Morality and Harry Potter

[nikkalmati]

No: HPFGUIDX 191841



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:
>
>> 
> Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.
> 
> (Law) is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.
> 
> 
> Many have argued that Harry was a nasty little boy who did nothing but flout the rules and get into trouble. If he were a good boy, he would have stayed in his bed and let the adults handle it. 
> 
> Let the adults handle it for better or worse, though we know, without Harry's help, it would have always been for worse. 
> 
> As I have strongly counter argued in the past. Harry may not have obeyed the rules, but he always did what was right. 
> 
>snip>

Nikkalmati

I am not sure Harry does anything that rises to the level of morally wrong.   He does break rules and not always for good reasons - meeting Draco in the Trophy Room for a duel? He is rebellious and doesn't communicate well with adults, but can one say he really does anything morally wrong - at least in the first books?  (I know he deceptively used the potions book to improve his grades and he did cast Secumsempra - but those were later.)  I like how it all fits together - his upbringing, the way the adults brush him off -  they think they are doing the right thing too, and the way no one we see always makes the right choices.  If everyone did what they were supposed to do, there would be no story and it would not reflect life so well.  

The person in the stories who is the most rigid rulemaker is, of course, Umbridge, and I see her as the most evil person in the books, probably even more evil than LV himself.
 
I will add that I have an aversion to self-righteousness, which I tend to see in some who proclaim they know what is "right", despite what the lsw or religion or anyone else says (present company excepted of course).

Nikkalmati