is that is who Harry is, the essential part of his 
> character.
> 
> How he developed his qualities? I suspect that first year and a half 
> of being LOVED by his parents played a significant role. Is it 
> possible in JKR's world that Harry was born with such qualities? I 
> think it is possible.
> 
> I think that JKR's world is largely essential in nature. Just look 
> at the Dudley,which Minerva describes and Dudley is what couple 
> months older than Harry?
><snip>
> And we of course remember Tom Riddle bullying habits of early age.
> 
> I think young Harry already had in himself a lot of his heroic 
> nature. His sufferings at Dursleys could have strengthen those or 
> not, or make Harry like Tom Riddle, we don't know.
> 
> So, to answer your question, no, I don't think Harry NEEDED to live 
> with Dursleys to develop his nature. It is essential of course to 
> make the hero suffer in literature, but besides blood protection, I 
> don't see any GOOD things Harry acquired in Dursleys and moreover, 
> even if we knew that Harry needed it to become a saviour of WW, I 
> think that he should not have be nade to go through that, because 
> that was not Dumbledore's decision to make, if he had some shred of 
> decency in him and I think Albus IS a decent guy. <snip>
>
Carol responds:
So you're saying that Harry is who he is because of innate character
trait (and perhaps a few powers acquired at Godric's Hollow)? That he
is the product of his genes and nothing else, that the years of living
with the Dursleys and the subsequent years at school had no effect on
him? Why complain about psychological abuse, then, if Harry is some
superior being who is not affected by it?

Why would the love his parents showed him during his first fifteen
months affect him when the treatment by other adults did not? How
could those first fifteen months overshadow everything else he went
through when he doesn't even remember them?

I agree that there are essentialist elements in the HP books (notably
the character traits of the young Tom Riddle and DD's statement that
our choices *show* who we are rather than make us who we are) that I
find rather disturbing. But the books emphasize the theme of choice,
and choice would be meaningless if it were predetermined by the
underlying "innate" nature of the characters. Second chances would be
pointless, as well, since the essential traits of the character would
not be changed by the opportunity to forego folly or evil and pursue
the cause of good. And yet Dumbledore, JKR's spokesman in many
instances, is constantly offering second chances. It would be sad,
IMO, if he were wrong to do so because second chances are doomed to
failure by the innate character of the individual to whom they are
offered. And I am not just talking about Snape here. Or just Draco.

If the essence of a child is predetermined, why worry about a child's
placement in the Dark-magic-oriented, pureblood-celebrating
environment of Slytherin? The child is what he is by your argument,
and nothing can change him. But I see Draco, for example, as the
product of his environment as well as his pureblood genes. He's been
taught the pureblood ethic and the "values" of the DEs since birth.
Surely he's at least as much the product of his environment as of his
genetic inheritance, surely his parents' words and example influenced
his thinking, and if that's true for Draco, it's true for Harry as
well, though he rejected rather than accepted that example. So did
Sirius Black. (I'll grant you that Tom Riddle seems to have been born
evil--his upbringing at the orphanage seems to have been neutral, not
pushing him in either direction--but he's the exception, not the rule.
And surely even he had choices--should I or shouldn't I hang Billy's
rabbit from the rafters--and he chose to do evil. Perhaps, after
awhile, the choice became authomatic, but still, it was there. He
could have refrained from evil and he chose not to do so.)

Harry also has choices, even at the Dursleys. He can choose to
retaliate and be punished or to avoid punishment by refraining from
offending the Dursleys; he can choose whether to harbor a grudge
against them for a particular incident or to let it go; he can choose
whether to act like a bully himself at school by picking on smaller
children or to refrain from bullying, rejecting the Dursleys as role
models. And as for Dudley, do you really think that he was born a
spoiled brat and that his mother's indulgence of his temper tantrums
had nothing to do with his continuing to throw them? Surely the
sixteen-month-old Dudley would not have kicked his mother had she not
condoned it.

I am not saying that Harry "needed" to live with the Dursleys, as you
put it, to develop those traits, but I do think that living with the
Dursleys helped him to develop them. I doubt that he would have been
the same person (even with the scar and the events at Godric's Hollow
in his past) if he had been raised as James was raised. There would be
little opportunity to develop humility in such an environment and
little chance for learning to endure hardship if he never experienced it.

So my first question is whether you (not just Alla but anybody reading
this post) agree that Harry has the qualities I listed--humility,
resilience, resistance to bullying, the ability to react quickly
(either instinctively or by second nature) to the threat of danger--or
if not these specific traits then your own list of virtues that
uniquely qualify him to be the hero of the story.

And my second question is, do you really think that he was born with
these traits and did not develop them through interaction with his
environment? If they are indeed innate, then no credit can go to Harry
for developing them, and fate is determined solely by who we are born
to be. If the good guys are innately good, the bad guys are innately
bad, and their essence will determine that good triumphs over evil,
why are we reading this book? We might as well watch Saturday morning
cartoons.

Carol, again asking posters in general to consider Harry's character
proto-heroic traits at the beginning of SS/PS and what effect, if any,
living with the Dursleys had on the development of those traits and to
express their views on how he acquired those traits despite/because of
living with the Dursleys