On the perfection of moral virtues

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 168757

> >>Marion:
> > <snip> 
> > However, the bone I have to pick with the 'heroes' of the 
> > Potterverse is not that they are morally imperfect, rude and 
> > self-absorbed little brats, but that they *stay* morally 
> > imperfect rude and self-absorbed brats. They only grow 
> > bigger, not better.
> > Good children's books have *never* given us morally 
> > perfect children as the heroes of the story. Well, not in 
> > the past hundred years of so. Not that I can remember 
> > anyway. But they did give us morally imperfect children 
> > who *learned* from their experiences. That was usually 
> > one of the points made in the story.
 
> >>Pippin:
> One of the things I like about the books is that despite           
> Dumbledore's little sermons at the end, they're not like After-    
> school Specials. People do not Learn Their Lesson and live happily 
> ever after.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Well, they can't can they?  I mean, if you're only in book 2 there 
can't be a "happily ever after" because there are 5 more books to 
go.  However, there are *five* more books to go.  So are we seriously 
supposed to have these children stuck in their same old, same old for 
five more books?

I think what Marion was talking about, and this is definitely why the 
series has soured for me at the moment, is that there should be a 
happy medium between "after school special" and "the adventure 
continues".  Otherwise the children start to look a bit stupid and/or 
stunted in some manner.

> >>Pippin:
> Sor far, Hermione is always self-righteous, Ron struggles with      
> feelings of inferiority, and Harry  rushes to judgement.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
And I think it would have been fine for those big issues to keep 
manifesting *if* they manifested in different ways.  Which, in some 
ways, JKR does do.  Let's take Ron as an example. 

Ron's sense of inferiority leads him to feel jealous anger against 
Harry in GoF.  But he is forced to confront and deal with those 
feelings and a lesson is learned.  Ron will still deal with 
inferiority, but not manifested in that particular way.

So, in OotP Ron isn't unfairly angry at Harry, he's a screw up on the 
Quidditch pitch.  But then Ron has his moment of clarity, becomes the 
Quidditch player he always was inside, and saves the big game. 
Huzzah, Ron.

Only not.  Because the very next year, Ron has the *exact* same 
problem.  Why?  JKR forced the reader to go through pretty much the 
exact same Quidditch adventure as the last book, only this one wasn't 
as good.  It struck me as sloppy writing, loss of control on JKR's 
part.  Why not let Gryffindor *lose* the big game last year if Ron 
needed to keep the same problem into next year?  Or why not allow Ron 
to be a good Quidditch player and only have his feelings of sexual 
inferiority to deal with in HBP?

Instead of feeling like this is a path of natural growth on Ron's 
part, it comes across as forced to me.  Every time I read about Ron 
flubbing up in practice I would think with great frustration of the 
OotP game.  It was like that scene never happened; no one ever even 
referred to it, IIRC.  Which is frankly out of character for Ron, and 
makes team captain Harry look like a bit of an idiot.

Was that JKR's goal?  I doubt it.  So I can only guess that she was a 
bit thrown off by Ron's growth in OotP and had to force him into a 
stilted holding pattern until the "big payoff" in DH.  Badly done on 
her part, IMO.  And a definite weakness in the series. 

Betsy Hp