I think there is a suggestion that DD feels what he does for him because he's so personally special . . . [but] if he decided to take special interest in Ron Weasley wouldn't Ron have seemed just as great?
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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Date: 2006-06-19 04:23 am (UTC)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.