MAGICkal elITE

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186391

Geoff wrote:
> Looking at the choices which we have been considering in this thread, on several occasions I have said that I regard Harry as an everyman (with a small "e"). <snip>
> 
> If I may misquote Shakespeare, "Some are born heroes, some achieve heroism and some have heroism thrust upon them".
> 
> Harry, I believe, fits into the last category. He sees himself as a very ordinary person:
> `"Hagrid," he said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. 
> I don't think I can be a wizard."'

> He feels uncomfortable when he is thrown into the limelight:
> <snip>

Carol responds:

I understand your interpretation and in some respects I agree with it.

Certainly, there's no question that Harry, having been brought up by the Dursleys who treat him as an unwanted intrusion on their lives, starts off with a very low opinion of himself. However, he quickly gets over the delusion that he "can't be a wizard," and he also discovers, rather too quickly, IMO, that he's a naturally gifted flyer and (with no training or practice at all), an even better Seeker than "the legendary Charlie Weasley." He can't lose a game, it seems, unless there's outside interference from Quirrell or Dobby or Dementors. (It's this sort of thing, IMO, that makes some readers object to Harry as "too perfect." And, certainly, he's not an everyman, meaning "everywizardkid, when it comes to Quidditch.

I also agree that he dislikes his fame even during periods of popularity (as early as CoS we see him contrasted with the fame-loving Gilderoy Lockhart). His "dearest ambition," to borrow Mr. Weasley's phrase with regard to knowing how airplanes stay up, is to be Just Harry, to have a life like Ron Weasley's (which Ron, of course, sees as anything but ideal). In the epilogue, we see that (despite his continuing fame), Harry has achieved that level of ordinariness (I want to call it "ordinary wizarding level") to the extent that such a life is possible for the former Chosen One: wife, family, well-paying and prestigious job (admittedly, not quite the life of Mr. Weasley, but still very much what would be called in the U.S. "the American dream").

But wanting to be Just Harry and being Just Harry are two different things. I agree that in many respects, he's just an ordinary wizard kid. He wears glasses and has unruly hair that not even magic can tame. At least in the first four books, he's small and skinny (like Snape as a child). He suffers unfairness and bullying in varying degrees from a variety of characters. He likes to have fun; he breaks the rules; he cheats on his homework; he has problems dealing with girls. His grades in most subjects are above average rather than exceptional, in part because he lets his mind wander in class. So far, setting aside the fact that he's a wizard, he's a kid that any reader can identify with in one respect or another. This is the Harry that we would have seen, probably, had Voldemort not come to power, killed his parents, and given him that scar.

The scar itself, though it doesn't give Harry any superpowers, sets Harry apart from everyone else, making him in the narrator's words "a marked man" figuratively and literally. Not only does the scar draw everyone's eyes (sometimes it seems to be the only part of him that people see), it links him, sometimes painfully, with the mind of the very Wizard who wants to kill him. This link in itself, along with the Prophecy Voldemort ironically sets in motion by trying to prevent it from coming true, sets up a destiny for Harry that is anything but ordinary. It's entirely true that this destiny has been "thrust upon him" by events beyond his control and by the choices and actions of others. His survival as a baby of fifteen months was not his own doing nor the result of any extraordinary powers that he possessed. he's famous for something that happened to him, not something that he did. Yet that fame doesn't go away in the ten years that he's absent from the Wizarding World, and when he returns, he's faced with expectations  and challenges unlike those that any other young Wizard faces--or rather, in addition to the challenges that other Hogwarts face since he's also expected to take classes and do detention when he breaks the rules.

It's useful, I think, to contrast him with Neville, who can be viewed as a foil to Harry (that is, a character is a similar situation who can be compared and contrasted with another character). Neville, too, might have been the Boy Who Lived (assuming that his mother had for some reason been given a chance to live). And Neville, too, lost his parents to Voldemort even though they're technically still alive. But Neville, with neither fame nor scar nor special destiny, is unquestionably an everyman. Though he has a talent for Herbology, he has no extraordinary powers (from a Wizarding perspective). His own family worries that he may be a Squib. He does not even recognize his own remarkable courage, which is overshadowed by his self-doubts.

But in Harry's absence, in the face of danger, Neville emerges as a leader, resourceful and courageous. I was thinking when I read your paraphrase of Shakespeare, that Neville, like Harry, had heroism thrust upon him, but now I think that Neville achieved heroism. He only needed the opportunity to reveal who he was all along. And that, I think, is true of all the everyday heroes that we hear about in real life.

Harry, in contrast, had heroism thrust upon him. He had choices, certainly, but running away and saving himself as Aberforth suggested was never one of them.

Harry as Everyman (everyman)? Yes and no, I think. Certainly, he has elements of ordinariness that help the reader to empathize or identify with him on some level. It's also true, as Snape says, that he's helped by luck and by more gifted friends. And, in the end, it isn't any special powers that help him to defeat Voldemort--just courage and self-sacrifice and an ordinary DADA spell that Snape taught him in his second year. And, yet, without the scar that linked his mind to Voldemort's, he would not have found and destroyed the Horcruxes. In that respect, at least, he's uniquely qualified to defeat Voldemort. And only Harry can sacrifice himself to destroy the Horcrux inside that scar.

Without the Prophecy and the events at Godric's Hollow, Harry would not have been forced into being Voldemort's nemesis. There's no question that he's had heroism (and greatness, if we keep the original wording of the quotation) thrust upon him. But does that make him an everyman like Neville (and Ron and many other characters in the books)? Or does it make him something else (a Christ figure or epic hero or superhero)?

Carol, not wholly convinced but not rejecting the idea, either