Harry's compassion WAS: Malum blah blah blah was Re: Harry using Crucio.

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 174474

> > Magpie:
> > Well, yeah, given that it's the bad characters that are more 
> > difficult to feel compassion for. 
> <SNIP>
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> And he still does it - for both Riddle and Malfoy.

Magpie:
But I don't find those moments very meaningful. For me they just fit 
into the overarching attitude towards that quality for me in this 
story. I think Harry feels compassion for them when it's relatively 
easy to feel compassion for them with little required of himself in 
terms of personal introspection or really seeing a connection with 
himself in a way that's actually challenging. It just seems like those 
moments are given to me as moments where Harry's being shown as 
superior with the real emphasis being on how little these characters 
deserve his compassion--something the story will enjoy proving. As 
opposed to another story that might be more interested in how they do 
deserve it and can grow from it. Instead it just for me remains very 
removed, with Harry feeling a distant pity watching them reap what 
they have sown, poor bastards. 

Basically, I feel like we've just reached a difficult moment in 
fandom. The series is over, and we know what the author was saying. 
Some of us really didn't like what she had to say. And that seems to 
make it difficult not to get personal--iow, if I don't think Harry's a 
very compassionate character and you do, does that mean I'm saying 
you're not compassionate? I feel like that leaves me with two bad 
options: lying about the book, or being personally insulting.

I don't want to be personally insulting--I honestly don't feel like 
having a different reaction to this aspect of the book than I do means 
the other person must be morally bankrupt. I think people can have 
different ways of approaching morality and still wind up in the same 
neighborhood when it comes to ethics. I honestly do think, even if I'm 
not always happy about it, that this provides an important balance 
that's needed to really get things right. I think a lot of the 
arguments the list has had over the years have shown that, how people 
have to hammer out a compromise between what values they think are 
most important. Take Marietta: I think it's quite possible that the 
people who don't like her permenant scars think it lacks compassion, 
and that other people think those people are too soft to administer 
jusice. I think that could absolutely be said to be floating around 
the subtext of some of those arguments, with both sides having to 
agree that you can't have both to the extent each side wants at the 
same time.

I think that's the way ethics get hammered out mostly in the real 
world. We don't have people who are totally right and totally wrong, 
we have different people with different priorities compromising with 
each other. 

So if I don't want to sound personally insulting, it feels like the 
other alternative is to just kind of lie and say yeah, I guess the 
series does show exceptional compassion, but it would be lying, 
because that's just not what I felt reading it. I felt like it was 
really really stingy about it. And I don't feel highly enough of the 
series to give it compliments it didn't earn from me. I felt like it 
ultimately came down on the side of some values over others (and post-
book interviews seem to confirm my impression as well).  I don't know 
how to find a balance between saying I didn't like the book and that I 
had actually things I didn't like in it without making that a personal 
challenge to people who did. 

-m