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deathtocapslockSo, this was just something that came to me as I was rereading my phoenix essay. Anyone else think that Harry has a bit of an unhealthy obsession with his dead parents? I mean, to be fair, I can understand that he’s upset that they’d die, since it’s thanks to that he has to live with his psychotically abusive aunt and uncle*, but even so....
Harry’s parents died when he was just one year old. Technically, his memory probably wouldn’t have been working properly at that time, so the odds of his remembering that are slim (I know my first memories are of moving into a new house at age 3). Yet Harry constantly uses his parents’ deaths and how much he misses them as reasons to angst, be an asshole, and hate on Voldemort. Constantly! To make matters worse, Harry probably mourns for his dead parents more than he mourns for other people who died much later, INCLUDING SIRIUS, all while never showing any real compassion for other people who have lost friends or family (it’s okay for Harry to angst about his dead parents whom he barely remembers but not for Cho to angst about dead Cedric whom she’s known for probably at least a year? Lolwhut?). Incidentally, I remember Ron in the DH movie, part one, complaining about Harry’s angsting about his family because he didn’t have any living family to lose- and I found myself agreeing with Ron, especially given Harry’s behavior towards dead people other than his relatives!
Second of all, it’s creepy how often Harry’s parents make appearances. I mean, I guess it’s understandable that Harry would desire to have a normal family life (see abusive aunt and uncle, above) but his parents just keep showing up, at rather inappropriate times (the Dementors flashing back to his parents’ death that he wouldn’t have understood, rather than any of the abuse he’s endured since; Voldy’s Priori Incantatum only showed the ghosts of Harry’s parents and Cedric, and no other spells that Voldy would have cast in the interim besides P’s hand; not to mention their cheering on his suicide). The ultimate example of this is probably Harry’s naming his children after his dead relatives. In a story that professes to be about someone growing up, I’d be more interested in how Harry got over his losses and became a better man, not how he spent his entire life pining for his parents only to resurrect them in his own children years later.
You know, in most stories I've read and most anime I've watched, a character driven by revenge over the death of someone is treated as a blindly obsessive fanatic- and they were usually old enough to remember the person who died!
I suppose you could argue that Harry wants to know as much as possible about his parents so he can follow in the footsteps of the great Lily and James Potter- but that doesn’t work because apart from a couple of commonplace achievements that never really get fully expounded upon (they were Head Boy an’ Girl, but Hogwarts has those every year; they defied Voldemort, but they weren’t the only ones), Lily and James were never shown to be anything other than fairly insular, selfish people who did good deeds by accident.
* Yes, I know the exact extent of their abuse is debatable, but just to give Harry the benefit of the doubt this once...
Harry’s parents died when he was just one year old. Technically, his memory probably wouldn’t have been working properly at that time, so the odds of his remembering that are slim (I know my first memories are of moving into a new house at age 3). Yet Harry constantly uses his parents’ deaths and how much he misses them as reasons to angst, be an asshole, and hate on Voldemort. Constantly! To make matters worse, Harry probably mourns for his dead parents more than he mourns for other people who died much later, INCLUDING SIRIUS, all while never showing any real compassion for other people who have lost friends or family (it’s okay for Harry to angst about his dead parents whom he barely remembers but not for Cho to angst about dead Cedric whom she’s known for probably at least a year? Lolwhut?). Incidentally, I remember Ron in the DH movie, part one, complaining about Harry’s angsting about his family because he didn’t have any living family to lose- and I found myself agreeing with Ron, especially given Harry’s behavior towards dead people other than his relatives!
Second of all, it’s creepy how often Harry’s parents make appearances. I mean, I guess it’s understandable that Harry would desire to have a normal family life (see abusive aunt and uncle, above) but his parents just keep showing up, at rather inappropriate times (the Dementors flashing back to his parents’ death that he wouldn’t have understood, rather than any of the abuse he’s endured since; Voldy’s Priori Incantatum only showed the ghosts of Harry’s parents and Cedric, and no other spells that Voldy would have cast in the interim besides P’s hand; not to mention their cheering on his suicide). The ultimate example of this is probably Harry’s naming his children after his dead relatives. In a story that professes to be about someone growing up, I’d be more interested in how Harry got over his losses and became a better man, not how he spent his entire life pining for his parents only to resurrect them in his own children years later.
You know, in most stories I've read and most anime I've watched, a character driven by revenge over the death of someone is treated as a blindly obsessive fanatic- and they were usually old enough to remember the person who died!
I suppose you could argue that Harry wants to know as much as possible about his parents so he can follow in the footsteps of the great Lily and James Potter- but that doesn’t work because apart from a couple of commonplace achievements that never really get fully expounded upon (they were Head Boy an’ Girl, but Hogwarts has those every year; they defied Voldemort, but they weren’t the only ones), Lily and James were never shown to be anything other than fairly insular, selfish people who did good deeds by accident.
* Yes, I know the exact extent of their abuse is debatable, but just to give Harry the benefit of the doubt this once...
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