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: 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..