Would Harry forgiving Snape be character growth for him? Re: CHAPDISC: HBP 29,

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 164174

> > Alla:
> 
> > 
> > But what I do want to know is how Harry moving from hate of 
Snape to 
> > forgiving the Snape is not the character growth, but Emperor new 
> > clothes as you said.
> > 
> Pippin:
> Going back to the orginal question...
> 
> Forgiving any flavor of Snape fits in with the themes of 
redemption,
> love and forgiveness. What doesn't fit, IMO, is Harry having been 
right
> to suspect Snape from the beginning. That seems to have nothing
> to do with those themes. I don't see in the story that  it's 
Harry's 
> extraordinary powers of love that made Harry perceive evil when no 
one 
> else did. If he did, it would be more of an emperor's new clothes
> theme, as Betsy said, seeing with the pure eyes of truth, or 
something
> like that. But Harry does not have such a power, and has been
> quite unable to detect evil that was sitting right in front of him
> and giving him friendly advice.

<SNIP>

Alla:

Well, yes, Harry being right about Snape may have nothing to do with 
power of love theme or it may have, I am just not sure why it cannot 
be the theme on its own. I totally think that power of love, 
forgiveness would turn out to be one of the main themes in the book, 
but who says it would be the only one?


I perceive that in the coming of age story/hero journey/slash  the 
hero should experience character growth, yes? And several people 
sort of agreed that Harry forgiving any flavor of Snape is a growth, 
yes?

 But I do not happen to remember that hero should be limited to 
**one** flavor of growth, you know?


Now Harry being right about Snape, well, for example it may end up 
being subtheme of the sort to Love and forgiveness IMO. I mean, it 
is not like it would be shown that by being right about Snape ( if 
he is right of course) Harry has some extraordinary powers of 
perception of something. If Harry is right about Snape, it is just 
**happened**, Harry took that lesson from Snape's interactions with 
him, Snape showed his nature to Harry, Harry did not seek out to 
find what Snape nature is IMO, not till Snape showed his nastiness 
to Harry in all his glory.

Does that make sense?

It can also be a theme of Hero being wiser than his mentor 
eventually, yes.

After all, for all JKR denying comparisons with Star wars, she does 
say that she works in hero journey  genre as well, where wise mentor 
has to die, where hero has to be alone, etc.

And Luke journey for all huge differences with Harry's is a Hero 
journey as well.

And while it is a **very** loose analogy, I believe it works.

Luke turns out to be, you know, **right** about his father, about 
good being in his father and his mentor, you know, wrong.

Does Star wars become any less compelling story, because the hero is 
right and his mentor is not? Not to me.

Now, of course this is a backwards analogy as to result, but the 
principle is the same, so I think it may work quite well.

IMO of course.

Alla