Suspension of disbelief - Being dependent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182464


> Betsy Hp:
> Yes, I was talking about Harry having that horrible moment when you
realize your preconceived notions are wrong.  Something that most
everyone goes through at one point or another, and something pretty
standard in coming of age tales.  Or really, any story where the 
protagonist changes.  In the Disney movie, "Beauty and the Beast" the
motherly teapot sings of their love beginning when they both have a
"learning you were wrong" moment.  I'd been hoping for Harry to have
such a moment.  He didn't.
> 
> But I think that if JKR was writing a story that warned against
being independent it makes sense that the boy chosen to be the hero
was heroic from the get go.  After all, he's the guy chosen from the
voice on high.  You don't want that guy to be wrong about anything 
since he's the only one able to save the day. 

Carol responds:

I think Harry does realize that he was wrong about a lot of people,
or, at any rate, he changes his view of them (Luna, Neville, Kreacher,
Regulus, Draco, Snape), but it doesn't come to him as an
epiphany--it's a more gradual change in perspective. In the case of
snape, probably the most important of these changed perspectives, it's
so gradual, and so mixed with his realization that he has to sacrifice
himself and of Dumbledore's "betrayal," that he isn't consciously
aware of it--and, yet, his very public vindication of Snape shows that
it has, indeed, happened. And, of course, much of DH is about coming
to understand dumbledore and finding the truth about him, which is
somewhere between the glowing tribute of Elphias Doge and the snide
insinuations of Rita Skeeter, who always puts the worst possible spin
on everything. 

As for Harry's never being wrong, I really don't see how you can say
that. He was wrong about Snape from the first book, and even after he
finds out that Snape saved his life and was trying to stop Quirrell,
he's still wrong about Snape, with the wrongness compounded in every
book and coming to a head with the "murder" of DDD, for which Harry
wants revenge clear up to "the Prince's Tale." We don't know at
exactly which point he starts to understand and empathize with Snape,
but it has clearly happened by the end of the chapter, when the
narrator states that Snape might have just left the room. Not once
does the narrator refer to "the hated voice" or "the man he hated"
once Harry has entered those memories.

Harry is also wrong about Sirius Black (understandably since everyone
else is, too) and about Fake!Moody. He's wrong in blaming Snape for
Sirius Black's death. He's wrong in thinking that he will be thwarted
by Draco and his cronise in the RoR: Draco is trying to stop Crabbe
from harming either him or "that diadem thing" and I, for one, don't
think it's because he wants to turn Harry over to LV. His words are
too similar to Snape's when Snape is protecting Harry from the DEs for
me to accept that reading.

Now, granted, Harry is right (for a change) that Draco has become a DE
(I think he does have the Dark Mark) and that he's doing something
dangerous for Voldemort, but he's wrong that Snape is helping him do
it. He thinks that DD is (or was, as of DH) wrong to trust Snape.

Harry is not, I agree, particularly brilliant, though he does
generally think clearly in a crisis and he does figure things out
eventually. He's a member of a team; he can't do it all by himself.
(Hermione's contributions are clearest, but it's Ron who retrieves the
Sword of Gryffindor ("*Are*--*you*--*mental*?") and destroys the
locket Horcrux and opens the CoS and suggests that they accept
Neville's help and Disarms both Wormtail and Bellatrix.

Carol, cutting the post short because of a phone call