On Integrity and Transcendence-

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

This is going to be a whole lot shorter than that title would suggest. It's really just a question, brought about by Sunnyskywalker's post below on the meaning of the prophecy. Here goes--

Many of us were disturbed by the flayed child in Harry's visit to the afterlife--or whatever that train station was. You remember, he at first felt compassion for the child, and then ignored it. And didn't Dumbledore say the child was Voldemort? Or, to be precise, Voldemort's soul fragment?

But we know Dumbledore is not always truthful, and we know he is not truly wise. So who is the flayed child? Where did it come from?

Clearly, it is the part of Voldemort's soul that resided in Harry for seventeen years. That child is Harry, not Voldemort. Oh, I know: J.K. Rowling would like us to think the soul fragment has nothing to do with Harry. In her story world, everything about Harry that was at all like Voldemort--his vengeful feelings, his rages, his self-absorption, his parseltongue, heck, perhaps even his magical ability--came from the soul fragment and Harry is a completely separate individual. But I can't believe that.

I can't believe it because Harry is actually written as a fairly consistent character. He  IS vengeful and self-absorbed, understandably so at first, and he becomes more so as the series progresses. I am not going to give him a free pass on his behavior in books six and seven, for example, and just say: "Oh, that was Voldemort. It wasn't really Harry." That's not how emotion works. We all have negative feelings and impulses. We can deny them, but that's not healthy, is it? Rather than rejecting our worse impulses and negative feelings, we can try to turn that energy around. We can try to transcend the negative aspects and use them for good. But we can only do this if we first recognize and accept those feelings and impulses.

So what I think is that, in that train station, Dumbledore teaches Harry to reject a part of himself. It's a dreadful thing to do. It is bound to limit Harry's moral and spiritual development. What do you think?

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Rather than rejecting our worse impulses and negative feelings, we can try to turn that energy around. We can try to transcend the negative aspects and use them for good. But we can only do this if we first recognize and accept those feelings and impulses./

I think that's the problem with the Trio's character development in a nutshell. For example, many here have commented on the similarities that Hermione has with Umbridge. The problem is that none of the characters ever realize this. Hermione doesn't ever step back and wonder if she's going overboard with her self-righteousness. Heck, in the same book where Umbridge is introduced and forces Harry to scar himself, she permanently scars a classmate with no regrets.

Harry has multiple opportunities to reflect when he sees echoes of himself in Tom, Severus, and even James, but he never learns from them. He never thinks, "I'd better stop doing that so that I don't end up like him." All that those flashbacks really end up doing in the end is make Harry momentarily uncomfortable. They don't spur him to improve his behavior. If anything, they just prove how much better Harry is: "See, Harry could've wound up becoming a murderous psychopath due to his abusive background like Tom did, but he didn't!"

Even Ron, who's the mildest of the three, doesn't try to improve himself substantially. Granted, given his family background, he may feel that there's no point because he'll be mistreated either way. But that's the problem: he just gives up. He feels inferior to his brothers, but doesn't do anything to alleviate that inferiority. He doesn't try to find something that he's good at and they're not and try to excel at it. He doesn't try to be a great student and do the best he can, regardless of what his family may say. He just floats along on mediocrity and complacency instead of trying to break free from them.

In fact, I'm just thought of something: Neville's whole character arc could have been Ron's. They're both belittled at home, they both start out as average/incompetent in school, and they're constantly underestimated by people. But while Ron's skill at chess was showcased in PS/SS and then never used again, Neville at least had Herbology as his hidden skill set. True, he ended up having to become a warrior in DH anyway, but at least once the war's over, readers can see him as a Herbology professor. What does Ron have after the war's over? He steps into Fred's place by helping his brother run a joke shop. He doesn't have his own unique gift to build on.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh yes. I can easily see that soul fragment as a concrete representation of outside influences upon oneself (which fits very well with all the other literalized metaphors in the Potterverse). Originally, that fragment was something externally imposed on Harry, but over time, he incorporated it into himself and it affected the way he developed. It's like how the Dursleys externally imposed the "don't ask questions" rule on him, and over time, he internalized it and didn't ask questions even when he could, because that way of thinking and acting had become so normal to him. People can resist such influences, or react to them in different ways, but it affects them somehow.

That soul fragment was an influence (to some degree) on Harry for over 15 years. Taking it out won't change the way his reactions to it have affected him. I think facing that flayed baby could have been a form of facing all the terrible things that had been done to him, and figuring out how he was going to live with that. He could have thought about who he wanted to be, and what he needed to do to become that person, and how to compensate for wounds that might not fully heal, instead of just reacting.

It could have mirrored the non-embodied character development I was hoping he would have in Book 7. Like learning how to reach out to people (but nope, Neville did that character arc for him), something his years with the Dursleys didn't encourage and his time at Hogwarts didn't really help much either.

I was also fond of the original (pre-HBP) Changeling Hypothesis on Red Hen, which asked what hanging out in Harry's head might do to Voldemort's soul. However bad things got for Harry, it was better than Voldemort--so couldn't essentially being given a childhood do-over have given Voldemort a chance at redemption? (Maybe not a good chance, but more than he had the first time around.) Could that flayed fragment have been healed enough that it could feel remorse and pull the main fragment back to it? That still wouldn't leave Voldemort with a whole soul, but again, he'd at least be less damaged than before.

What we got was so much sadder. Harry is still isolated, barely able to connect with or trust people, lacks critical thinking skills, and is still locked into "either people believe you immediately or they're jerks who will never believe you and there is no possible use to explaining things with evidence and reasoning" mode. It makes "all was well" so hard to believe, even after a 19-year jump.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

But Dumbledore is at least being consistent there: he's teaching Harry to use the exact same strategy that Albus did at that same age.

My ambition (and my love for Gellert) led me to destroy my baby sister.

NO MORE AMBITION! (And no more personal love for anyone.)

Excise a part of oneself. And then never have to think further about how one came to do such a thing, or to grow....

In fairness to Albus, he might actually have thought that this time it would work.