I do think that Ginny is putting on an act; the problem is, I can't tell when she is acting and/or lying, and when she is not. I do think that her reaction(s) to the way that Harry dumped her were all genuine, from her initial anger to her subsequent 'cool' cover up. Beyond that, I cannot truly tell how much of her current behavior is genuine, how much is an act, how much to write off as just a phase she is in, and how much may have been her 'real' personality all along.
Abstractly, that is one of the things about her that fascinates me so much. There is a whole lot going on inside of her head that we are not privy too. I don't think that we can take all of her behavior at face value, but I cannot tell where to draw the line because JKR has not made us privy to Ginny's thoughts. She hasn't made us privy to any of these people's thoughts except for Harry's. Likely, she will never let us be privy to anyone's thoughts, nor will she ever -- as author -- pass a moral judgment about anything that happens. This used to bother me intensely about this series, but now it is the thing that I respect the most about JKR's writing. She has presented her readers with a morally muddy, murky (very scary) world populated by morally ambiguous, highly flawed people... and then left it entirely up to the readers to draw their own conclusions about *everything* and *everyone.*
That's why... (to bring this full circle back to the original topic post) it's perfectly okay for a reader to say, "I hate character X! I wish people would stop trying to tell me that character X is 'good' or justify his/her behavior so that I will like her/him." Just as in the real world, we *don't* know what's going on inside of these peoples' heads to make them act the way that they do. We can only judge them by their words and deeds. We shouldn't be swayed by whether or not Harry likes/dislikes someone. We shouldn't overly romanticism them and turn our own favorite characters into insufferably noble Byronic heroes. I'm beginning to think that this is even why she revealed that Tom Riddle was a complete, psychotic nutjob even as a child. She didn't want readers to ever be able think that they understand (or can justify) who he is and what he has done. We just need to take him at face value and assess his actions, not try to crawl inside his head and psychoanalyze him, or hold any romaticized ideas about him.
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Abstractly, that is one of the things about her that fascinates me so much. There is a whole lot going on inside of her head that we are not privy too. I don't think that we can take all of her behavior at face value, but I cannot tell where to draw the line because JKR has not made us privy to Ginny's thoughts. She hasn't made us privy to any of these people's thoughts except for Harry's. Likely, she will never let us be privy to anyone's thoughts, nor will she ever -- as author -- pass a moral judgment about anything that happens. This used to bother me intensely about this series, but now it is the thing that I respect the most about JKR's writing. She has presented her readers with a morally muddy, murky (very scary) world populated by morally ambiguous, highly flawed people... and then left it entirely up to the readers to draw their own conclusions about *everything* and *everyone.*
That's why... (to bring this full circle back to the original topic post) it's perfectly okay for a reader to say, "I hate character X! I wish people would stop trying to tell me that character X is 'good' or justify his/her behavior so that I will like her/him." Just as in the real world, we *don't* know what's going on inside of these peoples' heads to make them act the way that they do. We can only judge them by their words and deeds. We shouldn't be swayed by whether or not Harry likes/dislikes someone. We shouldn't overly romanticism them and turn our own favorite characters into insufferably noble Byronic heroes. I'm beginning to think that this is even why she revealed that Tom Riddle was a complete, psychotic nutjob even as a child. She didn't want readers to ever be able think that they understand (or can justify) who he is and what he has done. We just need to take him at face value and assess his actions, not try to crawl inside his head and psychoanalyze him, or hold any romaticized ideas about him.