[the_old_crowd] Re: 'Clue to his vulnerability' (Coming to a conclusion )

[silmariel]

El Jue 22 Sep 2005 21:59, carolynwhite2 escribió:
> --- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at e...>
> wrote:
>
> From Harry's example we find out a magical person doesn't have to be
> perfectly well behaved to have an untarnished soul! What seems to be
> remarkable about Harry is how many times he's been in contact with
> pure evil and never succumbed to darkness. He's been touched by the
> curse-that-failed, had his thoughts invaded by Voldemort, been
> possessed, partially soul-sucked, etc. From a WW perspective, I
> think we're meant to see his still-pure soul as a Very Big Deal.
>
> Whether you buy this idea is another matter.
>
> Carolyn:
> Well I don't. In fact, codswallop [I took your advice and opened a
> bottle..Miss H on the rampage, you have been warned <g>].
>

My mind tends to disconnect when confronted to accepting Harry as an 
untarnished soul and pure of heart. It may be a side effect of reading some 
(always borrowed from some friend) of the monolitic trilogies or series 
hero-driven that flood fantasy sections, but what I see is Dumbledore 
cheering Harry in order to reassure him that he is a hero. 

Agreed he has been tempted, but anguish per se has been so overused in series 
that is almost a standard, and agreed he takes the right desitions at 
'important' points, but what kind of hero would he be in other case? He's 
suppossed to have some heroic qualities in order to be a hero, it's in the 
minimum requirements for the job.

Really, I couldn't call him a hero if he had executed Peter. Harry simply has 
to act like a hero sometimes, or is Heoric Quotient will sink. It's his work 
to save Ginny, it's his work to confront Voldemort, otherwise, this wouldn't 
be a hero series or we'd have another name in the tittle of the books.

Particularly I'd like to point to the Sectumsempra incident. While it is true 
he laments the results, it's also true when confronted by Hermione he keeps 
defending the prince. To me, he doesn't think he was wrong in taking the set 
of steps that led him to using the spell, so it was kind of inevitable, so he 
would have done it, again. That isn't exactly learning from the incident. You 
know, even a 'gosh, I can't go on trying spells marked for enemies on human 
beings without trying to know first what the spell is about' would have been 
something.

It's kind of cheating needing to read the interviews to learn what the author 
was suppossedly trying to say, imo. I don't do for other books. She might 
consider using other approaches as 'introductory words from the author', or 
'apendix #n', because I see shades of grey and quite an standar hero, that I 
find likable precisely because he is a predictable adolescent mess, but not 
my image of a pure of heart hero.

Silmariel