Harry's glasses (Was: Lilly's eyes another let down)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174428

Random832 wrote:
<snip> something that's always bugged me (and that didn't get
addressed in any of the books as far as I can tell)
> 
>     She's [...] outraged that an Italian dust jacket shows Harry
>     minus his glasses. "Don't they understand that they are the
>     clue to his vulnerability?" 
> http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/1200-readersdigest-boquet.htm
<snip>

Carol responds:
If you have the Scholastic edition, take a look at the drawing of
Harry accompanying the "King's Cross" chapter. Harry is not wearing
his glasses. Now granted, Harry looks rather groggy and myopic in the
drawing, but I think, (only think!) that Mary GrandPre has missed the
point.

Harry starts off naked and then, as if he were in the ROR, summons
clothes by thinking about them. He summons Dumbledore without even
thinking about him because he needs DD to explain the things he still
doesn't understand. (He doesn't summon LV's tattered soul, which is
having its own much less enlightening side trip.)

But significantly, IMO, Harry is not wearing his glasses and does not
mentally summon them or think about them because in "King's Cross" (as
opposed to the real world), he doesn't need them.  "He sat up. His
body appeared unscathed. he touched his face. He was not wearing
glasses anymore" (DH Am. ed. 706). 

Dumbledore, who appears as he did in life before his encounter with
the ring Horcrux, still wears his half-moon spectacles (odd that he
would need them, but maybe they're as much a part of him as his silver
beard and crooked nose). But Harry, who in any case, isn't really
dead, is not wearing his glasses. He doesn't need them. Why not?

I don't think it has anything to do with vulnerability. I think they
symbolize perception. Harry has had a very distorted view of Snape,
Slytherin, DD himself, even, perhaps, his own mission, but he has made
some right choices (Halows, not Horcruxes; self-sacrifice, not
revenge), and he is ready, finally, to understand Dead!DD's
explanations for everything except the few remaining questions that he
must answer for himself (what the whimpeing thing on the floor is;
whether to return or "go on"; what "going on" actually means (he'll
found out when he actually dies. The reader can imagine for him or
herself.) Granted, DD's explanations aren't quite as clear to the
reader as they seem to be to Harry, but it seems to me that Harry
understands, at last, what his preconceptions and biases and
temptations and, well, general slowness on the uptake, IMO, have
prevented him from seeing so far.

Before he returns, he shows compassion for Dumbledore's weaknesses,
trusting and loving him again even though he has been DD's puppet
because he understands that DD loved him and hoped that he would
survive. He has, as I said in another post, already stopped seeking
vengeance and casting Unforgiveables. He has also already chosen to
abandon the resurrection stone. When he returns, we see him extending
mercy to the weak and undeserving (but not evil) Draco. We hear him
publicly vindicating Snape with perfect understanding of a man he has
always hated (and later naming his second son after him and DD). He
extends a chance for remorse to Voldemort. He understands that his
choice to sacrifice himself has weakened Voldemort's magic. He sees
Neville's courage and chivalry earn their own reward. And then he
makes one last choice, to do as he did in the graveyard and fight the
Killing Curse not with another Killing Curse or even a Protego but
with his own signature spell, learned long ago from Snape and used as
an act of mercy on Stan Shunpike, Expelliarmus. For complex reasons
that I don't fully understand, it's the right choice.

Harry Potter, who has made many mistakes over the series, most
obviously misjudging Snape, who has suffered doubt and despair through
the middle of the book, can finally see clearly. His physical myopia
remains (he always feels understandably helpless without his glasses),
but his figurative myopia, his inability to perceive with his mind
what he sees with his eyes, has finally cleared.

That, at any rate, is how I interpret Harry's glasses and particularly
their absence in the "King's Cross" chapter.

Carol, welcoming reactions and alternative interpretations