The past week I posted a couple of Harry Potter-related posts and asked everyone about their favorite characters and why you liked the books and/or movies. I figured that now would be a good time to talk about Harry Potter since the first part, of the last movie, is coming out this week. Since you are reading this post, I am assuming that you are all wielding sharpened objects, different kinds of projectile weaponry, and/or various animals that you plan to load into a catapult and fire at me.
All I ask is that you just hold on for a second and let me speak my piece.
Despite the title of today’s post, I really enjoyed the Harry Potter books. They were fun to read and I especially liked how they were all connected together. I don’t mean connected in the sense that the same characters and locations were returning in each consecutive release. What I’m talking about is that there were small bits and pieces, in one book, that people would take for granted, which would then turn out to be a pivotal clue, answer, etc in another book.
The books also had a great cast of characters and, as you know, of which I had several favorites of my own. But it was because of these characters that I kept reading. Even though I consider Rowling’s writing to be fine, there is no denying that she found a formula that grabbed peoples’ attention and got them hooked on her books.
And I was one of them.
However, it was because of that great cast of characters that kept my interest in the books alive. Without them, I would never have bothered. You see, as I continued to read the books, I started to get sick of Harry Potter, the main character that the books were named after to the point that this character was a great disappointment. So I will go over a few of the things that I found to be the biggest problems for me.
The Rage of Harry Potter
(Spoilers ahead for all the books! So if you don’t want anything spoiled then you better Apparate out of here!)
What is interesting is that, when I talk to some of my friends who also read the books, we came to quite a few interesting conclusions about him. One of the most fascinating things, we noticed, was that Harry Potter showed a very angry and dark side of himself a couple of times. However, when he did fly into such a rage it was always against the wrong people or the act of a petulant child.
When Harry thought Sirius had been responsible for Voldemort finding out about his parents, and killing them, Harry became determined to hunt him down (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). When Harry was finally able to confront Sirius his rage led him to try and choke Sirius to death.
Yet, as Harry found out later, Sirius was innocent of betrayal.
The second time Harry lost his temper, occurred in Dumbledore’s office after the fight at the Ministry of Magic in Order of the Phoenix. Sirius had been killed by Bellatrix and Dumbledore had tried to help Harry cope with it. This particular scene showed how selfish Harry was. All he cared about was that Sirius had been killed. He didn’t care that all his friends had made it through the fight without any serious harm. In fact, when Dumbledore told him, he essentially just shrugged it off. So focused was he on himself that he didn’t care about anyone else.
Then the third time happened when Snape killed Dumbledore. Once again, Harry flew into a rage in which he would have killed Snape if he had only had the skill to do so.
So here is the interesting thing. While Harry had a murderous rage towards three people (Sirius, Snape, and Bellatrix), at one point or another, he never felt such a rage at the man who really killed his parents, Voldemort. Bellatrix was the only person that Harry justifiably raged at and who deserved to be killed. There were times where his rage and anger was justified such as with the Dursleys, or anyone who insulted his father or mother. A great example would be Snape insulting Harry’s father and, being a loyal son, wanting to defend him. Or when Aunt Marge not only insulted his father but his mother as well.
Yet how is it that Harry could hate everyone else so much yet, when it came to the man who killed his parents, not summon up such rage? Not only that, but his anger was so great that he would forget and ignore everyone else around him. Not to mention, the failure to channel that rage and focus it to right perceived wrongs or to try and avenge his parents.
The Boy With Money
This is a small thing but one that continues to irk me. Harry Potter was rich. Yet he made no attempts to use that wealth to his advantage. He could have purchased books on all kinds of offensive/defensive magic. Or he could have purchased powerful trinkets to help him in a fight. Maybe hire tutors to help him learn how to properly fight.
But that wealth was never really used or utilized.
Is it me or was that just a waste?
Things would have been much more interesting if Harry Potter didn’t have all that money. Instead, it just added to my puzzlement towards this character. It was as if this was a throwaway part of Harry’s backstory, yet had the potential to really affect his growth as a character. Show me any young kid who realizes that they have a lot of money and aren’t willing to spend it.
In the case of Harry, it could have been a powerful tool for him to utilize in helping him survive when, you know, an all powerful wizard is trying to kill you. Maybe hire some personal security? It’s safe to say that money gives you options. Just look at Batman and Iron Man!
Harry Potter: The Feeble Wizard
Before I continue on, however, I’d like to refer back to my earlier post asking everyone who their favorite characters were. I only tallied those who answered the first question, which of the three main leads do you like the most, and wasn’t surprised by the results. Only two people liked Ron the most, then came Harry with six votes, and Hermione crushing her rivals with 14 votes.
Not shocking considering that, as I said in the post, Hermione was the most evolved character of the three.
The best comment I received, in regards to Hermione, came from LeidyGaPa:
“…she is the one who evolved the most of the three of them. She is also my favorite, because of her evolution, but also because of the fact that knowledge or rationality can live well which feelings and emotions, Ron is pure instinct, and Harry is pure feelings, while Hermione is a combination of emotions and rationality, pretty much the same as most human beings. It’s kind of interesting that they represent the three brain levels, instinct, emotion and rational.”
This was the best comment overall and made me regard the three characters in a new light. Especially Harry, but not enough to change my attitude towards him (sorry!).
Yet, it is a sad thing when the sidekick has a more evolved character than the main character himself. Like how would it look if Robin overshadowed Batman? You see, Harry Potter didn’t really evolve throughout his books. In fact, as he got older, he just got more pathetic in my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, he had his moments, but there were certain things that overshadowed these moments and made him such a pathetic character. But what were those things? What is it about Harry Potter which ruined the books for me?
Well as I stated before, Harry, as a character, failed to evolve. He continued on through the books as a one-dimensional character that kept crying about his dead parents, who he never really knew, and who stumbled and fumbled through each life-threatening situation. Here is a boy who survived because of sheer luck instead of having skills or brains.
In his first couple of years, this would have been acceptable but, as the time went by and he got older, it went from being acceptable to being downright retarded.
Despite the talk that he possessed strong magic, Harry never truly utilized it or used it to his advantage. You would think that he would try to learn as much magic as he could given the fact that one of the most powerful wizards in the world wanted to kill him.
But alas, such would not be the case!
Instead he went from year to year, at Hogwarts, barely scraping by and hardly learning any magic at all. Nor did he show any drive to try and learn anything that would really help him in his inevitable confrontation with Voldemort (everyone gasps at the use of the dark lord’s name). Any spells he learned were basic spells along with some hexes and jinxes.
Just look at book four when Voldemort has Cedric Diggory killed, regains his form thanks to Harry’s blood, and is no longer affected by the protective spell Harry’s mother cast on him as she died. Harry, once again, survived that encounter because of luck. How? Because Harry’s and Voldemort’s wands had a connection with one another, which then resulted in Voldemort’s wand spewing out the ghostly echoes of Harry’s parents, who then helped him escape.
But did those events lead Harry to finally have the drive to learn as many offensive and defensive spells as he could in order to have a better chance against Voldemort?
No…
Instead, he bungled his way through book five (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). Instead of learning spells to become more powerful, he kept doing what he always did. Nothing at all! All his talk about wanting to help was essentially nothing but words because he couldn’t really contribute anything. He still had the same bag of tricks as he did for the past four years.
When Dumbldore’s Army was created, it wasn’t because he thought it would be a good idea to teach other people as well as learn some things himself. It had to come from Hermione, bless her, who cajoled him to the point where he finally saw the advantage in it. But, once again, Harry didn’t really learn anything himself.
Instead, he kept going on about how they didn’t know what happened. That no one knew what it was like to be in that situation. Well, he knew what it was like and yet he hadn’t learned anything from it.
Later on, through sheer luck and holding the prophecy hostage, Harry and company were able to survive their encounter with Voldemort and his Death Eaters long enough for the Order of the Phoenix to come to their rescue. If that hadn’t happened, they would have all been killed. Instead, Harry loses Sirius because of his actions. Even after that, Harry didn’t try to increase his still-lacking catalogue of spells, hexes, and jinxes. His “power” was still being wasted.
So book six came along (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and I continued to wonder about Harry.
We all know how the sixth book ended. Snape killed Dumbledore, which resulted in Harry flying into a rage and trying to take on Snape. Once again, we were shown how useless Harry really was when he was pitted against a true opponent. Snape, without any effort, blocked Harry’s pathetic attacks and escaped with the Death Eaters. But instead of learning from the encounter, not knowing that Snape didn’t kill him because he was really a good guy, Harry still didn’t try to learn more magic to help him.
And so it was with the seventh book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) that turned out to be the most disappointing book of all. If it hadn’t been for Hermione, Harry would never have made it out of the wedding alive. If Hermione hadn’t been there for Harry, he would never have been able to hide from Voldemort, and his minions, as they searched for him. Hermione, the strongest character in the book, was the one who had prepared for such an occasion (yet he fell in love with Ginny and not Hermione).
Harry? He continued to putter around in all the books, never learning anything really useful, and surviving because he was lucky. Even when he was being hunted, he never tried to learn any more spells that might give him some advantage. Instead he had to rely on Hermione who, to me, is the real hero of the Harry Potter series.
And so here we have a character that was stupid, lazy, and lucky. Even though he knew that a powerful enemy was out there trying to kill him, it still wasn’t enough motivation to try and learn everything he could to increase his chances of surviving.
All that power, that he was supposed to have, was all for nothing. The buildup for an epic confrontation didn’t happen. Instead, the final book ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.
And that whimper was in the form of two words…luck and Expelliarmus.
The boy who survived turned out to be the boy who never mentally matured or became powerful in any way. This is why, in the end, the Harry Potter series was such a disappointment. It is why JK Rowling is, to me, an alright author. But how Harry Potter was written wasn’t great.
How can someone look at Harry Potter and say that he was a real hero? How can someone say that Harry Potter was a smart and powerful wizard when he is the exact opposite?
Yes, this is a kid’s book. However, the kids that read these books also grew up with them and, one would hope, matured in both intellect and personality. Yet Harry Potter never did. A real shame too because this character had so much potential to be a great literary character that could have also been a kind of role model for boys to look up to.
It’s why I have to say Harry Potter is the Great Disappointment in literature, as a boy, and as a young man (a topic for another time). That’s not to say that books aren’t worth reading. They are, but just to read about the other characters and not Harry Potter himself.
Author’s Note: This editorial was written back in 2010 and I plan to revisit with follow-up posts. Be on the lookout for them soon! Also, feel free to check out a few chapters of a Harry Potter Fanfic titled Harry Potter and the Courtship of Ginny Weasley.
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