The redeemed individual in HP

[elanor-x.livejournal.com]

Declaration: I do not agree with all statements made in this article and, as a non-American, am hardly a political expert, so this link does not mean endorsement of any 'non-HP things.'

Why is this article worth reading?

What stood out to me was the interesting reading of OoTF. It has always been my least favorite HP book. After waiting for years for its publication, I remember practically suffering and wanting to shut the book down every time Dolores Umbridge or Harry's anger made an appearance.  Since one of the two, of most often their combination, are ubiquitous in OoTF, you may imagine the 'joy' of reading.

Renee Gorman's interpretation of Harry's evolution in OoTF at last reconciled me to this part of the series.

QUOTE from the article

Harry’s frustration stems from both the fact that he knows the truth and that he is being punished for his virtue: an injustice that is difficult to swallow. But he is also battling with his loss of popularity and celebrity. Though Harry consistently claims to hate the limelight—and though he genuinely does at times—he also secretly prizes his famous persona.

When Harry makes the reckless choice to leave Hogwarts and save Sirius after seeing a vision of Sirius captured by Voldemort, he has the following heated exchange with Hermione, the wisest of his peers.

“OK,” she said, looking frightened yet determined, “I’ve just got to say this—”
“What?”
“You … this isn’t a criticism, Harry! But you do … sort of … I mean—don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a—a—saving-people thing!” she said.
He glared at her.
“And what’s that supposed to mean, a ‘saving-people thing?”

Hermione hits a nerve here. But Harry ignores her warning and charges ahead to try to save Sirius. But, consciously or not, at this moment, Harry is also trying to save his own famous heroic persona. He gets his wish. After Sirius dies and Voldemort flees from a battle with Dumbledore, the truth is revealed, and Harry is once more the apple of the magical world’s eye—but it does not make him happy, after all.

This is partly because of his grief at losing Sirius, but also because that part of Harry that secretly prized acclamation dies along with his Godfather. It is no coincidence that this book is called The Order of the Phoenix because Harry emerges from the ashes of this tragedy a better man. Sirius had to die so that Harry could sacrifice himself for the right reason and finally defeat Voldemort.

Comments

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

The whole wizarding world is pretty desperately in need of redemption.

But another question that doesn't really come up is what happens to a person who did awful things and then is really, truly redeemed and changes their actions for the better. (It doesn't come up, because anyone who gets close to being redeemed promptly dies and conveniently sweeps the question under the rug.) That's great! But do the people who were previously harmed by that person have to name their kids after him or invite him over for dinner, or can they go, "I admire what you've done and forgive you from a distance, but we're not going to be friends"?

It's such a complex set of issues.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[tygershark.livejournal.com]

Wow, right on the mark, someone once told me just because you forgive someone it doesn't mean you have to allow them to hurt you again.

I had this discussion with my S/O one night. For me, the question at the heart of it is, should one or more good things that a person does completely exonerate them for past crimes? Case in point, when I was an early teen my mom went to this church and there was this older guy (probably 30) who was always trying to talk to the young girls there. Something just seemed off about him, yet he was respected there and did all these good things. Long story short after my mom stopped going to that church they found out that guy had been doing bad things to some of those girls and he was arrested for murdering one of them. At the time the guy's mother was quoted as saying "but my son has done a lot of good things, the church should stand by him." Of course, any reasonable person recognizes that this is just a loving mother who can't believe her son is a monster. But it illustrates what I have always felt about many people in the HP universe, they redeem themselves on the surface only.

This is most blatant in Snape and Dumbledore as well. so many people love them. They both did terrible things and Dumbledore especially appeared to think the ends justified the means. But no reasonable person would excuse Snape's behavior towards children. No one would give him a pass if they were the focus of his abuse, nor would they do so if it was their child.

It almost seems as though JK didn't realize that the unintended, (hopefully) message was that just because Snape was abused and bullied as a child it was ok for him to abuse and bully other children. Because he was a spy for the "light" it balances things out and makes up for every bad thing he did. The inference being you can do wrong and never have to actually change your ways and take the consequences of your actions or make any sort of restitution because as long as you're on the side of "the light" all be forgiven. Sorry, the real world doesn't work that way for most people, or at least it shouldn't. There is nothing going on in my life that gives me the "right" to mistreat another human being.

I think a better message to send would have been if Snape had survived the war, admitted that he was wrong, and spent time and effort showing that he had changed and done what he could to make things right. I think that's a great message to send, that everyone should be accountable for the things they do. Forgive my soapboxing, but as has been said before, it's a complex set of issues.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[tygershark.livejournal.com]

Upon giving this further thought I was reminded of the circumstances surrounding the town of Coventry, England during WWII. The story goes that Churchill knew of the impending attack and allowed it to happen in order to protect the secret that they had cracked Enigma at Bletchly Park. The official word is that it's a myth, whether it's true or not I do not know but it reminded me that no one lives in a world of black and white. But it brings me to a point I had overlooked.

If the story was true was Churchill right or wrong in what he chose to do? Well, that could depend. If I was living in Coventry at the time or had a loved one who lived there and they or I was killed then I would definitely feel it was wrong. But how many other people would have died if the Nazis knew the British had cracked the code. There are no easy answers in war it's all shades of gray. Wartime leaders have to make very tough decisions that are mostly paid in the lives of people who trust those leaders to protect them. If a leader has to sacrifice one or more of their people, hopefully, those leaders will sell those lives as dearly as possible. As Obi-Wan said "many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, that is a sticky one. I think sometimes we forget that when a choice is the lesser evil, that means it's still at least a little bit evil. Just because there were no good options and so maybe it wasn't anyone's "fault" exactly doesn't mean it didn't do harm.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[oryx_leucoryx]

If you think Severus' treatment of children stands out in a negative way at Hogwarts you haven't been paying sufficient attention.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

I think he used McGonagall as his teaching role model. And I think it's possible that both of them would agree he's usually the "softer" teacher, because he doesn't assign potentially lethal detentions.

We know what they consider marginally unacceptable teacher behavior: transfiguring a student into an animal and slamming him repeatedly against the stone floor. McGonagall is shocked--but not so shocked that she says she'll talk to Albus about having Moody dismissed immediately. She never says that the ferret incident should have tipped her off that something was wrong with Moody, at least not in our hearing. Rita doesn't use the incident as an example of how bad Hogwarts administration is, suggesting that a lot of parents wouldn't feel it was that big a deal. So I really doubt the other teachers see anything wrong with Snape's approach.

There are literally no other teachers they can look to for alternatives, and the entire population was raised this way and probably has a hard time imagining anything different. This makes it a lot harder for any of the teachers to get enough perspective to go, "Wait, maybe we're actually wrong? Maybe there's another way to handle things?" (And that's even before you factor in their likely over-scheduled, sleep-deprived lives, which can make even normally even-tempered people snappish and unreasonable.) They phased out corporal punishment around 1970, so they are able to make some changes for the better... but only with a lot of time and effort, I would guess.

But having an explanation doesn't make it any less awful for the kids on the receiving end. I would have been like an unfortunate combination of Hermione and Neville in class, and knowing that the teachers maybe genuinely didn't know better and thought they were doing the right thing would not have helped me. Which is one of those difficult situations the books really don't address.

RE: Re: Redemption in the HP books

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Re: ‘Moody’ and the ferret incident - magic makes it that much easier to do something without consequences, because it creates a certain distance.

Physically picking up a student and bashing him against a wall would: a) be much harder for certain teachers, b) give the student a chance to escape and c) also increase the odds that the teacher would be hurt. Blasting him against a wall repeatedly with a wand, on the other hand, can be done by pretty much anybody. As can inflicting bruises, cuts, etc.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

It does make it so much easier and quicker to do without really considering it. I wonder if that's why Hogwarts used whips and chains back in the day? Maybe it was intended to make teachers stop and think for a few seconds longer than if they were allowed to punish students with their wands.

McGonagall drags Draco off by his ear, so she isn't entirely averse to laying hands on a student as of 1991. And she tells Moody that transfiguring students is not allowed, not that bashing them about is not allowed. That's... an interesting set of priorities. Just because they can heal most injuries quickly doesn't make the injuries not excruciatingly painful. But that doesn't bother her that we ever hear.

She's both a teacher and the deputy headmistress, so she sets the bar for what is acceptable for the rest of the teaching staff. And according to McGonagall, calling your students stupid and incompetent in public and setting them up to be horribly murdered are acceptable. So... yeah, I don't think the teachers would find much of anything that any Hogwarts teacher does out of line, sadly.

RE: Re: Redemption in the HP books

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

I mean, this is a world where apparently the principal sacrificing one of his pupils is seen as noble, heroic and ‘for the greater good’. I know it’s a hallmark of bad writing and worse editing (see also: Paolini), but there’s such a glaring difference in the text and subtext of these books that I sometimes wonder how much of it was intentional. DD’s big character flaw reveal in HBP/DH wasn’t particularly surprising to most people who’d... well.... read the books.

And the last three books got steadily worse, such that I can’t really understand adult fans who stick to the surface-level reading of the text.

Even at a very basic level, without getting into the nitty-gritty of Muggle-wizard relations, events and timelines (IOW, definitely not up to the standard of all the write-ups here, because I haven’t touched DH probably since it came out), I struggle with reading Harry straightforwardly as the good, obedient sacrificial lamb, the Dursleys as some kind of bastion of lampoonable, Telegraph-reading middle class, and Tom as the supposed Dark Lord. I can think of a dozen ways Tom could’ve killed Harry.

The first scene of PS with owls, fireworks and wizards just rampaging around proclaiming “Ding dong, the Dark Lord’s dead!” is hard to reconcile with the news that there is, in fact, a Statute of Secrecy and the flagrant abuses of power that go on, not to mention supposed anti-Muggle sentiment that we never hear about. Doylistly, do we have a Statue? Or don’t we? Are they prejudiced against Muggles? Or aren’t they? If so, why? If not, why not? If so, what inconvenience does being so secluded cause them? You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Rowling. You can’t have your two hidden worlds and then tell us the magic users (or Gryffs, or whatever) are the good guys and their world is amazing and they don’t need Muggles, but also show them egregiously violating nearly every law/rule/moral code there is. Or if you do, that can be your moral tale: whet has happened to wizards during their seclusion and what the two societies can teach each other. Or how the wizards can lawfully keep from being subsumed into wider Muggle society.

Not “the power of love”, which sounds like something from a New Age magazine.

There’s a lot of potential in that first scene, too. It implies some kind of ending, both to Lord Voldemort’s oppression (as we are supposed to believe it) and the Statute of Secrecy. If the narrative had taken that kind of direction it would’ve been - or could’ve been, anyway - much more compelling.

Harry, in this scenario, wouldn’t have been the POV character. The entire conflict would be, “Well, magic exists. What implications does this have for the entire Muggle and magical world, and how slowly can we reveal ourselves? How will Muggles adapt to us?”

Instead Rowling... sort of... stubbornly inserts Harry into the middle of this caricature of a family and... I don’t even know, honestly, why she bothers. If the explicit point of Harry’s journey was for him to overcome his trauma (actual PTSD) and learn to make friends or whatever during PS and maybe realise the Dursleys weren’t normal, okay, fine, I could’ve bought that. If Dumbledore had been subtly, Snapeishly presented as manipulative, again, fine. Instead we see him gallivant off to Hogwarts to solve puzzles and learn magic. He’s a different character at Hogwarts and at the Dursleys’ according to authorial fiat. The reason Dahl works so well is because his heroes (e.g. Matilda) break rules that are unfair. Harry breaks perfectly reasonable rules and we’re expected to believe it’s a harmless little escapade because he managed to escape detention by the skin of his teeth.

Given Rowling’s recent open letter and her generation, I wonder if HP wasn’t a way for her to bleed off some internalised misogyny or something. HP is very male-centric and very... it encourages (stereo)typically ‘toxic male/macho’ traits like aggression, braggadocio, violence, rushing in to the rescue, bluster, rule-breaking and valuing bravery even in its female characters (Hermione, mainly, but also Ginny). If Harry and the WW are the Ideal Mascot for anything, perhaps toxic masculinity might be it. Talk about trickle-down effects.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

It's so frustrating how much good setup their is without any payoff. Or sometimes anti-payoff.

Like, Harry not understanding the difference between reasonable and unreasonable rules makes sense given his background. The Dursleys were arbitrary and unfair, and apparently somehow convinced his primary school teachers to join in a bit, so it's no surprise that Harry instinctively feels that rules are arbitrary and unfair and designed solely to oppress him.

What's frustrating is that the books reinforce this. I don't expect Harry to have worked out every issue by the time he's 17, because who would, but could there have been a little more acknowledgement that Harry benefiting from favoritism and being exempted from rules whenever Dumbledore or McGonagall found it convenient was also not good for him? I felt like he ended the series with so many of his old problems magnified plus getting some new ones that he was going to have serious trouble just being a person coping with life. That's an incredibly depressing way to leave a protagonist. And then the epilogue had to go and rub our noses in some of the wizarding world's major problems not having changed a bit and still being thought of as jokes. So it isn't just Harry; it's his whole society. "All was well," my foot.

RE: Re: Redemption in the HP books

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

But the books also never explicitly link the two. Yes, it makes sense that he might break rules because of the Dursleys, but JKR never actually shows us that, whether through Harry’s own thoughts or someone else actually calling him out on it.

E.g. something like “Harry hated rules. The Dursleys always had too many rules. Why shouldn’t he sneak out and duel Malfoy?”. Then if someone reliable had later come and told Harry that he couldn’t just break whatever rules he wanted, and he’d reflected on his behaviour and *learned* that his rule-breaking tendencies were because of trauma, then yes, absolutely. Or if he’d suffered some freaking consequences - like, actual consequences, not detention. The closest he comes is the Pensieve incident... which makes no sense for all the reasons we discussed on Ao3, and is more about ethics, etiquette and unspoken rules besides. But if we take that at face value for a sec, that’s where I think he has a moment of... God, I don’t even want to say empathy or understanding that some things are private, because what he thinks is “He had never seen Snape so angry”. Not remorse that he shouldn’t have intruded. I suspect a large cause of his reaction there was not guilt for prying into other people’s memories, but shock that his father & Sirius were bullies and that Snape is incandescent.

But the mentor figure (Dumbledore) is the one who gives him the Cloak and, presumably, hides the mirror where students can find it, not to mention following Harry to the Mirror of Erised in the middle of the night. The only people who actually object to Harry’s special treatment are Slytherins, who are painted to be ‘evil’ and anti-Harry. And that’s not even getting started on the lack of any psychologists in HP, or any equivalent system, e.g. a Lorien-Novalis style school with an emphasis on rehabilitation.

Yeah, Harry develops a cruel and passive streak towards the end. He’s disturbingly indifferent towards everything. Seriously, compare the writing in PS to the, um... the bloated mess that is DH.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, that's it--she has the set-up, but never follows through. And weirdly, this problem never bites Harry in a way he can't handwave as someone else's fault. Now, that might happen in real life, because occasionally people do get weirdly lucky. But we also see Dumbledore deliberately encouraging it every time he lets Harry off without so much as a warning, never mind an explanation of why what he did was a bad idea. He's actively encouraging Harry to continue believing that all rules are arbitrary. (Unconsciously, anyway. I'm sure if you forced Harry into a Socratic dialogue, he would work out that sometimes they make sense. He just doesn't understand this at a gut level.)

And that's the sort of thing that really ought to be addressed in fiction one way or another. There are a lot of different ways it could be addressed. It doesn't have to include a long, Dumbledorean speech explaining it or Harry spending a chapter analyzing everything he's done for the past six books, and it could include some (well-handled) uncertainty and ambiguity. But it should matter somehow.

Re: Re: Redemption in the HP books

[oryx_leucoryx]

Now I wonder if there are fics where a post-DH Harry goes to (non-magical) therapy.

RE: Re: Re: Redemption in the HP books

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... now that would be interesting to explain away to your therapist. “I went to an unusual school.” I’ve definitely read one or two where he goes to therapy while at Hogwarts (and I think in that case the therapist was a Squib), but nothing post-DH..

RE: Re: Redemption in the HP books

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Extra comment because I exceeded LJ’s limit: This isn’t new - I’m pretty sure there’s an essay floating around on Snape’s typically ‘female/feminine-coded’ characteristics. Terri has one on how Harry was a pacifist pre-Hogwarts, and I recall one about Neville too.

God, every time I reply to anything here it turns into a big tangent, but there you go.

Re: Redemption in the HP books

[sunnyskywalker]

I think part of what she didn't realize she was writing is that Snape teaches the way he does because he's using McGonagall as his role model, and that all the Hogwarts teachers are locked into a bubble of terrible teaching culture with very little outside influence for them to even realize there are other methods. She might want us to think Snape's teaching is because of his particular issues, but after a closer look, he seems well within acceptable bounds for Hogwarts teachers. It isn't unique to him. Removing one teacher or killing a Dark Lord will do nothing to fix this.

And what about situations where there really isn't a right or wrong answer? Like, say you could be 100% sure someone has changed and will no longer do any of the harmful things they used to. This doesn't cancel those out, but you're in no further danger. But what if seeing the person still constantly reminds you of past traumas, and you'd really just rather not? You could force yourself to see them anyway and try to desensitize yourself, and maybe that would even work for some people. But wouldn't moving on with your life without that person in it be just as valid a choice? Not being constantly reminded might also be a way to slowly get over (in the sense of it not hurting as much, not in the sense of erasing it) what's happened. And different people might react differently, so you can't say that everyone should do it one particular way.