Did Harry Notice?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182925

 
> 
> > Pippin:
> > We should have already learned, from Harry's adventures, that the
> > hero's one true accomplishment is his choice to face the enemy 
> > against the odds.  All the rest he owes to providence.
> 
> Mike:
> I thought we were supposed to learn that Harry's one true virtue was 
> his extrodinary ability to love and all the ways in which that 
> manifests itself.

Pippin:
The hero needs a noble cause, but the cause elevates the hero, not
vice versa. Bella thought her cause was noble, but that doesn't make
her a hero, right? 


> Mike:
> I don't think James bravery was ever in question. Nor do I think 
> bravery is all that is required to be pronounced a hero. But why 
> shouldn't I think differently of James based on how he performed? 
> <snip>
> 
> This isn't a Greek tragedy nor epic poem, but what would you have 
> thought of Perseus if he had performed like James?

Pippin:
I would think that Fate was against him. Achilles died at the hands of
a warrior far inferior to him who was helped by a god, IIRC. IOW, the
other guy got lucky, same as Voldemort.

How many times has Harry been careless with his wand?  He might have
been killed by Barty Jr at the QWC or blown one of his buttocks off --
my guess is it runs in his family, just like Sirius's exhilarated laugh. 


> > Pippin:
> > But that's just backwards, IMO.  No one in canon has to be a
> > responsible adult to be a hero -- <snip>
> 
> Mike:
> James does, imo. We were shown all the ways James behaved 
> irresponsibly in his youth. He was still picking on Severus, two on 
> one mind you, as late as his fifth year O.W.L.s (and after he had 
> saved him from the Prank). Yet somehow he was made Head Boy in his 
> seventh year. Why? In what way did he mature enough to deserve that 
> honor?

Pippin:

 We saw that James had leadership abilities, they just needed to be
redirected. DD would need somebody who'd stick up for kids who were
being harassed by DE wannabes. I'd think James would be perfect. Of
course Snape would see it as hypocritical bullying. But why didn't JKR
just show us all that?

IMO, because relating  James's story mostly through  Snape's limited
experiences shows us why Snape had  no direct evidence that James had
changed. We need to understand that, or Snape's hatred would continue
to seem as demented as it did in PoA. As it is, Toerag!James is a
compelling point of view even though it is contradicted by everybody
who knew James in later life better than Snape did.


> 
> Mike:
> James was never going to be the kind of hero that Harry was, I agree 
> with this premise. I certainly don't deny that love of family was an 
> important theme and rightly so. Heaven knows, without Lily's love of 
> Harry we wouldn't have a story. 
> 
> But what part was James supposed to play in this theme. I submit it 
> was loving father, adoring husband, and *protector of hearth and 
> home*. It was in this last role that James falls short, not by a lot. 
> However, in the one role that differentiates him from Lily, he 
> doesn't give his best performance possible. Doesn't this in a small 
> way point to James' dedication to fathering?

Pippin:
I don't see how. As usual, Voldemort got it backwards, it was James
who didn't have to die. If he hadn't rushed headlong to defend his
wife and child, if he'd let them face Voldemort alone, then both James
and Harry would have lived. But he couldn't have done that and been
James, any more than Harry could have kept himself from going to save
Sirius in OOP.

That same headlong behavior cost James his wand and whatever chance he
had to make a fight of it. But that's the price of  being a
Gryffindor. Where he fell short of Lily was only in not seeing that if
he *chose* to die instead of wishing, no matter how ineffectually, to
hold Voldemort off, then he could have cast the shield charm as she did.

That's where Harry goes further down the hero's path than James did,
and further than Lily, who thought only of protecting her son, while
Harry thought of protecting everyone.

> 
> > Pippin:
> > We don't see how James grows out of hexing people for fun,
> > but we see how Harry does -- nothing dramatic, no realization that
> > he'd even done it. He just stopped as he developed a taste for more
> > mature activities, such as snogging Ginny and took on a man's job
> > (in the colloquial sense) of hunting for horcruxes. 


Pippin:
(responding to Montavilla's points without quoting in this already
overlong post)

I didn't forget the sectum sempra episode or Harry's detentions. But
canon shows us how little effect they had on Harry's attitude. That
illuminates how the prank and all those detentions didn't seem to have
any effect on James. Harry managed to rationalize what happened to
Draco, just as Sirius in PoA rationalized that it would have served
Snape right if he'd been killed. Having done that, the detentions only
made Harry feel martyred. 

Things that point a moral in a cautionary tale don't have to  have
that effect on the characters. We can see quite clearly the lesson
that ought to have been drawn, but that doesn't mean that Harry or
James need to have seen it. 

And yes, Harry continues to hex people aggressively in DH. But he's
not doing it just to entertain himself. Sirius says that James
continued to hex Snape because Snape was still trying to hex James
every chance he got, and (quoting from memory) "you couldn't expect
James to take that lying down." That's the stage that Harry is in
through most of DH, IMO.  Hexing in retaliation or self-defense, yes,
but not completely for amusement, unaware of why he acts the way he
does. SWM!James doesn't understand or feel whatever frustrations are
driving him to act out against Snape -- like a child he doesn't feel
angry and hit, he just hits. 

Further,   an arrogant bully can't be a decent father in canon. He
just can't. Sirius tries  hard in OOP, but he can't pull himself out
of his self-absorbed state for very long. We certainly never see
Vernon or Lucius or Barty Sr. just enjoy being with their kids. Even
when he takes Dudley to the zoo, Vernon spends most of his time
talking about the things he dislikes. 

Besides there was no one at GH for James to bully except Lily, Harry
and the cat -- since he didn't bully them I will conclude he wasn't a
bully anymore.

> Mike:
> I've had a further thought. Was JKR forshadowing Harry's resignation 
> to his fate in the forest by James responding to Voldemort's 
> intrusion without his wand? 

Pippin:
See, I just can't get my head around "I'll hold him off!" as
resignation. It's not like he said, "Save yourself, I'm finished!" 

I think where Harry goes beyond James is being able to "take it lying
down" -- in being able to control the urge to retaliate. What he
discovers at Dobby's grave is that if he fully allows himself to
experience the pain of his loss, he feels no anger, no need to get
revenge. He still has the *choice* -- he can admit anger to his mind
if he  wants it. But he also has the choice to let it go.

IMO, love, in JKR's world, gives you the power to overcome anger, but
it doesn't force you to do so. You still have to make the choice. In
Ravenclaw Tower, Harry didn't yet see why he should refrain from
revenge on  Amycus, who to his mind clearly deserved it. Harry had not
yet realized that he might be a poorer judge of that than he thinks. 
So at that point, IMO, he hadn't fully gone beyond James, because even
though he understood how to control his desire to strike back, he
didn't understand why he should do so. 

Pippin