[HPforGrownups] The GoF Train Scene - and beyond (was:Re: Humanity, Kant, Caricatures, and Draco

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 146785

> >>Magpie:
> <snip>
> The thing with Draco is that he's a supporting character but he
> does have a character arc, one that will become important in HBP.
> It's rather unique amongst the younger characters, the kind of
> thing he's used for--many people had put him in a different role.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Now I'm intrigued!  What do you see Draco being used for?

Magpie:

Oh, I just meant that early on Draco was often described as only a 
schoolyard bully that Harry would grow beyond, whose choices regarding his 
future weren't important.  It seems now that JKR finds the difference 
between talking the talk and walking the walk significant, and considers a 
kid's potential fall into real evil a dramatic story.  Dumbledore spends 
most of his last scene overseeing this choice.  I don't know where this will 
go in the next book, but Draco's actual character when and if he actually 
discovers it seems like it could tip a scale or two.

Betsy:
 Harry just needs to become what his parents and
mentors hoped he would be.  Draco has to reject his parents plans and create 
plans of his own.  It's like Harry is Tom Sawyer, but Draco is Huckleberry 
Finn.  And I did find Huckleberry the more interesting character.

Magpie:
That's certainly true.  To me it seems like part of the victory against 
Voldemort would have to be the next generation learning and coming up with a 
new way.  Killing Draco for being a bigot or making sure he's thrown in jail 
just isn't a victory.

I was talking to someone recently about what was going on in the Tower and I 
realized that it seems to me that Draco is important because he's a 
potential Dumbledore misfit-those people for whom Dumbledore offered a 
second chance to change their life.  Dumbledore has plenty of straight-out 
supporters, but I think the misfits are the ones that are potentially the 
biggest risk and so offer bigger potential reward or ability to change. 
Snape being the most important, of course.  James Potter might have been the 
greatest guy ever, but Snape's dominating the narrative; he's the one 
Dumledore's always declaring his trust in.  I wouldn't be surprised to see 
Harry remind Draco of Dumbledore's words in the next book, and for Harry's 
witnessing that scene to be important.


Annemehr:
In HBP, the shoe is on the other foot; Harry invades Draco's compartment and 
gets hexed and left there, immobile and oozing. Harry's reaction, from the 
beginning of Chapter Eight: "Harry had never hated Malfoy more than as he 
lay there, like an absurd turtle on its back, blood dripping sickeningly 
into his open mouth.  What a stupid situation to have landed himself in..." 
Not much reflection or self-evaluation there, but he did at least partly 
blame himself. Granted, it's not much, but it could be a start.

Magpie:
Something tells me the same lines were probably running through Malfoy's own 
mind as he oozed his way home in a luggage rack.:-)

tropicwhale:
I still say that Draco was just too weak to have an opinion on his own. 
There is a term in psychology (that I cannot find at the moment) during 
identity vs role confusion in Erikson's stages where he's failed as refusing 
to develop as his own person.

Magpie:

I don't know the psychological term but Sartre's term would probably "Bad 
Faith."  Hmm, where have we heard that term before.:-)

HBP seems to be about Draco coming to the point where he has to form his own 
opinion, facing the fact that he has a choice to make on his own.  Someone 
living under Bad Faith, as I understand it, identifies himself as "one of 
them" instead of as an individual, and just lives a role.  A lot of what 
Draco is doing in HBP seems connected to attacking exactly this view of 
himself, though it ends with his choice up in the air.

Of course, as Betsy pointed out, Draco's one of the few students who is 
expected to define himself this way.  If you come from a good family it's 
fine to define yourself in context of them, and to make their values your 
values without having to question them too much. Sirius is often held up as 
a character who defined himself, but in fact he really isn't a particularly 
mature character in his views of himself and others, including his family.

It's not surprising, imo, that Draco is basically in limbo at the end of 
HBP--he knows what he isn't going to do, but what can he do instead? 
Fanfic, I think, often makes choices purely logical--Draco realizes 
Voldemort is a crazy and so makes a deal with Dumbledore.  But the real 
character is far more messy and emotional, less political etc. And rather 
than Harry having to deal with a Draco now on his side, Harry just has a 
potential advantage in a Draco he's not as sure of as he was before.

-m