Compassionate hero (WAS Re: Appeal of the story to the reader)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175671

Nita wrote:
<snip>
 
> Watching someone die is an act of compassion now? Well, I don't
know. I don't think so. <snip>

Carol responds:
The compassion comes later, after he sees the memories. Harry's
initial reaction is horror and shock, not at all the reaction he must
have expected to have to Snape's death, since he still thinks that
Snape is DD's murderer and a loyal DE. Until that moment, he has been
hoping to meet Snape face to face to avenge Dumbledore (not that it
would have happened that way, but he says twice that he wants it to
happen). And instead of gloating or watching him die from beneath the
cloak, Harry is moved by some impulse or instince (could it be the
subconscious memory of all the times that Snape, as an adult or the
HBP, has helped him or risked his life for DD, things that Harry knows
but has suppressed?) to come forward and look at him, and he
obediently scoops up the memories (once Hermione has conjured a vial)
and obeys snape's last request to look into his eyes. It may not quite
be compassion, but it isn't hatred (though he still thinks that he
hates Snape) or the desire for revenge, either. Something is changing
or has changed in Harry at that moment.

I keep thinking back to Snape's healing Draco in HBP and to Harry's
cut hand in the second chapter of DH. "He had never learned how to
repair wounds, and now he came to think of it . . . this seemed like a
serious flaw in his magical education" (14). (Hermione doesn't know
how, either. She just uses essence of dittany, but evidently Ron still
has a chunk out of his arm from his Splinching.) I wondered as I read
the quoted words what they foreshadowed. Could it be his (and
Hermione's--Ron's reaction is not given) helplessness in watching
Snape bleed to death? He raises a hand to his neck but apparently
can't or won't perform the incantation on himself. A simple wand wave
probably won't work here, and perhaps, with the snake's venom, even a
complex chant like the countercurse for Sectumsempra wouldn't have
worked. Still, I think that Harry feels helpless here and the flaw in
his magical education is showing. And it's another sad irony that
Snape, who has saved others from Dark magic (three people in HBP, not
counting teaching Harry about bezoars) can't heal himself.

At any rate, if we contrast Harry's feelings about Snape at the
beginning of the book (or even the beginning of the series--we've
watched the mutual hatred and misunderstanding grow with every book)
with his shock and horror here and his empathy for Severus the
"abandoned boy" after the Pensieve excursion and his public
vindication of Snape and his naming his second son after him, I think
we can safely say that he does feel something like compassion for
Snape, very different from the desire for vengeance at the beginning
of the book (the same feeling that prompted the Crucio of Amycus
Carrow), which would, IMO, have made his self-sacrifice impossible (he
would have tried to fight Voldemort, avenging the deaths of his
parents and Cedric and Sirius and Dumbledore, and he would have failed).

Harry has always shown some compassion for his friends. But compassion
for those he sees as odd or inferior (Luna and Neville) develops into
appreciation of them as friends and respect for their abilities. But
only at the end of HBP, watching Draco lower his wand a fraction of an
inch, and throughout DH does Harry finally develop, or start to
develop, full-fledged compassion and empathy. We see it first when
Molly Weasley gives Harry her brother Fabian's watch, and instead of
wondering why she's given him a hand-me-down, he understands its full
significance, which he can't put into words, and hugs her (DH Am. ed.
114). After all this time, he finally understands and appreciates
Molly, knows what her brothers' deaths mean to her and how she fears
for her children and how she loves him as one of them. It's a lovely
and understated moment.

Harry is not notably articulate, especially with regard to emotions.
He's just an average kid (a boy at that, meaning that he's less
willing to display his emotions than the typical girl) with a few
unusual powers and a unique destiny that continually places him in
grave danger. He prefers action to words and is not always aware of
his own emotions. It's as if, in both these instances, a wordless
understanding simply comes to him, a little epiphany with Molly and a
huge one with Snape.

To the extent that the HP series is a Bildungsroman, this is the book
in which Harry, though still a boy by our standards, becomes a "man"
in the eyes of the WW. It's the last stage in his journey toward
adulthood. And, IMO, he does make progress. His perception of Snape
and Dumbledore and his mission is cleared, with the doubts and
mistrust and misunderstanding removed. He chooses Horcruxes over
Hallows; what is right over what is easy. He faces death without
fighting back. He forgives Snape (and Kreacher and Draco). He sets
aside revenge and sacrifices himself as an act of love. And he learns,
or begins to learn, compassion. We see him talking to his younger son
with the affectionate understanding that no one showed to him (or to
little Severus, thirty-nine years earlier).

I see a vast improvement. I see hope for the future. Harry is not and
never will be perfect, but he's a better person in this book--not
merely courageous, as he's always been, but at last grasping how
others feel and think--than he's been in any of the other books.

Carol, once again asking people to look closely at the text itself
rather than making unsupported generalizations based on disappointment
in the book