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petitesoeur and I had great luck last night taking a chance on Shakespeare in the Park We got on the stand-by line after 7 and got tickets--woo-hoo!Liev Shrieber was doing Macbeth. The production was entertaining, if uneven. In the really important parts the one that was weakest was Macduff--I liked Banquo a lot.
petitesoeur was worried Macduff's stage fighting skills were so bad Macbeth was going to beat that prophecy. I'd only ever seen this play performed one other time that I can remember, when a friend of mine was in a production, so I don't know if they often do this, but I liked that they decided to not show Banquo's ghost at the banquet. Macbeth was just reacting to an empty chair that sometimes had a spotlight on it. It made for, I must say, a funnier scene with Macbeth jumping on the table and spearing the chair with his sword before looking around like, "Oops. I look a little crazy, don't I? Sorry about that."I'd never thought of it before, but there was a note in the program pointing out that Macbeth is kind of the anti-Hamlet. He's got lots of doubts, but they never keep him from acting. In a way he seems to just be compelled to follow his impulses and then wonder about it. Another friend said she always feels like Macbeth's kind of underrated as a part while Lady Macbeth is a bit over-rated. I admit I do find Lady Macbeth an annoying character, pushing her husband into doing stuff and then going mad herself. I considered making a joke about Shakespeare totally ripping off JKR with that prophecy that only happens because Macbeth acts on it (leaving out the part where JKR seems to undermine that by saying that had Voldemort picked Neville it wouldn't have worked), but instead I'll confess to the dorkier confession that at times I did look at Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and think I might be watching H/G, the later years. Seriously. ("If the king hadn't looked like my father when he was sleeping, I'd have stabbed him myself!")
That just made me think of
Another random HP thought I had yesterday. Someone was making a comment about Dumbledore talking about how he couldn't believe he'd have somebody so great as Harry to deal with. I think the person was contradicting another person's reading of that line as saying that DD had never felt close to someone personally the way he did Harry, and presenting this as a more acceptable reading. What struck me was that I really disagree with the whole idea behind this interpretation, which I think is backed up in canon. There's always all this focus on how great Harry is with his great power for love yadda yadda, and I think there is a suggestion that DD feels what he does for him because he's so personally special.
But that makes me think a lot less of Dumbledore (not that I have all that far to fall there!). I feel like he should have felt that way about any kid he decided to focus on specifically. Like, if he decided to take special interest in Ron Weasley wouldn't Ron have seemed just as great? Or even a kid who's decidedly not great, like Draco? I mean, obviously Draco's not a hero in canon but what I like about his story in HBP is even the little we see of it, imo, sets him up as a legitimate protagonist in his own story who's conflicted enough to hold his own and be worth rooting for. Obviously his being in Harry's role would be a very different story because he'd be going against his own, but I'm talking here just about rooting for him in the story he had.
Really I guess what the comment really did was made me imagine AUs in which other characters were put in Harry's role. I mean, we all know that whoever the hero was would have to win; they'd just have a different path to get there because of their own personalities. Ron would face a lot more confidence issues in the TWT tournament and might have just barely scraped it. Hermione would have more troubles with going too far. Neville would be more about the contrast between his timidity and abilities, and we'd probably get more of a sense that winning wasn't everything.
I don't think it's a flaw that I can imagine other characters in the role. That kind of seems like the point that a kid put in the situation makes good. I just can't help but think of it whenever it's suggested that it couldn't be anyone but Harry.
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I remember at an SF con, somebody talking about Hamlet and Othello in that manner.
From my blog post on the panel:
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Was it Lady Mcbeth's ruthlessness that did it or her utter conviction that no one but her husband was worthy of any sort of power?
It's so funny, though. My cousin's a big Star Wars fan and we were talking about it the other day. And he said that his eight-year-old nephew who saw the more recent episodes before he saw the ones made decades ago actually likes Anakin a lot more as a hero than he likes Luke, despite Anakin's ending up on the dark side. And that the only thing that was really special about Luke was that he ended up on the right side.
Which is why I think it's hard for me to get behind Harry sometimes. Because he's so instinctively good, there's never really any sort of moral struggle for him. He knows what he has to do, he knows what's right and, viola, in the end, it generally turns out to be. The thing he has that Voldemort doesn't know is something he got naturally, not something he had to really work for or earn. Literally, he's The Chosen One, you're supposed to get behind him because he's inherently special, not because he's an ordinary boy who's been pushed. Like you named all those struggles up there for characters and it's hard for me to think of one for Harry. Except maybe for his tendency to see things in black-and-white where there should be grays but even that's downplayed. And so, yeah, I suppose that's why I'm so behind Draco because what he's struggling against always seems so much harder just because he doesn't really have many special gifts. And yeah, Dumbledore's picking out Harry for special treatment because he's special kind of strikes a wrong chord with me, too.
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It is a similar thing that you've got with Draco just in that he's got good reasons (for him) to go either way. His choices are so way different from Harry's choices. His story appeals to me a lot more personally.
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ROFLMAO!
Like you named all those struggles up there for characters and it's hard for me to think of one for Harry. Except maybe for his tendency to see things in black-and-white where there should be grays but even that's downplayed.
I think even this is not so much JKR showing a struggle for Harry as a result of JKR's own tendency to see things in black-and-white rather than shades of gray, especially when the characters she has designated as the "good guys" are making the decisions.
And so, yeah, I suppose that's why I'm so behind Draco because what he's struggling against always seems so much harder just because he doesn't really have many special gifts.
Yes, exactly. I've always been rather bored by Draco, but I found his story in Book 6 much more compelling than Harry's for this very reason. He doesn't get the special breaks--he doesn't get the last minute deus-ex-machina rescue. He kept me guessing until the very end.
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Hahaha! Me either.
So far as imagining AUs in which the other HP kids are put into Harry's role... The one who interests me the most is Draco, because he is already so clearly on his own hero's path. His is the opposite of Harry's, of course. If Harry is the hero in a typical coming-of-age/adventure story, Draco is the hero in the horror story version of the same tale. He is sort of 'the last great hope' of his ancient, noble magical people who is being groomed to fight the good fight against on onslaught of invading barbarians who would completely pervert and destroy the glorious Ancien Regime. All good... except that when it finally comes time for him to confront and slay the Big Bad (Dumbledore) he realizes to his horror that he has been groomed to be nothing more than a common murderer. Harry Potter gets to skylark about in a cool fantasy adventure, but Draco is stuck in an existential horror story, and he's smart enough to know it, too. Poor young man. What will he do now, I wonder.
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I remember pre-OotP telling somebody that besides Harry Draco was the kid with the most to fear from Voldemort's return and they completely didn't get why. (I think they thought surely that was Hermione as a Muggleborn.) I was like dude, talk about the Dark Path--Draco might have everything he's ever known or had stripped away from him. And that's pretty much what happened. Unfortunately I think a lot of people don't read Draco's story from Draco's own pov. He's only judged on whether he did what Harry would do instead of understood for what he is.
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Harry is only just becoming mature enough to start seeing the world around him in shades of gray instead of black and white, and JKR is only just starting to show us the changes in his outlook. Simultaneously, she's showing us facets of the characters around Harry that should make readers question their understanding of all of these people: Draco crying over his fate with only Myrtle to console him; the Twins selling their 'prank' items to DEs; etc. If you can pull yourself *out* of Harry's POV and just look at what is actually happening, it becomes painfully clear that both Harry and Draco have been used like pawns in other men's fights. Draco has had to face this before Harry. (I note with amusement that JKR just gave Draco an official birthday and he is just a few days older than Harry, so it's fitting that he gets to 'grow up' first.) Harry still sees himself as being "Dumbledore's man" (ie, a pawn). In the final book, they're both going to have to take that final step into adulthood and declare their own path. Be interesting to see what happens.
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But you could say it so much better.
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As for Draco... I find canon!Draco to be far more interesting than the typical slick, fast-talking, uber-sexy fanon!Draco. Canon!Draco has so many issues and so much potential. She's developed him very well. Harry has such a rabid dislike for him that he's been seen as an exaggerated, extreme bastard so far. What will he do next, now that he's experienced such a devastating epiphany? I truly can't say, and that delights me. Normally I can predict exactly what will happen to every character in any sf/f book. Draco could still plausibly join either side in this fight. The mutual hatred that Harry and Draco have for each other could even be the tipping point. Who knows? Both Harry and Draco have Snape to use as an object lesson for how toxic it can be for an adult to be unable to get over his childhood traumas and disputes. Will Harry and Draco be able to get past their childish antagonisms and at least acknowledge that they are both flawed and at fault? Dunno.
Snape is another one. It would be so interesting to see this plotline told from his POV. Talk about issues! What a marvelously screwed up character he is. And yet here we are, at the penultimate book, and we still don't know which side he's on. When we finally do know what's really going on in his mind, it'll be fascinating to go back to the start and look at this entire plotline from his POV.
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What if he'd been grooming Tom to make a stand against Grindenwald? Is that possible? Would it color how he treats Harry?
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The Harry thing is the same problem as in CoS where Harry's supposed to be making a great choice by not wanting to be in Slytherin. Erm...what? And why would he want to be in Slytherin?
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That's a perfect description of how I've felt about Harry since OotP - and in HBP it becomes so blatantly obvious that we're watching some side plot to the real story, it's not funny any more.
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I still sort of like Harry, I suppose - though it's probably more a product of reading fanfic than the real books, to be honest. I mean, Harry in the books, like (I think) you and others have said, is just so - so good. It's nauseating the way Dumbledore goes on and on about his greatness of heart - greatness that I, to be quite frank, don't really see him exhibiting to anyone other than those who agree with him - and even his capacity for love, and so on and so forth. All I can wonder is what might have happened if Dumbledore had tried to help Tom or Severus before they became the Big Baddies of HP instead of standing around twiddling his fingers and going ga-ga over Harry when he came round.
Harry's an understandably interesting, tragic figure, as well as a classic case for attracting sympathetic adult attention, but dammit, so's Neville. And so are Snape and Voldemort and Draco and countless others, down to all those resentful students that leave Hogwarts feeling like second- or third-class citizens just because they didn't catch the eye of someone in power. That's really why I write, to be honest - to see those stories, even through Harry's prejudiced eyes, and to explore them beyond the superficial layer of black and white and the imperfectly smudged, tiny area of grey in between.
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I was really disappointed with JKR's explanation of the Neville prophecy--not because I expected or wanted Neville to turn out to be the real boy in the prophecy, but because she went that extra step and said that Dumbledore (and therefore she, imo) believes that had Voldemort marked Neville he'd never have been able to handle it the way Harry did. Which pretty much destroyed the idea that Voldemort made the prophecy happen himself because you're telling me that he coldn't have marked Neville because Neville really wasn't his equal. And I still don't really see where she's coming from there because I've yet to see anything that indicated Neville couldn't have done things in his own way. It seemed like there was just this need to again acknowledge an innate superiority in Harry that seems to put down the other kids unnecessarily.
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Yes, yes, yes. As I read and write more fic and meta, I look back on that particular writing decision she made and shake my head - Neville, as well as other kids in the story, would probably have done just fine as the Chosen One. All Harry has to his name is a tragic past (which Neville certainly has), some leftover/transferred power (moot, because Voldy would've transferred that to his victim under the same circumstances), and a hefty heaping of Quidditch talent. Which, imho, shouldn't count. As far as love and courage go, Harry isn't anything more than slightly above normal, either. *sighs* It's just one of those things about the series, I suppose - author closemindedness showing through in a big way.
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Yes, yes, exactly. I was irritated by the entire prophecy reveal, and I get extremely annoyed with Dumbledore whenever he talks to or about Harry, but I wasn't able to put my finger on it until you pointed this out.
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Particularly since apart from his lack of willingness to *control* his emotions, Harry shows no evidence whatsoever of being a particularly loving child.
I just had an uncomfortable flash there to the most uncomfortable (and autobiographical) of Diana Wynne Jones's novels "The Time of the Ghost".
Jones and her sisters were not brought up in a normal household and Jones has stated that it took her years to realize that and to deal with it. In Time of the Ghost, the mother of the (criminally negleted) four sisters makes up for her lack of involvement in her daughters' lives by making up glorious futures for each of them and convincing them that this is what their lives are destined to be.
In fact the children are left to inexpertly raise themselves and their mother's glorious imaginary futures are about the only thing they have of her. And these futures become as much a prison as a hope. The story, as I say, is extremely uncomfortable, but ends well.
But I'm suddenly seeing far too much resemblance between Phylis's glorious futures for her children and Albus's faith in Harry's power of Love™.
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There are a number of strong similarities between Ghost and Hemlock. I've noticed that Jones often takes more than one book to explore an issue.
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It does seem that way, doesn't it?!
But on love, perhaps the point is that it's remarkable that Harry can love at all, that this capacity hasn't been destroyed by LV and by H's experience at the hands of the Dursleys. Perhaps DD going on to Harry about love is in order to encourage him further in that direction. (Because that's the way to vanquishing LV.) And, you know, it's important to remember that inspiring love is as important as feeling love, and Harry certainly inspires love in others.
Someone was talking about Harry not having to struggle to be good. Harry's struggle is to understand, I think, and he's definitely having a lot of difficulty with that! I wonder if in Book 7 he'll be disillusioned about DD?
I know that there has been a deus ex machina element to the resolution of many of the scrapes Harry has got into, but the thing is that Harry doesn't ever know there's going to be a d-e-m, and that in fact the d-e-m only arises out of Harry's own actions, or puts him in a position where he can act - if he chooses, or if he's brave enough, and imaginative enough!
Draco in the Astronomy Tower: selfish love. Harry in the Cave: selfless love.
Heck, am rambling, and in someone else's livejournal. Must stop and go away.
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Sorry for derailing here,
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One of the impressions I never gained from HP was that Harry was in any way truly special to DD. Nor that he was particularly gifted in his capacity to love in return. The deal is that he has been protected by his mother’s love, isn’t it, which forms a kind of shield around him? He, himself, could be the most worthless little ratbag, but he still had that literal gift of Having Been Loved.
…at times I did look at Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and think I might be watching H/G, the later years
*hee*
And the exchange between strangemuses and yourself is beautiful in its precision, and has me jumping up and saying ‘yes!’ (to the confusion of everyone around me).
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That's my impression too, that Harry doesn't seem special or special to DD. That's why it's so funny in HBP when Harry even asks if Neville's mother would have done the same. Are there so few people in the world whose mothers would put themselves between them and an evil wizard?
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I think you put your finger on what makes Harry such a frustrating hero. From the perspective of the big epic plot, his "specialness" and Dumbledore's focus on him have very little to do with his personal qualities, and everything to do with circumstances determined by his mother (the lurve thing and mysterious immunity to V) and Voldemort (the self-fulfilling prophecy and artificially created rivalry.) Dumbledore, I think, simply takes Harry as he finds him, first and foremost as a tool in the war against Voldemort, and manages/bonds with/flatters/manipulates him accordingly, all in the service of defeating Voldemort. It's true that if he treated Ron more specially, Ron would probably get some advantage from that and be a more confident person. But through no fault of his own, Ron doesn't come with a pre-assigned role in the fight against Voldemort.
Now where the story potentially gets more interesting is when Harry shows some signs, some personal force of character, that make him more than merely a counter in the game. This also has the potential to be interesting if it throws off Dumbledore's calculations a little bit. And I think there are definitely some signs of this happening in the series. One of the reasons Harry is so attractive a character, at least in the earlier books, is his resilience, the fact that he shows signs of strength, of craving for normalcy and health, despite being "damaged" by the Dursleys. Harry's battle between damage and health is, I think, a more interesting human story than whether he gets to chop Voldemort in half with his jedi sword or whatever. In the same way, part of me would like to believe DD in OOTP (though I really don't, completely) when he says he was taken by surprise by how much he ended up loving and caring about Harry. I would really like to believe that because it would make the story much more twisty and interesting.
The problem is, I don't think JKR does enough with these possibilities. She raises them as kind of interesting directions the story might take, but then it's as if she can't spare the time and energy for them because they might undermine the overarching Dumbledore/Voldemort contest, which is the only thing holding her epic together. So Harry, after making some interesting human-like gestures here and there, eventually slots into his pre-ordained role as a soldier in the war, and we forego the more emotionally interesting story that is potentially there under the surface. In almost the same way, as we talked about once before, the "operatic" Black family story might have made a more interesting set of books than boring old Harry. Or, as you and strangemuses talk about above, Draco's story could be even more compelling than Harry's because it's more about choice, and struggle, and self-awareness.
I'm just not sure what to make of those choices, except that maybe JKR didn't know what to do with these alternative stories when she came up with them along the way, but found them too interesting to suppress entirely. It's a tribute to the power of her imagination, though perhaps not to her ability to craft large-scale stories.
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I admit that's often the way it comes across to me--and maybe it's why the books are so attractive to fanfic etc. I remember it was OotP especially that made me feel like characterization was always in the service of plot, and these things tie into that as well. The characters sometimes feel jerked from one point to the next instead of as if there's a continuous flow of development, and that goes with Harry as well as the other characters. Rather than getting the sense of Harry growing into something Dumbledore didn't expect, it's like Harry is a series of blocks that stand for scenes, and in some scenes he's got the chance to act like more of an individual, but eventually he always has to come back to the standard blocks where he's doing the soldier thing and agreeing with Dumbledore.
So he never has personal issues really overrunning his standard hero plot. I didn't need to have Harry mourning for Sirius in a way that was central to the book, but I do think people have a case for saying he didn't mourn him at all. That is, the book simply handled the mourning by having him say he would be going forward without him and then gave him a few moments when there would be a reason to think about Sirius. What we didn't get was a Harry profoundly effected by what happened to Sirius in a way that made him really think about what he was doing, who he was, life and death and all that.
I was talking to someone about Draco the other day, for instance, and said that while it may again be an accident of plot I loved the fact that there was emphasis put on Lucius being happy to be safe in prison in HBP because it suggested to me that Draco had reason to feel somewhat betrayed--in ways that this thread reminds me that Harry is not so much allowed to be. Lucius has not only turned out to be less than all-powerful but willing to save his own skin over heroics or possibly even saving his family. Draco has good reason to seriously question his father figures and what they taught, as has Percy and Barty Crouch, for instance. Harry really never has to do this. Sure he's disgusted with his father personally in OotP, but he doesn't have to rethink his own beliefs, just as his anger at Dumbledore never makes him question their shared beliefs. And yet this is so expected than even when Harry has that horrible scene in the bathroom with Sectumsempra he just moves on to the next order of business: Quidditch and dating. I would at least hope that Draco had some more interesting thoughts while he knew he was dying.
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I really like the way you put this. I think we've both circled around this point before -- how the "micro" level character analysis doesn't necessarily connect with the "macro" level plot developments, how the alleged "love over evil" theme doesn't really seem convincingly illustrated in detail. But I really like your formula of the blocks. I kind of picture them as boxes or fences, where JKR is coming up with a tool to discipline her own rowdily productive imagination -- the characters can wander this far, but no farther, from the pre-ordained path dictated by the abstract plot.
Draco has good reason to seriously question his father figures and what they taught, as has Percy and Barty Crouch, for instance. Harry really never has to do this.
That's a really powerful point of comparison between them. And I've grown wary of my own habit of over-psychologizing, but it suggests an interesting take on Harry. He's never had to confront or defy a father figure, because death and distance have always held his father figures safely apart from his actual, concrete day to day life. So he can cut and shape them to his own imagination and needs. Even when he defies ordinary authority, he can always imagine his father would have been there, cheering him on.
I wonder if this is at the root of some of his less likeable traits -- his disinclination for self-examination, etc. I mean it's a tricky point to say he's never had to take a stand, because in some ways he does nothing but take one contrarian stand after another. But he's never had to take a stand against a background of radical self-doubt, which might give him empathy for other people's choices; on the contrary, circumstances have compelled him again and again to assert himself on his own immediate and instinctive terms against people (the Dursleys, Voldemort) who pretty much want to annihilate him as a personality. So for both reasons he's never been forced to question how he sees himself -- or if you want to look at it the other way, maybe he's never had the luxury of questioning himself.
And I don't know, maybe those are good traits for a hero to have, if his job as a hero is more important than anything else. And maybe he can even still be all about the "love," if it's enough to love things that are yours, or that are uncomplicatedly gratifying. Maybe it's not necessary for love to overcome hate or forgive fallibility or create understanding across gulfs of experience, as long as it sustains solidarity among your own side. Or, god help us, maybe JKR thinks she is really showing these things already by having Harry love Hermione despite her bossiness and Ron despite his envy and insecurities.
But I'd kind of like to see this "love" business take on some more ambitious challenges. And I think that Draco's development in HBP, and Dumbledore's dying concern for him, both point the way to this kind of greater ambition and complexity for the love theme. I hope this doesn't end up being one more foregone opportunity . . .
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LOL--Yeah, that's the fear. It's just so sadly ironic the way Harry's personality seems so unsuited to his power of "great love." Part of it is sometimes a joke in the way JKR chooses to write about Harry showing affection, but it adds up to Harry being a character who somehow seems the last person to have the power of love. For instance, I remember there's a scene in OotP where Sirius says, I think, that Harry should be told about the "weapon." Harry feels a surge of affection for Sirius.
It's sort of a joke, but the thing is, that's a pretty accurate description. Harry really does seem to feel surges of affection for people when they help him, and that's not love. One doesn't imagine Ron feeling surges of affection for Molly because she sticks up for him, the affection is always there. Unfortunately Harry's relationships so often work like that because everybody works for him. Meanwhile it's other characters who seem to act out of love, even when it hurts them.
When Dumbledore says it's amazing that Harry's retained the ability to love he's correct in that it's amazing Harry has basically no social problems after years of abuse (ironically under DD's orders--wtf?) but take that away and Harry's actually remarkably UNtested when it comes to love. His friends spend far more time focused on his problems than most peoples' friends do, while he takes very little interest in their lives and problems. His parental figures, as you said, are kept at a comfortable idealized distance. He gets the good part of the Weasley family while skipping the bad part. His girlfriend literally always gives him exactly what he needs when he needs it.
Compare that to other boys in his class: Ron's the Weasley who resists attacking Percy. Neville cherishes his mother's meaningless attempts at gifts because he recognizes the attempt. Draco's branded a coward throughout canon yet seems to find courage in his love for his family--not to mention humanity. Are these hints that the book's going for something more subtle? Hopefully.
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Does he? I mean, it's true he doesn't throw parsnip at Percy and that despite wanting to hit Percy at the end of HBP he held back (with a little help from Hermione) but I would hesitate to use the Percy example as a demonstrator of Ron's capability to love (although this might change in Book 7). After all, some (or practically most) of the most vile comments against Percy in the series are spoken by Ron, and once to his face too.
If Ron was already under the belief (calm and deliberate with no crazy moment to spark off his temper) in GoF (Before Fudgegate in OotP) that Percy would willingly throw his family to the Dementors for career advancement (a belief that was already held but expressed differently as early as CoS) despite the fact that in his pompous style Percy has already shown love for his family and ESPECIALLY Ron than eecch, the love was beyond warped and deformed. Ron hasn't yet grasped the startling concept that Percy is capable of love; the one moment that shows Percy in an utterly naked light in GoF where Percy wades into the lake looking younger than normal to hug Ron was abruptly rejected by Ron.
That said, I absolutely love your LJ and love reading your essays. Very interesting and intelligent.
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It's funny--I'm reading that example and thinking...why'd I pick that one about Percy? Ron seems to have lots better examples of forgiving and loving with his family just because there are so many of them and he's not one of the aggressive ones. He feels overlooked, but loves anyway. He does seem to understand the kind of "I hurt you intentionally but I love you" kind of love more than Percy's way of showing love. I think partially because Ron fears he's the most like Percy somehow, maybe because he's always afraid the Twins will accuse him of it. I'm not sure what Ron and Percy much really have in common, but Ron seems to feel something's there.
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For all his talk of love I don't think DD feels (really feels) it a great deal. It's all a bit theoretical and academic with him. I get the feeling that Lily's sacrifice may have been as much of a surprise to him as it was to LV. HBP spork has just done the chapter where DD first encounters Tom, and everyone is cross about DD's ineptitude. Well, I think the long and short of it may be that he didn't care. Back then (it was 50 odd years earlier) he hadn't discovered love yet. You can see him as a bit of an ivory tower prof, working with Flamel on alchemy etc, can't you? Even now, DD is rather remote. He seems to understand people, and value them, but he's not close to anyone. He's able to get the measure of people and, if not to manipulate them, to manage them. In the interests of good, of course! So, what Lily did demonstrated the power of love to him. Then Harry totally floored him; DD actually felt love. It's not that Harry is powerful, it's that he's unmanageable. He's himself. DD didn't have the measure of him, Harry surprised him. DD was amazed to discover he loved Harry, and the love was beyond his control.