Sportsmanship in Harry Potter

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 151777

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Karen" <kchuplis at ...> wrote:
>
> Here is my lonely take on it: if you showed every student what 
happened to Harry at the Graveyard  and said, "you can have all 
kinds of help and a nice broom and be given extra points in games, 
but you have to go through that or you can skip having to experience 
that and not get quite so much help" how many students would choose 
to be tortured, cruciated, terrorized, humiliated and have people 
killed in front of them, (only because they are  who they are) and 
the person "came with" in order to get help and extras? I'm thinking 
mmmm....no one would trade for that?
> 
> It's just a thought to put this in perspective.

Magpie:
Since you've give the take twice: what perspective is this supposed 
to give?  Because it sounds just kind of vaguely shaming, like 
because Harry had a terrible time at the end of GoF and other 
places, we shouldn't be discussing anything in the tournament 
leading up to it, or perhaps anything in canon, except to nod and 
say poor Harry, he deserves every scrap of happiness he can get. The 
graveyard scene has nothing to do with the definition of 
sportsmanship, or whether or not giving a student points for "moral 
fibre" because he mistakenly thought lives were in danger and 
stopped to save them, fits that term.  Or whether the author might 
have written the hero losing something.

As for whether any of those students would choose to still be Harry 
if they saw what happened in the graveyard?  Yes, many of them 
probably would.  Just like millions of kids all over the world read 
Harry's books and wish they were him.  Even without Voldemort the 
tournament is an excuse to put people in mortal danger; I think 
we're even told that there are fatalities in its past.  Yet it's 
still something kids are fighting to get into--personal glory and 
all that.  I think anybody who puts their name in that Goblet on 
purpose is crazy, myself, but if Harry had been a seventh year in 
GoF he'd have been up there doing it.

-m