HBP - Chapter 9 The Half Blood Prince

[cheeringcharm]

Chapter 9 - The Half Blood Prince or Harry's first day of classes, year six

There's no need to call me 'sir,' Professor." Ah, probably the best line of the series - definitely the highlight of this chapter. We are greeted with the requisite trip to the Great Hall for breakfast, Ron's bad table manners and McGonagall inexplicably setting schedules

Comments

Hermione's Misdevelopment Part 1

[euterpe5]

The closest example to innovation I can find is Hermione's use of the Protean charm, which is actually adapting Voldemort's use back to the original, text-book use, as far as I can tell. Hermione may be bright, but she's a book learner, and always has been. I find HBP!Hermione's opinion on the Prince's book to be fully consistent with Hermione's tendency to be a stickler to the rules.

Yes, this is Hermione, but this is an earlier version of the character who has been shown (sporadically, because the author doesn't employ consistent development) to be growing out of her inflexible stick-to-the-rules 11-12 year-old-self. Hermione in GoF blatantly ignored the rules to assist Harry in the TWT, not only that but she employed great abstract thinking skills in discovering Rita Skeeter's secret identity (we also have an example of this kind of thinking in CoS when she discovered how the basilisk was getting around the school.) She properly analyzed Harry’s ‘people-saving-thing’ in OoP, Umbridge’s true intent from her waffling speech and ignored the rules, quite blatantly throughout that book as well.

IMO, the HBP Hermione is just another in a continuous stream of examples of JKR not playing fair with her readers. The natural development of the character would have been to extrapolate from previous character behaviors and events to give the appearance of a logically developed individual. Hermione has just been through the most traumatic situation of her life. She saved Harry’s life and had him save hers as they worked in tandem in the MoM. She could have been irreparably damaged or killed. She knows that V is back and that the war has started, Sirius was killed. These are very heavy conditions to drop in the lap of a 15-year-old. For her to still be going spare over OWL scores at the Burrow when people are dying is not logical for Hermione. For her to go back to her 11-year-old “you’re breaking the rules” self is regressive.

The biggest hitch in all of this is that Rowling has drawn Hermione close enough our general perceptions of her (ie, her 11-year-old self ) that it is very easy to take all these aberrant behaviors as “looking enough like Hermione” to pass.

This entire mess seems to stem from JKR’s need to force these characters (which worked in previous volumes) into a prescribed plot that cannot accommodate them the way they were written. Adjustments have had to be made to force them into the behaviors that will move the plot forward. The book feels terribly off because instead of adjusting two secondary characters like she did in OoP, she now has major characters needing alterations.

Part 2 continues...

Re: Hermione's Misdevelopment Part 1

[cadesama]

I'm not going to go through point by point, because very simply, I think that JKR has been representing intelligence badly for years. I don't think she does a good job of showing intellect through anything other than achievements, and I think the few behavioral examples we have of Hermione show her using deductive reasoning, not inductive. The basic problem of it for me stems from the fact that several supposedly intelligent characters are in fact rules by their emotions all of the time. Snape is the best example of this, although I think Hermione is a more egregious one. Snape, at least, has the benefit of being totally screwed up. Hermione is not supposed to be an insecure mess who barely functions -- yet, the way she behaves and disregards reason, you would think that she is. That more than anything is what makes me believe her behavior is consistent in HBP. Is it intelligent? No. But Hermione often lets her emotions rule her life, despite her desperate attempts not to and to see herself in a different way.

Re: Hermione's Misdevelopment Part 1

[cadesama]

Right. Strike that assertion about not responding on all parts.

Hermione has always defied the rules to help Harry. It's nothing new in GoF, and I think her need to be useful always outweighs the need to stick to the rules, but that they both tie into her insecurity about her self-worth. She did good with the Skeeter thing, I admit, but I don't think she has consistently displayed that level of reasoning before or after than incident. I don't think analyzing Umbridge's speech is on that level, because the only required for that is to actually listen, something that all of the other characters were far too bored to do. I think she is dead wrong about Harry's "saving-people-thing" -- or, at least, that since we never learn what she meant by that, we can't know if she's right. However, she doesn't say "you have this thing where you assume that the world is out to get you and that no one can or will help you, so you feel that you are the only on who can fix things", which would have been far more accurate than "saving-people-thing", imho.

This entire mess seems to stem from JKR’s need to force these characters (which worked in previous volumes) into a prescribed plot that cannot accommodate them the way they were written.

I think the problem is just the opposite. The intelligent behavior of the so-called smart characters is not contingent on the characters, but whether the plot needs them to be smart. I don't think the plot is what makes them dumb. I think the only displays we ever see of their intelligence are the ones forced by the needs of the plot. Otherwise, JKR would rely solely on telling us that characters are smart via their "achievements." I agree, though, that because of this sort of thing Hermione hasn't developed much in the books. Except for her tendency to break rules when she feels she's justified, I'd say she's exactly the same as she was in PS/SS, actually.

Re: Hermione's Misdevelopment Part 1

[cheeringcharm]

The intelligent behavior of the so-called smart characters is not contingent on the characters, but whether the plot needs them to be smart. I don't think the plot is what makes them dumb. I think the only displays we ever see of their intelligence are the ones forced by the needs of the plot.

In JKR's world, the plot drives the characters instead of the characters driving the plot. I mentioned an example of this involving DD in the Chapter 3 discussion. Bear with me, I know you hate DD talk. ;) I won't go into the details in hopes that you remember, but the same plot objectives could have been achieved if JKR had sat in front of her computer and thought "What would this character do?" instead of, "How can I make sure that Dursley knows about Harry's inheritance so I can use it in the next book."

This entire book was plot driven and the characters suffer for it.

Re: Hermione's Misdevelopment Part 1

[cadesama]

Oh, I'm willing to believe that Dumbledore only mentioned the inheritance so that JKR can move the plot along. His character is entirely based around things that the plot forces him to do or not do, shoddily covered up by the occasionally witticism -- which is a large part of why I hate him so much

I think that this book did suffer more than the others from being plot driven more than character. I think she edited it to death, and just tried to move things along. But, I think this has been her weakness all along, in all of the previous books.

Re: Hermione's Misdevelopment Part 1

[euterpe5]

This entire book was plot driven and the characters suffer for it.

I agree wholeheartedly. Very little in this book rings true because both themes and characters were compromised to fit The Plot.

Nia