30 Days of Harry Potter Meme -- Day 7

[kelly_chambliss]

Day 1. Discuss how you got into Harry Potter.

Day 2. Your favorite book

Day 3. Least favorite book.

Day 4. Favorite female character.

Day 5 Favorite male character.

Day 6 Least favorite female character.

Day 7 Least favorite male Character.

For a variety of personal and literary reasons, it's James Potter:

Literary

• He's the least interesting of the Marauders. Obviously, this has something to do with the fact that he never appears as a full character in canon. Not only is he dead, but JKR also has to make sure that he remains a suitably-admirable father for Harry. I liked the way she complicated his character in OoP, but still, he remains underdeveloped.
  
• As readers, we seem to be expected to like and/or admire James on some level (perhaps only because Harry does, and we see things through his eyes), yet the text never gives us any narrative reason to find James appealing. To the best of my memory, the only time we really see James (as opposed to being told about him) is in the "Snape's Worst Memory" scene, and he's pretty unpleasant. (There's the Resurrection Stone walk, too, but that scene is serving so many symbolic and structural functions that it's not really concerned with offering nuanced characterization.)

Personal

• I dislike this sort of arrogant, entitled, swaggering bully

I've read some excellent fanfic that offers a fuller, more fleshed-out and interesting picture of James, but in canon, I just can't find him at all charming.

Many of you on the flist have answered this question with "Dumbledore," and I do understand that; you've given thoughtful, persuasive rationales. But Dumbledore is saved for me because of his fascinating layers, his moral complexity, and the many shades of gray he develops over the course of the books. That doesn't mean I don't find him infuriating and sexist and Machiavellian, of course /g/. But that's why he's so interesting.

Day 8 Thoughts on fanfic.
Day 9 Favorite Hogwarts Professor.
Day 10 Dead character you want to bring back most.
Day 11 House you would be in.
Day 12 Hogwarts subject you would most like to take.
Day 13 Spell you wish you could work without a wand.
Day 14 Thoughts on fanart (+ A favorite fanart).
Day 15 Favorite movie.
Day 16 Least favorite movie.
Day 17 Books vs. films.
Day 18 A part of the books/movies that makes you cry.
Day 19 Favorite 'ship(s).
Day 20 Your favorite villain.
Day 21 Favorite location.
Day 22 Thoughts on wizard rock.
Day 23 Character you think you are most like.
Day 24 Horcruxes vs. Hallows?
Day 25 Something you wish JKR had written about more.
Day 26 Marauders vs. Snape.
Day 27 The Invisibility Cloak, The Resurrection Stone or The Elder Wand.
Day 28 The Next Generation.
Day 29 How have you participated in the fandom over the years?
Day 30 In general, the effects of Harry Potter on your life..

(NB -- I recently saw a Shakespeare version of this "30 Days" meme. I'm really tempted. . .And maybe I can make up a Jane Austen one.)

Comments

[delphi]

You know, while I'm aware it's entirely JKR's doing that the reasons we're supposed to like James aren't explained, this is actually one of the reasons I would be tempted to answer "Harry" for this one. It annoys me to no end that Harry spends seven years among people who knew his family and yet he apparently never asks what his parents did for a living, what happened to his paternal grandparents, or where he was living before his parents died.

I suppose it's a credit to how engaging the books are: it's a weakness on the author's part, and yet I blame the character.

[kelly_chambliss]

Harry's lack of curiosity in those areas is baffling, as is the whole grandparent thing -- why (beyond dramatic expediency) would both sets of grandparents apparently be dead? When James and Lily were killed, at the oldest, the grandparents would have been 60 -- and they could easily have been as young as their early 40s.

It does say something about how real the characters become, that we blame them. I had the same reaction to a series of US girls' books from the 19th century, with a Southern plantation-owner heroine. Motherless, the girl is more or less raised by her black "mammy." When she's in her 20s, her family meets another slave-owning family who happen to own a girl who, it turns out, is Mammy's granddaughter. Here's our supposedly Christian heroine, living a life in which, for many years, her beloved Mammy was her sole companion, yet she never apparently asked about Mammy's history or knew that M. had had a husband, children, etc. Denial is a fascinating thing.

[delphi]

I remember being convinced earlier on in the series that it was going to turn out that either Harry's paternal grandparents had been killed by Voldemort or that they had disowned James for marrying a Muggleborn. But JKR's answer in an interview makes me think they just never occurred to her. Apparently James's parents were very old when they had him, and they both managed to die of a disease sometime between when Sirius went to live with them and Harry's first birthday. I'm sure similarly vague fates are the reason for most of the rest of that generation's disappearance.

I'm always puzzled when JKR is referred to as an amazing world-builder, because in my view that's her weakness as a writer. Timeline mistakes, contradictions, things that just don't make sociological sense... Oh, she's an amazing world-conceiver, but to me, it's a bit like calling someone who paints beautiful cityscapes a master architect. On the one hand, this weakness makes the series prime fodder for fanfiction for those of who love backstory, but on the other, it made for a very frustrating open canon. "What do you mean Dumbledore's only 110—and he's been headmaster since when, even though Remus said—wait, so Molly and Arthur were just a couple of years ahead of James and Lily—so that means Filch has only been caretaker since—agh!"

[kelly_chambliss]

I love your distinction between world-builder and world-conceiver: yes, that's exactly where JKR's strengths and weaknesses lie. I tend to be a date-obsessed person myself, and so the inconsistencies and contradictions get under my skin. (I even check old calendars to make sure that when I cite a date in a story, it corresponds to the correct day of the week for that year. But one can overdo that sort of thing, I suppose.)

I wonder about the many red herrings and dropped plot options in HP -- whether JKR initially planned to do something with them and then decided not to, or whether she just didn't notice them. For instance, when it became clear that McGonagall and Riddle would have been at Hogwarts at the same time, I was convinced that point would be important in DH (especially after HBP, when Harry refused to confide in McG about the Horcruxes -- "of course," I thought, "because she's going to turn out to be a key in finding one of them, so JKR can't let her communicate with Harry just now.") But no. Just another dead-end in the maze.