Heroes in the Harry Potter Series

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 176147

> Betsy Hp:
> Nah.  Harry Potter isn't a hero, IMO, because he's a  
> suicidal, easily manipulated idiot.

Mike:
Yeah, what was he thinking, when he walked into the forest? He had 
two of the Hallows in his hands, he approached the bad guys unawares. 
He could have just reached out with the Hawthorn wand and 
Expelliarmused the Elder Wand out of Voldemort's hands and he would 
have had all three of the Deathly Hallows. Shoot, he could've AKed 
the lot of 'em, Voldemort included. Nobody could have resisted, he 
was the Master of Death for crying out loud.

Oops, there was that little matter of the soul piece still in his 
head. Oh hell, as the master of death he could've figured out how to 
get that piece out of there. He might have gotten a Dementor to suck 
it out, something would have worked.

Damn, why didn't JKR think of this?



> > Bart:
> > Dumbledore isn't a hero either; after all, he manipulated people.
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> And killed his sister.  And hid quivering away in his tower while 
> evil that he'd received early warning about blossomed at his 
> school.  "Sure the kid's killed fluffy bunnies and tortured small 
> children.  But he's not in my House so screw 'im.  Not my problem."

Mike:
Wow, thanks, I wasn't sure it was Albus who killed his sister, the 
book was a little unclear on this. But you've set me straight.

Yep quite the flaw in old Albus, wasn't it. He still fell victim to 
it some hundred years later, and it killed him, or would have if he 
didn't plan to speed up his death.

In the meantime, he sat back and did nothing for Tom Riddle while Tom 
set himself down the path towards Dark Lordship and a place where he 
could not be redeemed. So Dumbledore cooked up a plan to set this 
biggest of his mistakes right. But I guess if heroes overcome their 
flaws and orchestrate the correction of their mistakes from earlier 
on, they must instead be just manipulative old bastards. Seems we are 
particular about which flaws we allow our heroes to have, and cannot 
forgive some mistakes even when they are ultimately corrected.



> Betsy Hp:
> Snape was so wrapped up in his own failings he utterly failed the 
> children placed under his care.  He was horribly abused, so I 
> cannot find it in myself to dislike him to the same extent I 
> dislike Harry and co.

Mike:
I guess we've assumed that Snape was abused by his father. OK, I 
suppose that's a logical assumption. But he still had his mum and I 
hope I'm not suppose to assume that she abused him too. Unlike Harry, 
who had a perfectly normal childhood with loving and caring parents 
to raise him. Since Harry had nothing to overcome from his childhood 
we shouldn't be making excuses for his excesses in school like we 
should for Severus. 

Like when Harry called Hermione a "mudblood" in their fifth year. Or 
like when Harry hung around with those mean boys from his house who 
liked to practice some nasty spells on those Slytherin girls. We 
didn't catch Harry in the act, but we're pretty sure he was involved.



> Betsy Hp:
> But he's [Snape] more something to be pitied than admired.

Mike:
Yeah, after all Severus had no examples of how to treat his fellow 
wizards descently. That Lily Evans was just a conniving pretty-girl 
who was oblivious to the kind of boy James Potter was. Snape was 
right to dump her in favor of his aspiring DE housemates. They were 
just having a little clean fun, after all.



> Betsy Hp:
> IMO, by the end of DH, JKR shoved all of her characters into highly 
> unrealistic caricatures.  I saw nothing human in them.  And 
> certainly nothing heroic.

Mike:
I saw a lot of witch and wizard in these characters. I believed that 
was what JKR was writing about in the first place. So inside that 
context, inside the world she created, I have no problem seeing the 
human side of them and their very human struggles. And I also saw the 
heroes, flawed and sometimes foolish heroes. But they were heroes 
nonetheless, and they worked for me because of what JKR was writing 
and what I was reading.

I read the books as a fantasy adventure and setting them in modern 
times did not confuse me. Especially since much of the WW was stuck 
in pre-1692 thinking. Harry and Hermione were the only main 
characters who seemed to embrace modern times, but they had a lot of 
catching up to do with the wizarding world and their concepts. Did 
that cause plot holes,... lots of them. But as I've said before, one 
can choose to overlook them, justify or otherwise work around them, 
or let them fester and ruin the story for you.

I had hoped for different outcomes for some characters, for different 
story lines. That I didn't get them didn't mean that JKR was wrong 
for not giving them to me. But I never looked for an overarching 
moral message from the series, because JKR clued me in that she 
wasn't writing that kind of a book. So I wasn't disappointed when I 
didn't get that kind of a story.

Mike