A James Rant - Who was This Guy?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181343

Lynda:
> 
> I tried to stay as unbiased as possible about James.  We only ever
see him
> through the minds of others in the story after all.  His friends, his
> in-laws, his enemies, his teachers. All of which are in one way or
another
> more than usually biased for or against someone. So in the end.
through all
> of these various filters, I have no real concept of who James Potter
was.
> His friends liked him, his wife loved him, he was something of a
> troublemaker at school, but seems to have pulled things together at
a fairly
> young age. That's not really a lot to go on, when the character in
question
> dies at the beginning of a seven book series and is only seen in
retrospect.

Carol responds:
Yes and no. We do hear people speaking of him, and certainly, those
people are biased either in his favor (Black and Lupin) or against him
(Snape). Oddly, the person who most frequently praises James's courage
is Voldemort, who says in GoF (and SS/PS?) that he died fighting bravely. 

However, we also have Pensieve memories of him in both OoP and DH, and
the fact that they're Snape's memories makes no difference. A Pensieve
memory is an objective record. We also see Voldemort's memory of
James's death, which he clearly has not altered (it's a painful
recollection) in DH. That it's filtered through Harry again makes no
difference.

So the memories that we encounter indirectly when characters speak of
James are subjective, altered by time and preconceptions and feelings
(affection or hatred), but the Pensieve memories and Voldemort's
Godric's Hollow memory (which conflicts with his own statements to
Harry) can be taken as objective recreations of the events.

We can also take as true, I think, that he referred to Remus's
condition as "your furry little problem" since Remus has no reason to
lie. He recalls the words fondly, but I find them demeaning and
insensitive. Lycanthropy as a "little" problem? It's like calling
blindness "your little vision problem." It's along the same lines,
IMO, as Sirius's "Wish it were full moon" and his silence in response
to Remus's "I don't."

I don't see much to like about James personally, but he was clever as
well as arrogant and genuinely brave (saving Severus) as well as
reckless (running with a werewolf on full-moon nights). I just wish
that we saw more of adult James (brief though his life was) to wash
away the bad taste left by the bully in SWM. And. like Alla, I wish
that the depiction of his death in DH matched matched Voldemort's
description of it. "He died fighting bravely" doesn't match the facts
as presented in DH: he died wandless and unprepared. The only thing
that matches earlier accounts (the Dementor-induced memories in PoA)
is his last words to Lily.

He did trust his friends with his life, but that turned out to be a
failing rather than a virtue. (DD's trust in Snape and Harry's in Ron
and Hermione turned out to be justified. I'm not sure what sort of
conclusion to draw there.)

Carol, quoting from memory to save time