Growing into the Hero

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 165459

From: colebiancardi <muellem at bc.edu>
>Ok, so, I thought this was a pretty good definition of a Hero for the 
>HP stories.  Nothing new.  Therefore, the criticism around the HBP 
>book & Harry is the flaw.  It isn't a big one as far as flaws go, or 
>life threatening.  However, if Harry doesn't learn from this flaw, 
>will he pick up and run with it - i.e. continuing to repeat this 
>character flaw over & over again, which may lead to a tragic end.  
>The flaw is not the use of the book, but the stealing of credit.

Bart:
Actually, what I see as Harry's most basic flaw (and, as befits a hero, a very human flaw) which he needs to overcome is that he puts all his effort into what comes to him easily, and he avoids putting effort into what he finds difficult. The problem is the degree to which he does this; the reliance on Hermione for his homework, his giving more importance to things like Quidditch and the House Cup than to his studies, or even his work against Voldemort. Consider, in OOP, he is told that his highest priority is learning Occlumancy, and he doesn't even make a real attempt to learn it. In HPB, he is supposed to gain Sluggy's confidence, and use it to get Sluggy to reveal something which, while personally embarrassing, is ultimately towards Sluggy's own good (as he considers himself a target for Voldemort). And, if he used his secretly gained knowledge from the Snapester's book to get the info, then it would have been a deception towards the ultimate good (at least I don't recall Dumbledore saying, "Your first priority is to learn as much as you can from your courses"). But Harry is actually reluctant to ruin his falsely founded good standing with Sluggy to do what was REALLY important (although he DOES end up sacrificing his slyly gotten FF potion for the greater good). 

I think that Harry might have done better under Phinny Black's tutelage rather than Dumbledore; Phinny has (had? I still don't have the portrait business quite down yet) a way of getting people so angry at him that they do exactly what he wants them to do, just to show him up. Picture, "Well, I guess you can't be blamed if you are too stupid to learn Occlumancy." 

Bart