Untarnished soul: WAS Re: 'Clue to his vulnerability' (Coming to a conclusion )

[nkafkafi]

> Pip!Squeak, raising her head from out of the teacup...
> 
> No, I think Dumbledore meant more than that. What does Quirrelmort 
> say, way back in PS/SS?
> 
> "There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak 
> to seek it ..." (Ch. 17)
> 
> Power is the one thing Harry *doesn't* seek. In the face of constant 
> temptation, he never even seems to see the possibilities... The most 
> famous boy in the Wizarding World and he finds it irritating. The 
> best Seeker for generations and it never occurs to him to encourage 
> a (very useful) fan club. In OOP he creates his own small army, darn 
> it, mostly very loyal to him - and what happens in HBP? It isn't 
> needed any more, so he drops it. Nor is he attracted to those with 
> power; he rejects Draco, he rejects Voldy. Slughorn has power to 
> mention his name to the 'right people' - but Harry really doesn't 
> seem to understand that bit. He doesn't suck up, Slughorn's parties 
> are more irritating than anything. Scrimgeour offers him a role as 
> poster boy for the Ministry - another route to power. Harry rejects 
> it.
> 
> Voldemort would have (probably did) *killed* for these advantages. 
> Harry doesn't even seem to understand that they are advantages.
>

Neri:
Ah, now we begin to delve into the complexities of Harry's character.

Harry indeed doesn't seek all these forms of power, but not because
he's a saint with an untarnished soul. He has very good personal
reasons to reject them. He is the most famous boy in the WW because he
lost his parents before he could even remember them, and has to spend
his whole childhood with horrible people like the Durselys. Who wants
to be famous for that? Harry was new to the WW, in which he
desperately wanted to belong. Naturally he was scared of exposing his
ignorance and making a fool of himself in front of everybody. The last
thing he needed was a fan club that watches his every move and expects
great things from him. This was already established in SS/PS Ch. 5:  

**********************************************
"Everyone thinks I'm special," he said at last. "All those people in
the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr Ollivander 
 but I don't
know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things?
I'm famous and I can't even remember what I'm famous for. I don't know
what happened when Vol – sorry – I mean, the night my parents died."
**********************************************

And in many other places:
**********************************************
 "I'm not trying to be brave or anything, saying the name," said
Harry. "I just never knew you shouldn't. See what I mean? I've got
loads to learn 
 I bet," he added, voicing for the first time
something that had been worrying him a lot lately, "I bet I'm the
worst in the class." 

Harry smiled weakly. Yes, trying on the hat was a lot better than
having to do a spell, but he did wish they could have tried it on
without everyone watching. The hat seemed to be asking rather a lot;
Harry didn't feel brave or quick-witted or any of it at the moment.

As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little
hissing fires all over the hall.
"Potter, did she say?"
"The Harry Potter?"
The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the
Hall full of people craning to get a good look at him.
**********************************************

Don't you see why such attention would be terrifying, not tempting,
for a kid in Harry's situation? And when he grows up his situation,
instead of improving, gets much worse. Now he's prophecy boy. Everyone
counts on him to save the whole WW *again*, and he still doesn't
remember how he did it last time, and he doesn't have a clue how he's
going to do it now. Who wants that kind of responsibility? Harry was
immunized by the special circumstances of his upbringing against the
common forms of fame and power, but it's not because he's a saint,
it's because he's scared spitless.

The question for Book 7 might be how will Harry resist the temptation
of power that he really craves. For example, if he is offered a chance
to vanquish Voldemort by using Voldemort's powers against him, and it
would look like the only way to do it, and Dumbledore won't be there
as a guide, would Harry make the wrong choice? JKR made it a point to
clarify that the only difference between Harry and Voldy is their
choices. If she goes along with this theme it means Harry faces *two*
great dangers: he might lose the battle against the Dark Lord and he
might win just to become a Dark Lord himself. This is a known hazard
of vanquishing Dark Lords.



> Pip:
> because the series is really about 'who claims the grey people'? Do 
> they belong to Evil? Or can Good redeem them? Is this series about 
> Justice? Or Mercy?
> 
> Do you only belong to the side of Good if your heart is pure, you 
> have the strength of ten and any sins are only minor ones? 
> 
> Or is Good a side that anyone can join (or rejoin)? Whatever they've 
> done?
> 
> Carolyn:
> I'd personally prefer some of these sorts of more complex messages, 
> though (naturally) ignoring their religious connotations. However, 
> they seem at odds with WYSIWYG approach advocated by Neri and Nora.
>

Neri:
I have two fully acronymized theories lying in ruin on the GARBAGE
SCOW to prove I'm not a WYSIWYG person. But I do agree that for
technical considerations at least 95% of canon must be rock solid,
which is why Faith has by far the best prediction record in the Bay.
The trick that Faith doesn't know is how to identify the remaining 5%,
which are of course the most interesting. 

But there's no contradiction between the WYSIWYG approach and the Grey
People approach. There's plenty of grey characters around that can
redeem themselves, such as Draco, Kreacher, Munudungus, Regulus,
Slughorn, Rita, Fudge, maybe even Narcissa. There isn't even any
contradiction between WYSIWYG and Grey Snape. For example, he might be
a tragic character who tricked himself into the UV because of his love
to Narcissa and then found himself in a situation where it's him or
Dumbledore. The only seeming contradiction is between WYSIWYG and
White-Disguised-As-Black Snape. This is not only because of what
happened on the tower, but because people who feel true remorse about
being DEs and taking part in the death of two persons don't usually
enjoy torturing every kid in sight and especially the orphan of the
parents they are remorseful about. I know there are some potential
explanations for both these problems, but they are hardly WYSIWYG.


> Kneasy wrote in
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3292
> Thing is, at that time almost no-one had a TV, and even if they did
there
> wasn't much to attract or involve a 10 year old.  But those serials!
They
> keep us going until the following Saturday -  revising, interpreting,
> imagining where they would go next. So in the school playground it was
> "Pretend I'm Flash Gordon and you're a Clay Man disguised as the wall of
> the tunnel, and I've got this ray gun and...."

Neri:
As I very dimly recall from my own childhood, Flash Gordon had a
horrible tendency to get into impossible cliffhangers at the end each
chapter only to leap effortlessly out of them in the next chapter. I
was appalled even as a 10 yrs old. I feverently hope JKR will do better. 

Neri