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Tom wrote:
What I find most annoying about Harry is his incredible stubbornness, his procrastination, his belief, along Snapian lines, that despite everyone's efforts to safeguard him, he's above the rules. And I can't STAND the way he refuses to listen to reason once he's had his mind made up.
Marina wrote:
See, maybe I'm just strange, but these are precisely the qualities I find most endearing about Harry. If, on top of all his heroic qualities, he was also reasonable, diligent, obedient and uniformly sweet-tempered, I'd hate him with a fiery passion for being such a holier-than-thou little prig.
Heh.
Yeah, Tom, I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Marina here. I find the particular flaws that you mentioned far more endearing than I do annoying. If Harry weren't flawed, he'd make me wanna womit. But of course, mileages vary.
Actually, the flaw of Harry's that I find by far the least sympathetic is his utter lack of curiosity. Not only do I find that frustrating as a reader, but I also find it somewhat hard to relate to. For heaven's sake, boy -- there's a library! Look something up! Do a bit of research! Don't you realize someone's trying to kill you? Maybe you should learn a little bit about him, no?
Then, I suppose that this is the reason that I would likely not be sorted Gryffindor. ;-)
Of course, I do realize that Harry has to have that particular quirk. He can't be going around trying to learn more about his parents, or asking people probing questions, or using the library to fill himself in on the backstory, because if he did any of that, then he would absolutely cripple the informational structure of the series. The author needs Harry to be apathetic in order to help protect her secrets. I know, I know. But still, I can't deny that I find it irksome sometimes. While I recognize its utility on the authorial level, it also often makes me feel a lot less reader sympathy with Harry as a person.
But a word about that procrastination...
Is Harry really a procrastinator?
He certainly does engage in avoidance behavior in GoF. No question about that. And procrastination is certainly a very normal adolescent sort of tendency. No question about that, either.
But is it really a normal tendency of Harry's, do you think, or is it instead a perhaps not perfectly utilitarian, but nonetheless very normal response to the rather exceptional circumstances surrounding him in his fourth year?
It seems to me that to some extent, procrastination was a very sane response to the events of GoF. I mean, let's consider the situation, shall we?
From the very beginning of the story, Harry knows that Voldemort has some terribly cunning plan that is directed against him. Yet he doesn't know what it is, or who is involved, or when it's supposed to take place, or...well, or anything, really. Although sometimes in the other books Harry is reactive as a matter of proclivity, in this one he is to some extent forced into reactive mode. He's doing very little throughout the novel but sitting around waiting for someone to try to kill him.
Furthermore, the nature of the threat against him is both far less defined and far more palpable than it has been in previous volumes. In PS/SS, he doesn't even know anything's going on until halfway through the book. In CoS, he knows what's going on in all of its really important details: the questions are really just Whodunnit and How. In PoA, he knows (or believes he does) the nature of the threat against his person: it's Sirius Black, out to kill him.
But in GoF, it's all so vague. Vague, and yet also disturbingly specific. Disturbingly directed. Voldemort has a plan to kill him...but he doesn't know any of its details, or who is involved, or from what direction the blow may fall, or how or when or where or why.
Pretty disheartening, really. And given that just about the only thing he can deduce about the forces mustering against him is that they probably somehow conspired to get his name in that Goblet, I can't say that I really blame him for having felt somewhat uninspired when it came to preparing for the Tasks. I would have procrastinated myself, I think. Who wants to exercise hustle and diligence, just to help facilitate someone else's plan to kill you? Rather like being asked to muster enthusiasm for the trip to the slaughterhouse, isn't it?
And in fact, Harry's instincts were absolutely correct. Winning that Tournament really wasn't in his best interests.
It's an interesting issue. I've seen people cite Harry's procrastination in GoF as "just typical adolescent boy stuff" in the past, but really, I think it's a lot more than that. I think it makes perfect sense, given the circumstances. I don't even know if I believe that Harry is ordinarily a procrastinator at all. Have we seen him engage in procrastination in any of the other novels?
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 1, 2003 3:20 PM
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