Harry Potter: Lazy Slacker?

[lightofdaye]

At the moment I've been listening to Half blood Prince audio book, read by Stephen Fry on my mp3 player and it's very good, aside from poor Stephen having to attempt a variety of different accents and has to go especially far in the case of women. (poor Tonks and Demezla now have very thick accents) I've actually appreciated the story a bit more this time through. Still my favourite chapter is still the very first one with the poor prime minister.



I actually notice more stuff in the audio version. I think I have a terrible habit of skimming when I'm reading a book so I miss details but one of the things I did notice is that Hermione totally gets huffy when people hit on Ron even before he starts smooching on Lavender, never seen that before. I mean Ron acting up is totally obvious but Hermione was more subtle, lol.

But the other thing that seems endemic to the stuff is Harry succeeding purely by taking the easy way out and standing on the back of others work. This is obvious with the Prince's potions book and also when he gets the real potion from Slughorn using lucky potion.

I think I first noticed some of this when listening to the description of Voldemort getting the horcrux information out of Slughorn and Harry realising He must have buttered up /slughorn for ages whereas Harry gets the same effect with no effort at all: just see the luck potion and bam. Job done.

Likewise in potions he gets top marks for following Snape's revised instructions and yet Snape presumably compiled those changes to the net through trial and error and a great deal of work. Chance hands Harry the book and he uses at no effort to himself. (The book does point out that he doesn't understand the concepts involved but he gets through it by nerve and cheek. Admirable qualities we are to assume.)

So we're in the odd position where the villains of the piece apparently rose from humble origins through ingenuity and hard work. And the hero... gets it handed to him by the plot?


The other thing that comes to mind, is Hermione's rejection of the half-blood prince's instruction while adhering strictly to the 'official instructions'. Now its admirable not the crib someone else's work. But on the other hand this leads us the impression that Hermione gets to be 'the smartest witch in her age' by reading alot and slavish following instructions. Apparently that's all that is required not any great originality of though or adaptability or smartness of her own. Just read the books, memorise them and you get to be great. I mean this should stand her well on exam papers but she never seems to have an problem with the practical side either, so again read enough and apparently you cast spells with ease


I seem to have gone a little off track and more stream of consciousness here. Still thoughts?

Comments

[luna-plath.livejournal.com]

On Hermione
In my experience, the people who read the most/memorize the most are generally the people who do the best in school, whether they have any natural intelligence or not. This would apply to the reading/writing/theoretical part of Hogwarts classes the most. As for the hands-on aspect, I think Hermione performs spells well because she makes sure that she understands the instructions before attempting the spell, and is hard working enough to practice over and over until she gets it right. Being good at following instructions isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I think Hermione is meant to show us that. Her other qualities make her an intelligent person as well, one of those qualities being her ability to think logically and reason out problems. That may be a key difference between Hermione and some of her other classmates and it's probably why she performs so well in school.

On Harry
You know that I love Harry, but I think he does get by with luck and nerve over hard work quite often. However, we see times when this does not work out in his favor, even with the Half-Blood Prince. Harry uses the sectemsempra spell on Draco, hoping he'll get lucky and be able to defend himself with it, only to reap horrifying results. There are plenty of examples where Harry's fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants way of dealing with things gets him in trouble or causes problems, so I wouldn't say he gets off so easily. We see this in the Department of Mysteries where his luck/nerve run out and Sirius dies.

I think Harry is reckless, but I don't think that means he hasn't "earned" the things he's accomplished. Some of the risks he takes are out of ambition, and real ambition doesn't care about the dishonesty of using someone else's work or the implications of lying to get something that could help a lot of people. These events just show that, in general, Harry is willing to ignore the rules to get what he wants, things that characters like Hermione wouldn't necessarily condone. This is why I consider Harry to be a gray character and it's also why I get frustrated when writers portray him as the perfect example of morality.

Back to learning. I think that Harry was content to use the Prince's work because he simply wasn't as interested in book learning/the theory aspect of magic. As we see with Dumbledore's Army, he definitely prefers hands-on learning, i.e. the "foolish wand waving" like learning a Patronus.

[lightofdaye]

Interesting thoughts, Luna. I hadn't considered a lot of that. I guess its because as Hermione isn't the main character that we don't see a lot of the work she puts into it. It's just that she;s consistent achieving practical stuff like transfiguration or apparition a lot more quickly than anyone. So does just no one else doing the reading?

Good thoughts about Harry. He's definitely not a shining paragon of virtue. It's one of the things I remember noticing about the end of OotP, harry very explicitly motivated by revenge. Not justice or anything. Revenge. That's not traditionally a good guy thing, especially in kid's stuff.

I think maybe the difference between Harry and Hermione is that Harry excels at something he's good at and interested in (DADA) while not putting effort into other things, while Hermione tries to excel around the board. (and i think, she only really landed an E in DADA because she couldn't be as good as Harry, not that she really ever seemed weak at in previous books. Except the boggart and that was because she's never practised on a real one before)

Though speaking of Harry's exam results. He gets good grades in pretty much everything. The exceptions being an A in Astronomy and P in History of Magic, both subject exams which were disrupted for him. the only one he failed fair and square was Divination. Which is a dodgy subject to start with.

[luna-plath.livejournal.com]

You know I wouldn't be surprised if very few people (apart from some Ravenclaws) did the reading for school. I'm sure that, especially for subjects like History of Magic or Transfiguration, the reading is probably very dry. This is something I've even noticed at my university. I was in a biology class this spring and several students who were bio majors found the textbook too difficult and never read it, even when preparing for tests.

Good point about Harry being motivated by revenge. That may not be a hero-type thing, but it's realistic. I would expect someone in his position to feel that way. And when it comes to Harry's schooling I think he definitely failed to apply himself and use his full potential. His grades are alright without having to work too hard so he gets by with that, which is understandable when you consider that he's spending lots of time dealing with Voldemort and playing Quidditch, both of which seem more important to him than school. He just has different priorities than Hermione, who enjoys learning for learning's sake.

[nevrafire.livejournal.com]

but isn't one of hufflepuff traits "hard-working"?

I'm sure doing the material for Binns/taking notes in his class probably counts as hardworking hufflepuff.

and I personally think earlierbook!harry applied himself a bit more than laterbooks!harry- or when he knew something was at stake. (like I'm sure he really applied himself to get the necessary OWLS to be able to pursue auror career)