On the perfection of moral virtues

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 168877

> > >>Pippin:
> > Um, no. Disgraced Harry, watching from the sidelines because
> > he's been banned for life  isn't a patch on QuidditchCaptain!Harry,
> > who is responsible for  evaluating Ron's performance and could 
> > throw him off the team if he's not good enough.
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Um, yes.  (Sorry, couldn't resist keeping to pattern. <bg>)  
> 
> Do you have any canon that shows this is how Ron was feeling? 

Pippin:
Um...no ::blushes::

Reading over carefully, it seems that what put Ron
off his game was his fellow Gryffindors, not Harry.
They thought that Harry put too many of his
own year on the team and they were muttering...
"the pressure was increasing to provide a win
in the upcoming match against Slytherin." --
HBP 14

Ron must have been okay during their Quidditch practice 
over the summer, because Harry thinks he's gotten over
it until he sees how green Ron looks at the tryouts.  
Ron does manage to make his saves. We don't see Harry's first
practices with the team but Harry thinks that
they're making good progress.  Then Harry has to replace the
injured Katie with Dean Thomas. That's when the murmurs
start and *then* Ron's game begins to suffer. It grows
steadily worse, and *nothing* Harry says makes any difference.

So yeah, it's not Harry's confidence Ron is worried about,
it's the confidence of his fellow Gryffindors. But it doesn't come
out of nowhere. And it's not something Ron had faced before,
because he wasn't included when Harry, Neville and Hermione
lost all those points in Book One. 

I don't think this is just filler, because I think JKR has to get
Harry to the point where he can forgive an enemy, and we're
not going to believe that if he can't even show some patience
and understanding to his friends. It had to be something that
Ron's done before so that we can be sure that Harry is not
showing blind faith in his friend as the Gryffindors think 
(and Ron seems to fear.)

> > >>Pippin:
> > JKR's ultimate aim, I would venture, is not to transform
> > her characters. It's to transform *us*, or at least to make
> > us see that transformation is not beyond *our* reach.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> I, wait, what?  *I* don't tend to think people are born either good 
> or bad.  *I* don't live in the shadow of my family.  *I* have never 
> branded a schoolmate's face because she crossed me. So what exactly 
> am I supposed to be transforming into?  And who the heck does JKR 
> think she is that she feels she can tell me how to fix my life?  I 
> don't see no halo on her. <g>

Pippin:
She thinks she's writing "very moral books" so I think she expects
they will have some effect for the better. Anyway isn't the message
of all art "You must change your life" ? She's not writing these books
to make money, and she's not doing it because she had this
Tolkienic inner world that she had to make real in some way. I
figure she wants to tell us something, but I could be wrong. 

> Betsy Hp:
> Yes, yes, yes!  I think this is *exactly* the problem I'm having!  
> It's so very hard to tell if JKR really means for some of the 
> questionable stuff as per me to actually *be* questionable. 

Pippin:
I think we can tell it's questionable when a character questions
it. We have Arthur questioning what the Twins did to the Dursleys
and Hermione questioning what was done to Montague. Cho
questions what happened to Marietta. 

It's true that sometimes the characters do things that aren't
questioned. Hermione takes the law into her own hands more
and more, and she's questioned more and more as she does
it, just as Harry's lies aren't questioned at first but land him
in bigger and bigger trouble, until he's doing detentions every
week.

Hagrid is not proud of what he did to Dudley "Shouldn'ta lost me 
temper" and asks that Harry not tell anyone at Hogwarts what he did.
Sirius is eventually not proud of the way he treated Snape.
They don't beat themselves up about it, but they don't
do it again either. And then there's Lupin, who beats himself
up but doesn't change. It doesn't seem to be a happy pattern,
whatever JKR means to do with it. 

Betsy Hp:
> I can say that at this point this is not a series I'd specifically 
> recommend for children.  For the horribly icky reason that I'm not 
> sure they're all that moral. 

Pippin:

The morals are pointed by Dumbledore, Arthur, McGonagall and
Sirius -- all bona fide good guys, people whom Harry respects,
whose own shortcomings are pointed out in the text. Harry is
explicitly  aware that Sirius doesn't practice what he preaches, for
example. Kids are pretty good at recognizing hypocrisy. I don't
think JKR believes she needs to point it out every time  it happens,
just in case somebody missed it. 

Pippin