The trouble with Harry

[Annemehr]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "mooseming" <josturgess at ...> 
wrote:
>
> 
> 
> I never really *got* Harry. Oh I know what he's supposed to be but 
I 
> never actually connected with him. As the books progressed I sensed 
> (imagined?) that JK was increasingly, even desperately, trying to 
> make me believe in him. Often I found his behaviour inexplicable 
and 
> his motivations confused.
> 
> When we first meet Harry in PS he is, in DD words,  "modest, 
> likeable and reasonably talented
.an engaging child". Is this 
> believable? 
 
> <snip> Harry's abuse at 
> the hands of the Dursleys is not presented for pathos but comedy. I 
> have no problem with this, PS is not meant to be social realism 
it's 
> an adventure story.

Anne:
I liked him very much through GoF. I guess it's just a personal 
thing, like whether or not you like someone in real life.

Unlike many other readers apparently, I didn't see the Dursleys as 
being all-out abusive so much as oppressive.  I suppose the reason 
for that is *because* Harry didn't seem to be all that much damaged 
by them, and also because I could see he had certain defenses (the 
horrible jumper/sweater shrinking; his hair growing back).

Right now, I am reading a memoir, set in the 1990s, called _Reading 
Lolita in Tehran_.  The lives of the women in it seem every bit as 
oppressed as Harry's; particularly the ones with male family members 
in agreement with the regime.  Though I'm well aware that I have no 
full understanding of what that does to them, I do see that they are 
not complete emotional wrecks, that they are defiant where they can 
be -- and Harry is similar, in a very general way.

The real believable and fitting consequence Harry seemed to carry 
from his upbringing, in my view, was his emotional distance from 
people.  He really did have some empathy (except for his "enemies"), 
but never knew what to do with it -- so, sometimes he *appeared* 
cold.  Other times, he really *was* cold (like the time in PoA when 
he ditched Neville to go to Hogsmeade).


Jo:
> Nor is it a tale of personal growth, Harry 
> doesn't embark upon his journey to the magical world where he finds 
> his better self, he arrives at Hogwarts fully functional, complete 
> (as it transpires a little more than complete). It need not have 
> been this way, the childhood classic `The Secret Garden' is a story 
> about a child who relearns how to engage with others following a 
> personal tragedy but PS is not that kind of book. Nor are CoS or 
PoA 
> they are jolly romps through the wizarding world, all be it with an 
> intriguing backstory. Neither is GoF until that explosive scene in 
> the graveyard. When Cedric dies everything changes - except Harry.


Anne:
Here, I agree with your disappointment entirely.  The Harry who went 
into the Forest to be killed by LV in DH is the same Harry who went 
through the trapdoor in PS/SS -- except now he's meaner.

After GoF and OoP, I expected  Harry's victory over Voldemort to be 
made possible by the fact that Harry had a circle of friends cemented 
by love and loyalty whereas LV had a circle of minions cemented by 
fear (except for that crazy Bellatrix).

We did get some of that in the end, to be sure -- Neville came 
through in spades -- but it fell so flat!  First of all, it was all 
one-way -- from them to him.  *He* never thinks of them unless their 
distress happens right before his eyes.  And also, as you point out, 
he's too busy:

Jo:
> The problem stems, in part, from writing the books primarily from 
> Harry's POV. Harry has to `carry' the story. It's his actions that 
> drive the narrative. Hence in OotP instead of spending time 
> contemplating, addressing the impact of events in GoF Harry is 
> forced (by the author) into a rather incongruous trip to the MoM so 
> we can get a preview of the place in preparation for the 
denouement. 
> In terms of character development for Harry it does nothing. Yes we 
> are told of his frustration with his isolation, inactivity and the 
> dismissal of his testimony but this is nothing new to him or to us

<snip other examples>

Anne:
Yep.  But I don't think it's a POV problem, I think it's a problem 
with the story itself.  It seems Rowling had time for all this action 
because in her view, her Harry was just perfect enough but not too 
perfect (she stuck in those flaws to "humanize" him).

Returning to the character development I had been expecting, I looked 
for Harry to learn to appreciate the strengths of Luna, Neville, and 
Ginny; to lose his jaundiced view of Slytherin (the "House unity" 
thing, right?); and to have to overcome the hatred for Snape he'd 
been feeding all those years, because he'd need to trust him.  The 
only crumbs we got were Harry entrusting Neville with the Kill Nagini 
mission -- out of *pure necessity* only, and the posthumous, matter-
of-fact Pensieve history of Snape.  They negate my hopes, because 
neither one of these required a change in Harry himself.

In a less sappy vein (though a little along the same lines), after 
reading HBP and talking to Talisman, I looked for a more exciting and 
deeper change in Harry when he would encounter and then embrace his 
shadow self.  The soul-bit in Harry would be the concretised form 
around which this metamorphosis would revolve...

But no.  All the lovely possibilities, really and truly present in 
the text of the first six books (and beyond what I've written here), 
simply evaporated.  Instead, what did we get?  Tom Riddle was born 
bad and would always be bad, and Harry Potter was born good and would 
always be good.  Blah.

Well.  Fortunately, the HP experiences I treasure have nothing to do 
with DH.  I can be content with that.

Anne