A James Rant - Who was This Guy?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 181411

> Magpie:
> 
> You're perhaps right JKR just didn't see much reason to show tihngs 
> that much counteracted Snape's view. I'm not bothered by it myself. 
> But I think she might think James comes across a bit more positive 
> than he does to some readers.
> 
> Tom:
> Even if James was 
> > a bit of a hellion it's not to say that he didn't mature by 
> > the time he reached his sixth and seventh year. I highly doubt 
> > that Dumbledore would have named him head boy if he had not.
> 
> Magpie:
> Knowing Dumbledore, I wouldn't assume that. It seems like Dumbledore 
> thought he was fine even while being a "hellion", and even if he'd 
> somewhat changed (I think his friends say he only tormented Snape 
> when Lily wasn't looking in that last year) personally I wouldn't 
> consider that a good enough reason to make him Head Boy. I wouldn't 
> think other students had any reason to trust him after the way he 
> behaved as far as we know. 
> 
> I think that's why people find it so odd that DH seemed to take away 
> the one thing we thought solved the problem--the Prank seemed like a 
> believable change for James. It's imo a bad idea to show that even 
> that couldn't change the guy, but then I'm supposed to assume he held 
> out through the Prank but then randomly changed for no reason later 
> on. Grew up, yeah, but that sounds like he just got bored with the 
> hexing people because he could, not that he ever had any realization 
> about his behavior and other people. (Which imo mirrors Harry's 
> journey too.)

Pippin:
The thing you're not taking into account is  that the James who picked on
people and the James that people trusted -- the one who, even Snape
admits, saved Snape's life, who would have spared Pettigrew, rescued 
Sirius, refused to suspect a friend, who refused to see Lupin as a werewolf 
first and a person second -- existed simultaneously.

 James didn't have to stop being who he was, he just had to get more
control of his aggressive impulses and find a more  acceptable outlet 
for them. JKR doesn't have to show how James did that because she 
showed Harry doing it all through the last three books. 

JKR's target isn't individual morality -- Harry doesn't stop doing
toenail hexes when he realizes that toenail hexes are wrong, he
stops doing them when he's no longer in an environment where
people think toenail hexes are cool. But  Harry never did a toenail
hex in front of Hermione, just like James stopped hexing people
when Lily was around -- and I'm sure he never hexed people when
Dumbledore was around either. 

It's the social responsibility for bullying that concerns JKR, IMO.
The books seem to say that if we don't want kids to be bullies,
we have first got to admit that "good" kids can be bullies, and
then we have to find them a healthy outlet for their aggression.
Sports doesn't work for everybody.

Pippin