~~ 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.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-18 08:04 am (UTC)The idea that love is a weakness, I think, comes more from that idea of possession. Yes the good side has a "weakness" in that they care about their members and will possibly hold back if one of them is threatened or held hostage (though not always--Gandalf is not willing to trade Frodo's life for defeat, for instance). But that very thing is obviously the good side's greatest strength. Because the evil side only binds people together through fear they are always less stable. (Voldemort, though, may also hold people through his ideology which can be much more binding.) Lily's sacrifice, imo, does not really fit that description because a mother sacrificing herself for her child is kind of its own thing.
I would very much like to think that Slytherin, as personified by Draco, provided the last balancing force. I'm worried he won't, but I see hope for it all over the place in OotP. Gryffindor boldness is often exactly the wrong way to go. Phineas, imo, was the most refreshing adult character in OotP because he was brutally practical about feelings etc. I've seen fics where one of the things Harry likes about Draco is just what Phineas describes in Slytherin. Phineas says they have courage (we'll leave aside whether Draco has shown any of that yet!) but will always choose to save their own skins. In some H/D fics it's that knowledge that Draco will save his own skin that gives Harry comfort. He knows he's not responsible for Draco.
I do wonder, though, if this is supposed to mean that Slytherins are incapable of self-sacrifice because I just don't think that idea holds water. They appear to be sometimes more capable than most of deferred gratification, working together. Oddly, out of all the characters in the series, so far Draco appears to be the most bound up in another person. Would he knowingly destroy himself for his father? Maybe not. But he might focus all his energy on saving him and just go in with backup. In the end that could easily amount to the same thing. Draco's desires for revenge or honor may not ever make him forget about his instincts for self-preservation, but neither do his instincts for self-preservation keep him from acting on his desires for revenge and honor.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-18 10:51 am (UTC)i wasn't really thinking of draco, this time, except as a component, i think... although this throws a whole new light on the idea. i love the idea that modern ideas of romantic love have more to do with -possession-: that definitely rings very true. binding in a more practical, less spiritual sense, maybe? more capitalist. hee.
and yah, i was just throwing his mother in there because i wasn't entirely talking about romantic love and mixing up all sorts of love together. i want to rebel against the concept that romantic love is different and separate and should be separated out in some sort of love apartheid sometimes, you know? i -know- it's different but... love is love is love, too. they have different flavors, but it's the same basic feeling, isn't it, like fear is fear is fear. people don't have the "romantic love" part of their brain, totally separate from the "familial love", do they?
neither do his instincts for self-preservation keep him from acting on his desires for revenge and honor
i think that's really interesting.
i mean, he -submits- himself when he has to (well, to harry as well as his father), anyway. it's funny because everyone portrays draco as very individualistic and proud-- like he'd never kiss the hem of voldemort 'cause he's such a wild spirit or whatever-- and -that's- what brings him over to harry's side, somehow. but i don't think he -has- got that supposed malfoy pride, though maybe he's supposed to-- i don't think even lucius does, what with his hem-kissing and hem-hawing.
draco acting on his desires for revenge is a tricky thing-- since he fails all the time anyway, he never fully gets to act. who -knows- what he -could- do with a less heroic and powerful hero. hmmm.
well jk rowling probably didn't make him in any way to be separate from harry-- he's like his shadow or something. it's.... as always, a difficult scenario to envision.
i like the question of self-sacrifice for his father. i think i'm sort of addressing that in my h/d fic i'm writing. what would draco -do- for his father-- forget the obvious "joining the death-eaters or not" thing-- what if he knew his father was putting him in danger, or not really caring about his welfare? how strong is his unselfish attachment in the face of his father's selfishness?
hee. i think this reflects on draco's capacity for unselfish love in general, probably, too ~:)