Harry Ain't Perfect, but he IS a Good Person/The Series has Morality

[Katie]

No: HPFGUIDX 173127

I hear a lot of people taking issue with the lack of character arc, 
and/or the lack of a moral purpose in the series, and in DH in 
particular. I really strongly disagree, and I didn't realize how 
strongly until just now. I will try not to babble...

Harry Potter is a good kid. Let's forget Voldemort exists, just for a 
moment. Harry is just a basically good person. He is a loyal friend. He 
stands up for the little guys - like Neville, Luna, and Hagrid. He is 
polite to adults, generally respectful of teachers (except when he 
suspects them of being evil, in which case I think a little rudeness is 
justified), and he understands the difference between good and bad. 
This is a kid I would want to babysit my children, or teach at my 
school. He has a deeply loving nature, and he is, at his root, a kind 
and nice person.  

He isn't perfect. He occasionally breaks rules, shouts at teachers, 
gets inappropriately angry, and yes, in DH, he uses Unforgiveable 
Curses. That, in a nutshell, is exactly why I like him, and exactly why 
the series is powerful. If Harry were like Snape, I would not relate to 
him. He would be too close to the Dark Side for me to empathize with 
him, and I wouldn't have stuck with the books long enough to get to DH. 
Maybe some would have wanted a darker, more easily tempted protagonist, 
but not me. I appreciated Snape's character arc as an important, but 
peripheral, story. I would not have wanted to read books where Snape 
was my protagonist. 

 On the other hand, if Harry were less dark and more morally perfect, I 
would REALLY not like him, and the books would be really trite and 
irritating. I would never be able to relate to a holier-than-thou 
figure who never was wrong, or nasty, or did something they shouldn't 
have done. Bor-ring!

Harry has both light and dark in him, like all of the best characters 
in the series. But this doesn't mean they lack morality. Nor does it 
mena that they lack a good story. Harry has definitely struggled 
against himself at many moments...not only against the darkness within 
him, but also against the pull of normalcy, the pull of inertia. Many 
times, he wanted to quit fighting, as we all do sometimes in real life, 
but like Harry, we press on. 

I don't understand how people can not see the moral points in this 
story! 

1 - Friendship and Love conquer all. 
        Ok, Harry was saved by Love, he is kept alive by Love, and he 
willingly sacrifices himself for the love of his friends...How is that 
not moral and ethical? Just because he doesn't actually die doesn't 
mean that the point wasn't made. When you love people as intensely as 
Lily loved Harry, or as Harry loves Ron, Hermione and all the others, 
it makes you a better person and it makes the world a better place. 
That point was well made, at least in my eyes.

2 - Choices Make Us Who We Are
        I know many people thought JKR ruined this point by making 
Voldy a sociopath. I don't think so. First of all, I *don't* see the 
little Tom Riddle that we meet in HBP as a sociopath. He is an orphaned 
child who can do wierd things, and he wasn't shown how to use his 
powers soon enough. He wasn't ever loved. Unlike Harry, who was 
conceived in love, born in love, and had someone die for him, Tom 
Riddle had NEVER had a loving touch. I felt VERY sory for that kid, and 
Dumbledore certainly gave him latitude to make different choices, but 
he did not. 
        Dumbledore's choices are often bad ones, and he was certainly a 
selfish person when he was young...but he CHOSE to change, and he did 
so. I don't see Dumbledore as a master manipulator, at least in a 
malevolent sense. He knew Harry had to fight Voldemort and he tried to 
give him the tools to defeat him without giving too much away. Had 
Dumbledore simply handed Harry everything, Harry would not have had the 
confidence and the strength to do what he did. Harry needed to get 
there on his own.

3 - The World Isn't Perfect, but We can try to Make it Better.
       No one every said that defeating Voldy would make the world a 
sunshiney place. No one ever said that in the RW, either. But it's the 
trying that counts. It's people's hearts being in the right places. 
It's people working together for a greater good. And evil will never 
entirely go away, but we have to keep trying. Perserverence was a 
really big theme in these books, and Harry and the Order never gave up, 
never stopped fighting. They believed they could make the world better, 
and they never lost that purpose...but no one ever said it would be 
perfect. That wasn't the point, anyway. The point was the trying.

4 - Discrimination is Wrong
        Like many of you, I was also disappointed in the continuation 
of the Sorting in the epilogue. I had hoped that after seeing everyone 
in the Great Hall all together, children would no longer be pigionholed 
and catagorized. However, that singular thing does not erase the 
screamingly loud message throughout the rest of the series.
       From the formation of SPEW to the Charge of the House Elves in 
DH, from Hagrid's revelation about his giant blood to Grawp's bravery 
in DH, and from Draco Malfoy's "mudblood" comment in CoS to the hunting 
of half-bloods and Muggle-borns in DH, JKR has nearly beaten us to 
death with the idea that prejudice and hatred are very, very bad 
things. And I think that the continuation of Sorting in the epilogue 
has a lot more to do with that fact that the epilogue was written a 
long time ago and no editor had the you-know-what's to stand up to JKR 
and tell her it was lousy, than it did with JKR trying to send us the 
message that nothing had changed. 


In the end, HRH are good kids. They're smart, resourceful, and much 
better people than a lot of adults I know. They are also sometimes self-
involved, nasty, and just plain wrong. This doesn't mean they are less 
worthy of being heroes, or that we should like them less. They're very 
real people, and they are why I think the series is so darned powerful. 
And it certainly isn't lacking in moral/ethical messages. 

Ok...whew. I'll shut it up now. : ) Cheers, KATIE