Why Harry Potter is not a hero

[classicdrogn]

If one were to compare the overall conflict against Voldemort within the books to a trick archery shot, the components become clear. Voldemort is the target, Dumbledore the archer, Hogwarts the bow, and the Golden Trio are the arrow. For an arrow to fly true, it requires a weighted arrowhead to keep momentum, fletching to cause just enough drag to keep it on track, and a shaft to separate the two and lengthen the moment arm so they don't destabilize it by their own contrary natures. Hermione is then the obvious head, Ron the drag, and Harry gets the shaft. Of the three, I'd call Hermione most heroish, really.

Given that the arrow did strike bullseye after passing through various turbulence and obstacles, an archer making the shot could be called a hero, probably even more since he dropped dead while it was still in flight, but since the arrow was, in fact, human beings rather than scraps of wood and metal, he is a monster, and no less so than Voldemort who also twisted and seduced others into his service. Possibly more so since Voldemort did so with at least some form of consent on their parts, but that is offset by the general torture and murder perpetrated by Tom and his minions.

As for the Trio... who cheers for the arrow? Who mourns if it breaks on impact, so long as the strike was true? Harry was the viewpoint character, so we as the readers are coerced in a way into caring, but since I can't condone cheering the archer, nor the target, and least of all the crowd who stood by and watched, it should be no surprise that it requires major enough changes to the events that the last two or three books are invalidated and the above paradigm with them for me to enjoy an HP story.

- CD, Yeah, I know, it's been chewed over already, but it just kind of came together in the archery metaphor this afternoon and I wanted to share it

ETA: The above also explains why I feel the RW/HG couple would go nowhere, now that I think about it.

ETA2: You could even make an argument for Snape as the bowstring, pulled taught between two opposing points and used to drive the arrow forward by the power of that tension.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Wiregeek]

a) I cannot fault your logic or reasoning.

b) wat
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[classicdrogn]

I'm assuming your 'wat' is for Snape as the bowstring - breaking it down:

1st yr) Harry & co are convinced he's the one after the Philosopher's Stone, they end up in harm's way to save it from him

2nd yr) not actually involved save in continuing the general pressure of his antagonism directly and as encouragement for Draco & co.

3rd yr) foils the plan to get Peter captured and Sirius exonerated, and potentially able to warp the arrow

4th yr) back to general harassment

5th yr) mental torture in the name of occlumency lessons, which by all description were counterproductive if anything. Also took a long damn while to get a message to anyone else about the expedition to the Ministry - knocking Harry's fathwer off the pedestal in his mind might or might not really count as something more than his normal petty hostility

6th yr) took part in Albus's staged death scene, and between taunting and the spell selection in his duel while fleeing afterward ensured that Harry would fight the death eaters to get at him as much as Voldy

7th yr) kept things as calm as possible at Hogwarts, delivered the sword to the Trio, served up a set of memories as he died to wipe out any sense of satisfaction at being done with one of his enemies and focus Potter sharply on the remaining one, namely Voldemort, and thinking of his parents and the possibiliy of finally meeting with them when he went to be killed as insurance against chickening out - after all, as long as the horcruxes were destroyed anyone could kill Tom, and there was even a second candidate to dill the prophesy by doing so in Neville.

Note that I'm not saying that impelling Harry & co was neccesarily Snape's motivation, nor that he aggreed with the position - if anything, he's even more a victim of Albus-as-the-archer than Harry & freinds.

It's not as strong as the rest, but that's why it was an afterthought, I suppose.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Wiregeek]

No, No, I get it, I actually agree with pretty much everything, but I'm still firmly in whatland. I've never seen someone other than me take this tack.

In retrospect to the original HP series, both Voldemort and Dumbledore are scum - but you're the first person I've seen take it logically out from there.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Jinx999]

Meh. Harry may have been manipulated and shaped by Dumbledore, but he did make his own decisions and chose to oppose Voldemort.
The way your analogy breaks down is that arrows don't have free will or agency. I do shoot them for a hobby and while they've got a habit of not going where you want them to, I'd never accuse an arrow of being sulky or over eager or gullible.
Let's see what happens if we apply the same argument to other works of fiction.
Frodo is not a hero because he was sent by Gandalf.
Luke is not a hero because he was sent by Obi-Wan.
Nope - not getting this argument at all.

[dark seraph]

I used to read the Harry potter books... till I gave up on the series about 50 pages into the 6th book, but the main think I remembered is that there was always some pointing Harry in the right derection.
The boy never really seemed to figure out much on his own unless some one (in some cases, the villain of the book) pointed it out to him.
Dosn't sound much like hero material to me.

[classicdrogn]

Huh. A ghostly white owl just dropped this off in my inbox. Perhaps someone is displeased?



Anyway - I dunno about Frodo, because by the time I picked up the LotR books I'd read too many derivatives and they fell flat so I didn't finish them - but Luke is a hero not because he followed Kenobi off on 'some damn-fool idealistic crusade"after his aunt and uncle got killed, but because he decided to go rescue the Princess when all they really had to do was wait until the tractor beam was disabled and flee the Death Star, because he'd wanted to fight the Empire's tyranny all along and took the chance when it appeared, because he took the risk and followed the advice only he could here to pull the fat out of the fire at the last minute as the Death Star came in range of Yavin 5, because he still stuck with the Rebellion when the Imperial Fleet chased them to Hoth, because he went out on a limb again to follow a hallucination and put himself even more in the Emeror's crosshairs by getting trained as a Jedi, because he went into Jabba's Palace to rescue Han, because he went to face the Emperor on the second Death Star to keep him occupied until the attack came in... because even if there were people offering these courses to him, he was the one choosing to act, and how to act, and striving to succeed. Harry just coasts unless he has no other choice, and the only times he moved on his own were to scurry down the habitrails Dumbledore had assembled for him or at the prompting of his prosthetic brain, aka Hermione, when Ron didn't talk him into slacking instead.

- CD, just fixed six "becasue" typos... that's as bad as it is with "oguh"-es
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[RomanFanboy]

Full disclosure:  I like the Harry Books, find them well enough executed, and think that they work for me.
Of course Harry is a Hero.  Isn't he an ancient Hellenic warrior of either chiefly rank or high effectiveness?
More seriously, your argument breaks down for me on several points.
I perceive that Harry consistently made decisions that either set him on the path, or provided adequate evidence of consent.  'Staying with the Dursleys full time', 'Apathy towards who killed his parents and tried to do in him', 'having no interest in magic', 'joining the Death Eaters and like factions', 'assuming that Voldemort is entirely dead, not coming back, and that doing anything is hence meaningless' and 'give up and go hide' may look like bad alternatives from our perspective, but they do exist.
There is the issue of whether it is plausible for Dumbledore to have predicted and planned the whole sequence of events.  I tend not to find it so.  While a fanfic might convince me differently for its own specific case, I am inclined to think it that for the original books, the mess was a combination of happenstance, bad guy incompetence, and some good guy choices with personal selection and training that worked out well, and that were at least partly outside of the scope of Dumbledore's control.  You bringing up the issue raises the question in my mind of whether Rowling intended the Hand of Providence as a possible explanation.
When I set the above two variables to match with your assumptions, I run into issues with potentially differing definitions of monster, potentially differing criteria for appropriate levels of coercion when using people and appropriate ages*, and potentially differing criteria for who and what I am willing to cheer for.
I have my differences with Rowling, however, this line of argument does not seem strong enough to me to make discussing these relevant.  (I have differences with a great many people.  Discussing them to the degree I keep track of them would waste all my time.)
Then there is the whole Voldemort is the Hero line of thought.  The Harry Potter books are the story of how the otherwise potentially successful Tom Riddle is destroyed by his Tragic Flaw of being entirely too crazy to function in normal society.  They can be considered a Classical Tragedy, to be appreciated as a Classical Tragedy, and not in the way of a Comedy or some other thing.
*The serious line of argument starts with noting that Nanoha destroyed for me the concept of a universal minimum military age, and then rapidly leaves the scope of this discussion.  The silly argument is that some cultures have a military age of ten or so, and you don't want to be a Racist, do you?

[Herr Bad Moon]

Harry just coasts unless he has no other choice, and the only times he moved on his own were to scurry down the habitrails Dumbledore had assembled for him or at the prompting of his prosthetic brain, aka Hermione, when Ron didn't talk him into slacking instead.

Except for saving Ginny Weasley.
---
Jon
"And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"

[robkelk]

I perceive that Harry consistently made decisions that either set him on the path, or provided adequate evidence of consent.  'Staying with the Dursleys full time', 'Apathy towards who killed his parents and tried to do in him', 'having no interest in magic', 'joining the Death Eaters and like factions', 'assuming that Voldemort is entirely dead, not coming back, and that doing anything is hence meaningless' and 'give up and go hide' may look like bad alternatives from our perspective, but they do exist.

When Harry's options are "do what Dumbledore wants him to do" or "do something worse than that," is he really making his own choices?

You may be going somewhere if you ride the railroad, but you aren't setting your own path...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Acyl]

I can't say I'm a huge Potter fan, though I like the franchise well enough. With that caveat...though I've got some issues with Rowling's writing, I've actually always liked the idea that her characters make mistakes. And there's a lot of 'em. Voldemort, Dumbledore, Harry, everyone makes questionable decisions and screws up. Sometimes pretty badly.
Dumbledore, for instance, is often characterised as a master manipulator and a bumbling fool by fans. I suspect he's meant to be both. It's more interesting that way, don'tchaknow? On the same token, Voldemort can be both an extremely sinister grand villain, yet at the same time very stupid.
With that in mind, who is the hero? ClassicDrogn makes a good point that our views of Harry are inextricably influenced by the fact he is the viewpoint character, and there's always a certain amount of bias invoked in the reader. After all, you're literally seeing things from his point of view. Mind, I don't actually think Rowling is the sort of author to deliberately make use of that - she's no Kazuo Ishiguro, where the reality of things is deliberately quite different from what the perspective character thinks and feels - but it's a fun discussion.
Addendum:- Regarding Hermoine as having hero characteristics - I've often considered the idea of a HP fanfic where a Slytherin Harry, influenced or overcome by Voldie's soul fragment, is the villain...with Hermoine and her friends spending their years in Hogwarts trying to thwart his nefarious plots...
-- Acyl

[Necratoid]

I have to disagree with the basic premise on multiple levels... For one, a hero is not inherently expendable.  Yes, they (mostly) all die... but that is about being mortal, not a hero specifically.  Heroes aren't one task wonders by defeault.  Villagers are dying in those tales all the time.  This makes them victums not heros.  Villains die all the time... this doesn't make them heroic... it makes the casualties.  Being a casualty doesn't make you instantly heroic... it makes you injured and or dead.  The idea that dying makes them the Hero is stupid.  Its the fact they can actually die doing their deeds.  That they risk everything against (difficultly level varies) odds.  To be a hero you have to risk things you don't have to to accomplish things.  Things that are actually yours/the Hero's to risk... risking these kind of things you don't need to... for the benifit of others... is part of being heroic.  Risk and losing things that aren't yours isn't inherently heroic.  Its not a real sacrifice if you 'sacrifice' things that aren't yours in the first place.  Going into a random house and 'sacrificing it' to the fire gods is not sacrifice... its arson.  Thus Its not a 'sacrifice'... its a mockery of a 'sacrifice'... Its a 'Sacroflyce!'
I also disagree with the premise that you are actually firing an arrow in the example.  Ammo (the theoretical 'arrow')as you describe.it (Head, Shaft, Fletchings) is NOT and arrow at all... that would be a bolt.  A bolt can't be fired from an bow without being stupid and wrong about it.   Arrows also have Notches... Bolts have no notch.  They are flat on that end and the crossbow smacks them and they get propelled forwards... If we use your 'arrow' analogy Dumbledore is the notch on the 'arrow'... the force tying Harry to the target.  Setting him on his path.  The force that makes him forward is Hogwarts... the string.  The bow are his friends and pseudo-family and such... the archer the Wizarding World as a whole.... as the 'Archer' is the 'Hero'.... and they had to acquire a Macguffin (a Harry Potter shaped one) to fire at the target.  They didn't own 'Harry Potter' they by and large confiscated him.  They tricked him into coming there so he would solve their problems for them.  Look at how the press (and the populous in general in response to the press) treated him and you'll know he was an outsider to the Wizarding World as a whole... he wasn't a real person to them.  He was a tool that was there to fill a role... he was a celebrity to fill pages of the scandle sheets and the sometimes the Quibbler.  Also, to sell books he wouldn't get a percentage off.
What the Wizarding World did its best to get was a 'Tragic Hero'... the kind of expendable 'SacroFlyce!' your talking about.  Harry Potter was just that... a Tragic Hero.  Until the day he first showed up in Diagon Alley.  Then he was a public spectical... they eventually tried to make him a (tragic) 'Hero' again.  The entire surrviving the 7th book thin makes the Wizarding World fail at this goal.  So Harry isn't a 'SacrFlyce!' despite large amounts of effort on the WW's side.
That Harry didn't just leave and/or get the English military to carpet bomb those idiots and worse... that he did Final Death the genocidal maniac... that he saved the day from things that were largely ignored by the cops and the government (if not inflicted)... is what makes Harry Potter a Hero.  That he managed to only go emo and screw up his romanic life and learned to hate the general populous (like a fairly normal teenager)and still saved them.  Thatis what makes him heroic.  Harry Potter is a Hero for saving the Wizarding World despite itself.

[RomanFanboy]

robkelk,

I think that the level of summary you are using conceals some distinctions that

define spaces where my possible choices have more meaning than you describe.

Space one is in first year. Cast your mind back to that part of the story.

Next, remove from the working part of your mind the knowledge that we have as those who

have read the book, that Riddle is going to come back, and will try to kill Harry.

Also remove the perspective that we have as readers, that tells us essentially the same

thing from hints. (We've read some number of books, and know that few published

writers outside of the mystery genre are likely to fail to follow up on some of these

hints.)

It may be that I am misremembering things, but Harry, prior to Hogwarts seems

to have been closely supervised, and motivated in his activities mainly by threats. On

coming to Hogwarts, it seems to me that that it requires some time and effort for him

to collect the information making it clear that there is a problem, and that it cannot

be safely left to other people to solve. A kid that keeps their head down, discounts


the more bizarre things out of adults as being crazy talk, does the bare minimum and

thinks 'not my problem' whenever something comes up that is not explicitly required of

them might be reasonable for a background like Harry's. Given that Harry is not like

this, I am forced to consider that, despite Rowling's intentions, the Dursleys were a

positive environment for him in canon, if they somehow managed to instill in him the

values that caused him to make the choices that got him to the point in the first book

where failing to act seemed stupid. It is probably going too far to say that in Canon,

Vernon was a positive role model for Harry, but I certainly see a lot of actual choices

in book one, even if they are the hidden sort of choices.

The other space relates to fight or flight reaction decisions. I'm not talking

strictly about flight or flight, but about decisions made and acted on in response to

threats in particularly difficult trying or circumstances. Freezing up, refusing to

believe, or simply being unable to process things in a timely manner counts as a

decision. Realistically, many of these decisions end up being made poorly in the real

world, at least according to my criteria.

I have firm opinions on what constitutes a good decision in such circumstances,

but there is ample room for philosophical differences on the specifics. Myself, I do

not have any great certainty of making the correct decision if I ended up in a position

where I would need to. Whatever I may decide I should do while here in my comfortable

seat, if it comes down to it, the flesh is weak.

Some definitions of hero involve classification of these sorts of decisions.

Regulus and Horatio One-Eye, The Birkenhead, some incidents from that Hienlein

Survival/Morality essay...

The point is that even with preparation, people regularly screw up this sort of

decision and make a choice that they would know was stupid, if they had time without

pressure to think. Without preparation and foresight, the error rate grows much worse.

(Think about the the reduction in accidents and injuries caused by following safe

procedure for powered equipment like table saws. Also remember that a person can

operate a table saw for decades, being an expert woodworker, and still accidentally maim

themselves when neglecting safe practice. This sort of equipment is predictable enough

to allow easily teachable safety practices to be developed.) The most generic example

of this type of error that I can give is panic, or paralysis caused by emotional

response to the situation.

In Harry Potter, while errors occur when this sort of decision is made, they do

not happen at the rate I would expect given the levels of preparation shown. Given the

relative rates of both, I tend to chalk the errors made to the humanity of Rowling's

characters, and look at the successes for evaluating for certain measures of heroism.

For me, the only really irritating aspect of Harry Potter is that I am

sometimes left with a strong urge to pound Navier-Stokes into Mr. Weasley's head.

[Necratoid]

For me, the only really irritating aspect of Harry Potter is that I am sometimes left with a strong urge to pound Navier-Stokes into Mr. Weasley's head.

Too late... a knight piece did that at the end of the first book.  Which is rumored to be his main issue... Ron's big flaw moment in the first book is when he taunted Hemione and she ran off into the bathroom.  Ron didn't say anything he wouldn't have said to one of his siblings.  Herminone was too stressed and to under socialize to shrug that off.  Then he has a noble sacrifice moment at the end of the first book.  I'm in the camp of those who think Ron got a 'eh, close enough' type response from the school nurse.  It would explain a lot if the WW never did detailed research on concussions and head injures.

[RomanFanboy]

Necratoid,

By Mr. Weasley, I meant Arthur. You know, the guy who keeps on asking why

airplanes fly, and making those comments that an overly sensitive scientist or

industrialist could take as insulting?

Navier-Stokes is a set of equations that describe fluid flow. I have vague and

unreliable memories of deriving Bernoulli from them. That said, if you can work with

Navier-Stokes, excepting the thermodynamics/heat transfer of the engine, the basic

mechanics of flight are easy enough to learn.

In hindsight, Arthur is not as annoying now as when I was younger. Since when

I was reading Harry Potter heavily, I've found real people, with real power (for good or for ill),

who are apparently appallingly ignorant about an area (thermodynamics/heat transfer) that

I have a better grounding in than I do flight.

Arthur has the excuse of possibly never having been exposed to math or science,

much less anything like having passed an accredited university curriculum. The other

situation can get me into a frothing rage when I let myself.

[classicdrogn]

Not to derail the thread, but the idea that airplanes fly by the Bernoulli effect is actually something of a minor peeve for me - yes, it can produce a minor amount of lift (if you don't have a symmetrical airfoil, like any military or aerobatic aircraft) but mostly those shapes are abou avoiding drag - an airplane flys because the shape of the wing, angle it's traveling at relative to the air, or both, make it push the air down from the bottom and behind it, and good old Equal & Opposite Reaction pushes the airplane up in return. How else could a paper airplane, or one of those dollar-store balsa wood rubber band powered kits fly? For Arthur, I'd tell him to stick his hand out flat to one side while riding a broomstick, and play with cupping his fingers to see how the air pushes it up and down. IRL, you can do the same thing from a car window at 35-40 mph - doing this is how I learned to visualise the way my RC airplane would react. There was an essay I wrote for an English Composition class on the topic titled "Learning to Fly" that I really regret losing with one of the computer failures six or eight years back.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

I think you always have to remember that it is basically illegal for Mr. Weasley to own books on the subject.  His most constant enemy is Malfoy Sr... who has the Fudge on a shiny, shiny leash.  Aurthur's job is  policing muggle items that get enchanted... Ignoring his flying car...  if he starts talking about things like he understands them thourghly... he is doomed to get fired.  He has far too large a group of dependants to allow that.  I always got the impression that Misuse of Muggle Artifacts is a new department.  One created after Sirius enchanted his motorcycle.  He mostly deals with *air quote* Pranks *air quote*... that are played by Malfoy's peers.  It makes idiots consider the issue resolved, while letting it continue unabated.  That department is all about cover ups not stopping the misuse in the first place.  Wizards get small fines... Muggles get mind raped for the criminal act of not being magic users.  There may be something about keeping secrets in there as well.
For all we know Aurther does actually knows this stuff... its just politically unviable for him to actually admi it... consider he spent months living out of the same house as Hermione and apparently never asked her any questions.

[Proginoskes]

Given the flying car, I'd say Arthur Weasley isn't too concerned with observing the letter of the law. In view of that, and the fact that he is (presumably) literate in the English language and "Muggle Artifacts" aren't "misused" until they're enchanted, I'd say that either his apparently boundless ignorance is a spot where Rowling derped, or he's actively baiting Muggleborns into teaching him by pretending to be stupider than he is. In the latter case, Arthur probably has a hidden bookcase somewhere filled with engineering books.

I like how Rowling lets her protagonists make mistakes. I strongly dislike how, in Ron Weasley's case at least, they make one mistake over and over again. Seriously, the boy simply never grows up!

[Necratoid]

Its not the letter of the law that is the issue... its the politics of his job that are.  I'm agreeing with you... that does sound like a smart plan and the background evidence is there for it.  I'm still thinking Ron got improper brain care... though a lot is him being from a large family... things are just different from a personal interaction perspective.with that background.  Ron also acts his age... he just never had deal with many forced to grow up moments like the others.  People forget that of all of them... Ron is the normal one.  Harry is forced to grow up, he wouldn't live through puberty otherwise.  Hermione is one of those kids too smart to interact with those her age.
Also, Herminone never seems to really get sociology.  Look at how she handles the house elves.  Basically brute force and trickery... looking at the 'Why?' of things of this nature is beyond her.
Rowling actually does a good job of making a self involved society in decline.  I have to give credit there.  Between all the wars and habitual below replacement rate breeding levels... you have to wonder how many mud bloods are the result of edited from memory encounters.
Also, my main fault is that she wrote and epilogue... then a story to go along with it... then forgot to actually build towards it in the story.

[deadpan29]

This aproach to a post may be violating some sort of internet protocol, but I just read Forging the Sword by Myst Shadow and his author notes tend to sum up many of the issues that bug me about the series. 

"When Voldemort was 16 he was becoming immortal, when his [Harry's] dad was 15 he could already do silent spells, when Snivellus was 16 he was inventing spells and creating new ways of making potions, when Draco bloody Malfoy is 16, not only can he do occulemency, but he made up a plan that lead to the death of one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Heck, even Peter was an animagus when he was what, 15, 16. What the hell is Harry doing?

That's the crux of the matter, isn't it? All this time Harry hasn't tried to better himself, yet he has all these examples of wizards beginning to show greatness at the same age as he. Dumbledore can be added to the list above, remember the O.W.L. examiner said that she saw Dumbledore do things with a wand in his exam that she had never seen before? Harry seems unmotivated and unwilling to work, or even to try to gain anything - power, greatness, or just vengeance on his parent's murderer."

 
Some of this is an issue with the kind of hero Hary is supposed to be and type of heroism that the story is about, but on that subject from a later chapter:

It really doesn't seem like there are a lot of canon ways to use magic to improve yourself, does there? We have all sorts of fanon ideas about occlumency and animagi - and there's brief mention of a 'wit-sharpening potion' in GoF and a 'memory' potion in SS, but JK Rowling seems to have oriented her series less around improvement of self, and more about victory through luck and self-sacrifice.

Not that there's anything wrong with luck and self-sacrifice. But being in a situation where you don't have to rely on them would seem to be the preferable choice.

----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[classicdrogn]

At this cynical hour of the evening, I think the earlier post which suggested Voldishorts is a tragic hero because he wanted to reform the stagnant and degenerating wizarding society but was just too insane to succeed might have been right. It took me three revisions of an attempt at a Mage: The Ascension character to conclude that the WoD was not worth saving and the best end for a character there was to vanish into a pocket reality of their own from Paradox; the more I think about the Potterverse the more the same answer seems to apply. Maybe that's why I can't believe in Harry as a hero in the end analysis, it's not heroic if everything you do was pointless in the end because it just preserves the status quo ante bellum.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[deadpan29]

Again from Myst Shadow

Having reread Deadly Hollows, is anyone else amused by a story and a war - seven books long! - that ends without anything actually being resolved? Blood prejudice is still there. Bias against magical creatures is still there (and likely to get worse, given some creatures' involvement on the side of Voldemort.) Even an inefficent schooling system (hello, Trelawney, Binns) is still there. And as far as we know, a corrupt ministry and judicial system is still there too. It's like Harry spent seven books fighting a war that, in the end, accomplished absolutely nothing. Except for the lives he saved killing Voldemort, of course. But he'll probably be ticked when he has to do it all again in twenty/forty years. Or move to Majorca.
I'm not sure if I admire the realism, or find it incredibly frustrating. Probably both.

----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[zojojojo]

i've kind of been half watching/half ignoring this thread... it's interesting because i'm of 2 minds about it:

1) in a literary sense, harry potter makes a lousy hero... he doesn't train, he barely tries, he really just kind of stumbles through to the end and wins only because he has the devil's own luck and the bad guys seem to have the brains and reasoning skills of a lobotomized worm...

2) in a real sense, harry potter is a hero because he's the poor schlub on the ground who wins against impossible odds because he's good at thinking on his feet and has a good team (hermione) backing him up... he's everyman in a sucky situation who not only tries to survive, but tries to help out of a sense of decency (largely misplaced, with the wizarding world painted the way it is, but hey...). he's the moron who would rush into the collapsed building to help save people and only manage it because his friend followed him and warned him about which areas looked highly unstable (and would be all over the tv afterwards as the hero of the hour)

but that's my 0.02$ ...
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

[RomanFanboy]

At this cynical hour of the evening, I think the earlier post which suggested Voldishorts is a tragic hero because he wanted to reform the stagnant and degenerating wizarding society but was just too insane to succeed might have been right.

I feel this is an incorrect statement.  As far as I can tell, you are talking about me.  My statement about Voldemort being the hero had nothing to do with him otherwise being able to cause societal change.  It was purely about a Hero, in the classical sense, being destroyed by his tragic flaw. 
A) A Classical Hero does not have to be good, moral, fit any criteria derived from Judeo-Christian morality, fit any literary theory, or carry out any societal changes.  Hero was a word used for warrior-chiefs, and mighty or famous warriors, who were likely also aristocrats.
B)  As I recall, a classical tragedy is generally about a successful person of rank, skill, and other positive traits failing as a result of some imperfection or excess of positive trait.
C)  I'm afraid I haven't read enough classical tragedies lately to give a good reading list, or any solid examples of a tragic flaw.  Basically, a tragic flaw is a trait that taken to a certain degree of excess, is capable of utterly destroying an otherwise successful person.
D)  While it comes out in a nonlinear fashion, we get a lot of information about Riddle's life.  We get more about Harry, but we've essentially have the biographies of both.
E)  Therefore, if 'entirely too crazy' is acceptable as tragic flaw, and Riddle's known aptitude is enough to qualify as a Hero, the above explains the justification for 'Riddle as Hero', if you squint enough.  Under this model, Riddle would still be a tragic hero, no matter what he would have done without the flaw, whether mass murder or nothing of consequence.
Regarding youthful talent and Harry's relative lack thereof.  Albus got his position from talent.  Riddle was dangerous and able to avoid being dealt with because of his talent.  James and Severus also got their positions in the plot due to talent.  (James for 'thrice defying' Riddle, and Severus for his ability to pull off high level minioning.)  All over the place in terms of ancestry.  If Harry turned out to have been as talented, aside from the marked by Riddle thing, it would have undermined the whole 'blood is a poor marker for ability' theme.  Draco maybe does undermine that, but that can be understood as a) upbringing and b) having had an unfortunate effect on his personality.  One can understand that maybe Harry is, talent-wise, just an average person stuck in an environment that concentrates the mind wonderfully.
As far as nothing really changed goes:
Does this mean I cannot have a Hero if, in the course of the story I do not 1) Kill off a good sized chunk of the Human population (to hope to eliminate objectionable institutions) or 2) Kill off all of humanity (to eliminate those objectionable factors stemming from human nature)?  I mean, I really don't think I have very many other plausible methods for those goals, and thus have no chance with the convincing the reader to suspend disbelief on anything less.

[classicdrogn]

Honestly, I'm not sure what I meant by that, at this point. I know I wasn't intending to insult or belittle your position, RF - but was very tired and don't see what chains of thought would have produced the statements, aside from the Wizarding World as presented being not worth saving, even if a few of the inhabitants were. It duplicates enough of the flaws of real life for that conclusion to be inevitable.

- CD, would be all for human extinction if not for an exceptional few worthwhile people he's encountered
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows