Public humiliation: Re: Revenge on Rita was First lesson

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185792

> Carol responds:

> All of this experience makes him better prepared for public
> humiliation than, say, Ron, who (IIRC) has trouble dealing with
> unpopularity after he bungles a Quidditch game. He doesn't *fear*
> Snape any more than he fears Vernon or Dudley. He responds to the
> first Potions lesson with cheek and to the deduction of a point with
> resentment. The experience temporarily spares him from undeserved
> public adulation, but Quidditch turns the tables and he quickly
> becomes a hero to the Gryffindors and a rival to everyone else,
> especially Slytherin. Then he loses all those points for Gryffindor,
> and his whole House turns against him. And then he and his friends 
win
> them back, making them heroes again to Gryffindor and intensifying 
the
> Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry into enmity.

Magpie:
Actually, when this convo started I started thinking something sort 
of different. I think the connection between handling humiliation 
well or not connects not to practice but the opposite. Hermione seems 
to have supportive parents. She has issues, but they're not centered 
on public humliation. Where as I tend to associate characters who 
have issues with it with characters who have more of a history of 
being humliated.

This is a different issue than handling of fame, something few 
characters have to deal with. I suppose one could say that Harry 
would have been insufferable if he had better parents than the 
Dursleys, but that's hard to prove, since he didn't have them. Good 
parents wouldn't have to be over-indulgent.

Ron doesn't handle public humiliation as well as Harry handles 
everything better than Ron. (Also I'd Harry more often worries about 
looking foolish but doesn't, where Ron actually looks foolish on the 
Quidditch Pitch.) But I'd say the fear of public humiliation is 
common for Harry, who has a lot of experience with humiliation. Ginny 
otoh, ultimately seems really confident (outside of being shy around 
Harry when she's young). Seems like Ron, the child teased more often 
than Ginny, has more issues. Neville's family tells him he sucks and 
until he gets over it he freaks out over Snape's criticism. The one 
early scene we have with Lucius he's putting Draco down in front of a 
shopkeeper and Draco also gets furious when humiliated. Snape seems 
way sensitive about it and he's got a history with James.

Of course personalities come into it, as does the area about which a 
person is being teased. Molly critizes the Twins, but seems to 
criticize them for things that they think are great. Percy is praised 
by Molly and yet is totally sensitive about the Twins' teasing (which 
again links a character sensitive about this stuff with a history of 
teasing). Dumbledore's totally cool about stuff like this and he's 
alwyas told he was great.

So I really don't think the book makes a connection between lots of 
exposure to humiliation and handling it better. Harry can't help but 
get a bit better at it since he's exposed to so much of it, but I'd 
say that the most confident characters are the ones who don't have a 
history of humiliation and shame. I think it's more common to find 
out that the characters who think about this kind of stuff have 
experienced it more than others.

Handling fame is a different issue, I think. Snape sometimes brings 
that into it when he's dealing with Harry in class ("our new 
celebrity" etc.) but I don't think he really knows much about that 
aspect of it. 

So yeah, I'd say that Harry dealing with fame is a big theme, but a 
different from the connection between humiliation and confidence.

-m