~~ self-sacrifice and individualism in hp
Aug. 18th, 2003 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkai know i said no meta till i get my fics done-- and face it, if i predict something like that, i should know the universe will bite me in the ass. i will write them, though. as my harry-plushie is my witness, i will write them. ahem. (the reason i keep mentioning them as if i'm -serious- or something is because i -am- serious. these are -long-. i probably need a -beta- [and no, i don't know who to ask, no]. these have -plot-, man. i'm -serious-! one of them is a h/d how-they-got-together fic!! in multiple parts!! holy guacamole, etc. no, really. it's.... it's just a special thing for me, since i've never come so very very close before. it's not like it's The Ultimate H/D Reena Fic or anything, but.... *infatuated siiiigh*)
~~
i was thinking about people's differing opinions on what it would take for harry to win.
in particular, there are people who probably think they're supporting his "hero's quest" and individualist ideals in general by saying that harry needs to defeat Evil by himself, and that he wouldn't have time or protective energy to spare for 'love'. he has a job to do, right, and love and attachments-- especially to his -enemy-, of course-- would be a -weakness-, they would -undermine- him somehow. it would be much more of a -challenge- for harry to do what he has to do if he had a demanding personal relationship to worry about.
i'm thinking of a particular fic, actually. harry & draco get together under the auspices of having meaningless sex. months pass, they have lots of it, everything is fine, except draco is starting to get too attached-- or so thinks snape. he tells draco, well, don't you -know- what you're risking here? your father will disown you, voldemort will use you against harry, where will either of you turn, how will you explain this to the wizarding world, blahblah. draco is upset because he "knows it's the truth". he meets harry for the last time, and somehow harry knows already, and they break up without discussing anything; the end. in the comments, the author says, well, i think it's better for both of them in the long run.
and this isn't a totally unusual position-- lots of people think that love is a -weakness- somehow, that the challenges of keeping it are much more plentiful than the potential rewards of -having- it in the first place. i mean, there's sex and giddy happiness, but strength? that's friendship, not love, right?
there's this wide-spread feeling in modern pop-psychology that love involves co-dependency, that it weakens one's resolve, that it creates windows where your enemies could take advantage of you. that intensely personal, individual quests like the hero's one-on-one defeat of his arch-nemesis should be left to the lone crusader.
all in all, i think this is an underestimation and a misunderstanding of love. and i'm not about to imply that love "saves the day" or anything of the sort. the -will- to love can give a person the -strength- to overcome external as well as internal obstacles, yes. love itself is merely an emotion that binds you to another person, not really necessitating you to -act- any more than any other emotion does. love binds your emotions to someone, at the basic level, right? some people think emotions make you weaker the stronger they are, of course, and an emotion that takes control away from you-- that gives some of it to another person-- must make you even weaker still, in that vein of thought.
whatever the case with love in general, this isn't how it seems to work in the hp books, anyway.
it is quite clear, i think, that harry cannot win alone, that voldemort cannot be defeated simply with a display of raw wizarding power of some sort-- the only wizard who's supposedly as strong as voldemort is dumbledore, and it is harry who must defeat him because voldemort chose him. dumbledore tells him that it is the power of his -heart- which is what voldemort fears-- harry's capacity to love, his humanity, etc. the ties he so easily makes to others, and oftentimes those others are rather downtrodden and unpopular, too-- hagrid, hermione, luna. harry has his prejudices of course, but he does seem to have the power to truly sense people's good heart no matter what. i mean, he doesn't sense draco's, for instance, but i think the text seems to be saying that this is part of harry's judgement ability-- not everyone should be trusted. sometimes one should know when to walk away from the "bad sort", because if everyone was good then judgement ability would be void.
the other obvious clue is that harry's mother basically defeated voldemort through her self-sacrificial love for her son. basically, it was a true love, a -sacrificial- love which wasn't selfish, which gave without taking. ron and sirius display this quality of self-sacrifice as well, though in different ways-- ron did it most clearly in the first book, by being the one to keep playing the chess game even though he might have had to pay the ultimate price.
individualism and the usual hero's creed would say that only the hero should be the one to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good, for whoever he's protecting (let's say, the maiden)-- and yet, it is the people who -love- harry as much as harry himself who keep having to willingly pay a price to protect him.
in fact, it may be this sort of bravery on ron's and hermione's part that has made some people say that -ron- is really "the hero" in hp, because of course it has to be The Hero who sacrifices himself, who is therefore pure and Good. he cannot have -help-. the hero must do it themselves.
harry throws himself into danger in OoTP to rescue sirius, off to be the hero-- and he couldn't (and -doesn't-) really do it alone. everyone gets hurt, everyone pays a price but him, except in that harry's price is to -watch- other people get hurt (and die) because of him, because they believe in him. because they love him.
basically, heroism (in hp, at least) cannot be a one-way street, and neither can love or sacrifice. one -gives- and one accepts and one returns, all in a circle of mutual effects that transforms everyone into heroes. neville is a hero too, just as much as harry is. harry's -existence- and the existence of neville's parents (heroes in their own right) -motivate- neville to be a hero himself. harry motivates ron and hermione as well. harry -inspires- people and people (say, sirius or mr. weasley) inspire harry to protect them, too. they create this circle of protection, of -unity-, a community of people. i think that is the goal, anyway.
that is what -gryffindor- is, too, isn't it? a community of heroes, a house for the brave, where all of the students look out for each other, everyone can be united in a cause. this isn't co-dependence, then, it's interdependence.
i really think that -unity- is what's really the goal of the quest in this story, as well as self-realization-- you could even say that the goal is self-realization through unity. ron, hermione and harry -need- each other for balance-- they have such different and yet complementary qualities, don't they. hermione has the logic and the base of knowledge, ron has the strategy and the loyalty, harry has the drive and the raw power and the connectiveness to bind them all. they work as a team, each contributing different elements to create a whole-- and clearly, this should work on a larger scale of gryffindor house and hogwarts as well before success could be achieved.
so draco may very well be set up as the last piece of the puzzle-- as the slytherin aspect of the unity that is needed to balance hogwarts so that it can withstand attack. of course, this is what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ivyblossom had said in her brilliant post about draco's redemption. but this isn't really talking about why would harry -need- love, need this connection, whether with draco or somewhere else, in order to achieve his goal.
i would say draco, myself, because i think there is potential there for him completing a circuit, being that last balancing factor harry needs to come to terms with before he's ready to face voldemort without fear (the slytherin factor, basically). but really, the question of why would harry need love easily extends and flows from the more general question of why does -any- individual need love to succeed in their lives, and how could they remain an individual while acknowledging this.
mostly, without love, i think, the whole quest of heroic sacrifice and the entire grand struggle to survive and even -live- becomes meaningless, and this is precisely what voldemort doesn't understand. he thinks surviving alone is important, the mere act of beating death-- whereas harry has to realize that it's not the mere -living- that's important, not the question of who lives or dies, him or voldemort, but the -connections- one makes that makes life -worth- living, and that those connections aren't something death can ever fully take away from you. they will always be able to help guide you, always give you strength and perhaps, in ways, protect you-- just like lily's sacrifice and love live on in harry.
in hp as well as in life, in my opinion, love can never be a weakness, in the end, and you can never be better off without it. that sort of thinking leads one down the path voldemort took. love is ultimately the only strength-- the thing that makes an act of -sacrifice- into just a reflection of one's heart, and perhaps within this unity, finally, it isn't a sacrifice at all, but actually victory itself.
~~
i was thinking about people's differing opinions on what it would take for harry to win.
in particular, there are people who probably think they're supporting his "hero's quest" and individualist ideals in general by saying that harry needs to defeat Evil by himself, and that he wouldn't have time or protective energy to spare for 'love'. he has a job to do, right, and love and attachments-- especially to his -enemy-, of course-- would be a -weakness-, they would -undermine- him somehow. it would be much more of a -challenge- for harry to do what he has to do if he had a demanding personal relationship to worry about.
i'm thinking of a particular fic, actually. harry & draco get together under the auspices of having meaningless sex. months pass, they have lots of it, everything is fine, except draco is starting to get too attached-- or so thinks snape. he tells draco, well, don't you -know- what you're risking here? your father will disown you, voldemort will use you against harry, where will either of you turn, how will you explain this to the wizarding world, blahblah. draco is upset because he "knows it's the truth". he meets harry for the last time, and somehow harry knows already, and they break up without discussing anything; the end. in the comments, the author says, well, i think it's better for both of them in the long run.
and this isn't a totally unusual position-- lots of people think that love is a -weakness- somehow, that the challenges of keeping it are much more plentiful than the potential rewards of -having- it in the first place. i mean, there's sex and giddy happiness, but strength? that's friendship, not love, right?
there's this wide-spread feeling in modern pop-psychology that love involves co-dependency, that it weakens one's resolve, that it creates windows where your enemies could take advantage of you. that intensely personal, individual quests like the hero's one-on-one defeat of his arch-nemesis should be left to the lone crusader.
all in all, i think this is an underestimation and a misunderstanding of love. and i'm not about to imply that love "saves the day" or anything of the sort. the -will- to love can give a person the -strength- to overcome external as well as internal obstacles, yes. love itself is merely an emotion that binds you to another person, not really necessitating you to -act- any more than any other emotion does. love binds your emotions to someone, at the basic level, right? some people think emotions make you weaker the stronger they are, of course, and an emotion that takes control away from you-- that gives some of it to another person-- must make you even weaker still, in that vein of thought.
whatever the case with love in general, this isn't how it seems to work in the hp books, anyway.
it is quite clear, i think, that harry cannot win alone, that voldemort cannot be defeated simply with a display of raw wizarding power of some sort-- the only wizard who's supposedly as strong as voldemort is dumbledore, and it is harry who must defeat him because voldemort chose him. dumbledore tells him that it is the power of his -heart- which is what voldemort fears-- harry's capacity to love, his humanity, etc. the ties he so easily makes to others, and oftentimes those others are rather downtrodden and unpopular, too-- hagrid, hermione, luna. harry has his prejudices of course, but he does seem to have the power to truly sense people's good heart no matter what. i mean, he doesn't sense draco's, for instance, but i think the text seems to be saying that this is part of harry's judgement ability-- not everyone should be trusted. sometimes one should know when to walk away from the "bad sort", because if everyone was good then judgement ability would be void.
the other obvious clue is that harry's mother basically defeated voldemort through her self-sacrificial love for her son. basically, it was a true love, a -sacrificial- love which wasn't selfish, which gave without taking. ron and sirius display this quality of self-sacrifice as well, though in different ways-- ron did it most clearly in the first book, by being the one to keep playing the chess game even though he might have had to pay the ultimate price.
individualism and the usual hero's creed would say that only the hero should be the one to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good, for whoever he's protecting (let's say, the maiden)-- and yet, it is the people who -love- harry as much as harry himself who keep having to willingly pay a price to protect him.
in fact, it may be this sort of bravery on ron's and hermione's part that has made some people say that -ron- is really "the hero" in hp, because of course it has to be The Hero who sacrifices himself, who is therefore pure and Good. he cannot have -help-. the hero must do it themselves.
harry throws himself into danger in OoTP to rescue sirius, off to be the hero-- and he couldn't (and -doesn't-) really do it alone. everyone gets hurt, everyone pays a price but him, except in that harry's price is to -watch- other people get hurt (and die) because of him, because they believe in him. because they love him.
basically, heroism (in hp, at least) cannot be a one-way street, and neither can love or sacrifice. one -gives- and one accepts and one returns, all in a circle of mutual effects that transforms everyone into heroes. neville is a hero too, just as much as harry is. harry's -existence- and the existence of neville's parents (heroes in their own right) -motivate- neville to be a hero himself. harry motivates ron and hermione as well. harry -inspires- people and people (say, sirius or mr. weasley) inspire harry to protect them, too. they create this circle of protection, of -unity-, a community of people. i think that is the goal, anyway.
that is what -gryffindor- is, too, isn't it? a community of heroes, a house for the brave, where all of the students look out for each other, everyone can be united in a cause. this isn't co-dependence, then, it's interdependence.
i really think that -unity- is what's really the goal of the quest in this story, as well as self-realization-- you could even say that the goal is self-realization through unity. ron, hermione and harry -need- each other for balance-- they have such different and yet complementary qualities, don't they. hermione has the logic and the base of knowledge, ron has the strategy and the loyalty, harry has the drive and the raw power and the connectiveness to bind them all. they work as a team, each contributing different elements to create a whole-- and clearly, this should work on a larger scale of gryffindor house and hogwarts as well before success could be achieved.
so draco may very well be set up as the last piece of the puzzle-- as the slytherin aspect of the unity that is needed to balance hogwarts so that it can withstand attack. of course, this is what
ivyblossom had said in her brilliant post about draco's redemption. but this isn't really talking about why would harry -need- love, need this connection, whether with draco or somewhere else, in order to achieve his goal.i would say draco, myself, because i think there is potential there for him completing a circuit, being that last balancing factor harry needs to come to terms with before he's ready to face voldemort without fear (the slytherin factor, basically). but really, the question of why would harry need love easily extends and flows from the more general question of why does -any- individual need love to succeed in their lives, and how could they remain an individual while acknowledging this.
mostly, without love, i think, the whole quest of heroic sacrifice and the entire grand struggle to survive and even -live- becomes meaningless, and this is precisely what voldemort doesn't understand. he thinks surviving alone is important, the mere act of beating death-- whereas harry has to realize that it's not the mere -living- that's important, not the question of who lives or dies, him or voldemort, but the -connections- one makes that makes life -worth- living, and that those connections aren't something death can ever fully take away from you. they will always be able to help guide you, always give you strength and perhaps, in ways, protect you-- just like lily's sacrifice and love live on in harry.
in hp as well as in life, in my opinion, love can never be a weakness, in the end, and you can never be better off without it. that sort of thinking leads one down the path voldemort took. love is ultimately the only strength-- the thing that makes an act of -sacrifice- into just a reflection of one's heart, and perhaps within this unity, finally, it isn't a sacrifice at all, but actually victory itself.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-18 12:31 am (UTC)There's a great deal of emphasis on "heart" -- love and compassion -- in this type of story: Harry's love for his friends, Frodo's compassion for Gollum, Luke's compassion for Vader and his love for his friends. That's their strength and it leads to their victory. And it's Vader's acceptance of Luke's love that leads to his redemption. But it's not romantic love -- I don't know how things will turn out for Harry, but Frodo and Luke -- alone.
But then, I just saw Matrix Reloaded again and there, in a more adult story, it *is* romantic love that motivates and sets Neo apart.
We've been shown over and over again how difficult it is for fictional heroes to maintain those relationships, though. Neo's love for Trinity makes him strong, but it also makes him vulnerable. He clearly cares more about her than about anybody -- and everybody. Hurt her and you hurt him.
A big part of Spider-Man is how difficult it is for him to maintain normal relationships while being a superhero. It's not just the danger factor, it's the lifestyle. Unless your significant other is also your sidekick, how can you make it work? I'm just watching Peter and MJ getting back together now and so wanting it to last and sort of knowing that it can't, really.
Romantic love *is* about making yourself vulnerable, but to the object of your love, not to your enemies. And therein lies the problem.
I think, fictionally speaking, friendship gives the hero stability, while romantic love is chaotic.
I'm not sure if this even makes any sense, but I'm up too late. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-08-18 01:02 am (UTC)er.
anyway. felt the need to share -.-
yah, i know that romantic love is traditionally chaotic (and thus "dangerous") rather than stabilizing like friendship would be-- i mean, the people who say that harry's better off without it aren't -complete- morons-- but even so, i felt i needed to fight against it. fight the worthy fight, y'know?
i wasn't saying that harry should/would end up with a romantic interest as his source of strength-- i -reeeeally- don't think that's where the books are going. but. you could easily go there with fanfiction, just add that one not-so-large twist... except if you do believe it's entirely different, i guess it -is- a rather large twist... hmmm...
i think "true love" is stabilizing because it involves this component of -faith- or trust in someone. you're vulnerable, but you are with friendship, too. it's that feeling that romantic love can/would -betray- you more that seems so prevalent, and which i was trying (possibly ineffectively) to combat.
love doesn't betray you, romantic or otherwise-- people can, situations can turn around on you, you can betray yourself-- but romantic love itself? that seems harsh.
especially talking about a -hero's- love, like spiderman or neo (or harry).
this is usually "true" or pure love-- meaning, they really mean it, you know? they're not kidding around, they're pulling out all the stops, they're... 100% loving or whatever. the chaos comes from the obstacles, the risks, the danger of death or betrayal-- but not the mere -stability- factor of the love. what's the likelihood spiderman will ever stop -loving- mj or vice versa? no way, right.
it's like... out of all the quests, out of all the struggles that a human can face, achieving and sustaining love has to be the most important. if a hero cannot manage that, they are not a hero, and their story is a failure. do you know what i mean? the success story only happens once you've achieved your own personal journey beyond the event horizon of the hero's daily struggle. in the end, simply spoken, the hero -has- to "get the girl" or it's all in vain, isn't it?
we have to forge these difficult, chaotic connections, we have to risk it and keep risking it for the rest of our lives, that's the lesson i wish the writers would realize heroes (and people in general) should have to learn. it is chaotic and dangerous and unpredictable, yes-- but it's the only struggle that counts, even for spiderman, i think~:)
no subject
Date: 2003-08-18 02:55 am (UTC)One thing I wanted to clear up -- when you talk about love and Harry, are you talking about Harry *as though he were a real person* or *as a fictional construct*? Because fictional characters have different requirements, as constrained by the medium, than real people. For my part, I'm speaking of the needs of fictional characters, as driven by the story structure.
love doesn't betray you, romantic or otherwise-- people can, situations can turn around on you, you can betray yourself-- but romantic love itself? that seems harsh.
I don't think that love is a pure essence that you can separate from the people or situations that it involves. Love doesn't betray you because love doesn't do *anything*. It's a label for the way those people and those situations are related.
I was pondering this more after I posted before and I think that in the fictional construct, the hero's story, romantic love is only de-stabilising if it's introduced after the story begins. If the hero starts off married -- and I think that marriage is important here -- then that's a stabilising factor.
Otherwise, though, romantic love is seen more as a prize to be attained, usually as a reward for completing the quest. We expect that tension to only be fully relieved at the end of the story. So, how to work it into the story for Harry without it breaking the story arc and giving readers a sense that something is out of place?
out of all the quests, out of all the struggles that a human can face, achieving and sustaining love has to be the most important
I'm reminded of an article I read back when I was at uni, called "Heroes and Their Pals". (Don't have the author's name to hand.) It was about the ancient story paradigm of hero and sidekick -- it used the examples of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, David and Jonathan, and Achilles and Patroklus. One of the things that struck me was that the pair was very close, but that at the end of the story, the sidekick always died. That doesn't happen so much any more.
Heroes have to work outside of society in order to protect society. But now, in fiction, we're seeing heroes more and more often creating their own society for support -- Buffy is a really good example of that. Instead of working alone, she creates herself a support network of friends and family, still outside of society, but not outside of *her* society.
And that's what Harry is beginning to do. One of the most significant moments on Buffy was at their high school graduation where not just Buffy and not just her friends, but every student in the school joined together to fight. I hope we see the same thing at Hogwarts.
As you said in the original post (or I think you did!), there's a certain sense of completion in Harry/Draco -- like Draco is the missing element, the last piece that has to click in before everything starts to work. I'll have to think about that some more.
And now, I'll try to sleep again.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-18 12:06 pm (UTC)in fairytales and legends, the hero is motivated by the search for lost romantic love often enough-- in the arthurian legends, for instance.
i don't tend to think stories necessarily on their own terms... i mean, i have my problems with them, and they can't always be resolved by thinking of some examples of how it "should" be. i mean, in this case i was wondering why fanfic writers would say harry should win alone, that his relationship to draco is somehow a weakness and a distraction to him-- and of course this ties in with how harry as a character was intended to work (as a boy, as a gryffindor, as the friend of ron & hermione, as someone who hadn't -had- many people he knew loved him, as someone who hadn't fallen in love yet, etc), how heroic characters in general develop and the role of love in general and self-sacrificial love in the hp books in particular.
i guess i like mixing and matching my reference points until it's all a bit confusing, probably. in the hp books, i don't think harry is supposed to win alone, but i don't think he's got room for romantic love, -necessarily-, though his thing with cho showed that it's just -cho- that seems vapid and superfluous not that harry wouldn't want someone who -did- understand him and could help him make sense of things. at this point, he's 14-- the ideal of romantic love isn't that different from friendship at this point, except for some stray snogging-- there's just more awkwardness, more ritualistic behavior and more misunderstandings.
all in all, i think the best heroes are normal people with normal concerns that really matter to them, not all-focused evil-fighting machines or anything. i mean, harry in particular i think is meant to be a "normal boy" and incidentally a hero-- not a pure archetype. so in the context of hp, and in the context of his age, i think romantic love isn't all that chaotic-acting given that he finds the right person to balance him. and i'm saying this in a -mixture- of taking harry as a "real person" and a character in a book and a representative of a class of heroes in similar stories.
i do see your point that in heroic quests and fairy tales, romantic love is the prize, a goal that comes into fruition only at the end. i mean, sidekicks and comrades are one thing, but your princess is the background motivation to eventually rescue or woo or convince you're not a dork once you stop being distracted by fighting back the dark forces. i mean, cho seemed rather vapid to harry partly because her reaction to the dark forces was so... normal, non-heroic. i mean, she just cried and cried like a girl, while harry had to -deal- with it.
that's why i think that hero/sidekick or hero/anti-hero pairings are so interesting. what if the love interest of the hero is someone involved in the struggle, someone who's already part of the story? this happens in modern stories-- inter-hero love affairs like in the x-men, in x files, in buffy. in terms of harry potter, harry/draco definitely does that. in the books, it -might- happen-- for instance, harry/luna or harry/ginny would be co-fighter pairings at this point, i think, though not really balanced like h/d could be.
So, how to work it into the story for Harry without it breaking the story arc and giving readers a sense that something is out of place?
this is really the main question i was trying to ask with the essay, because i feel that the fanfic that bothered me answered it so insufficiently~:)
dropping romantic love like a hot potato doesn't seem to be the answer, you know?