Harry as a character, Part One
Warnings: A bit more toward psychotherapy than I usually get...
The annoying thing about character is that it requires us to understand human beings in general to write good ones. Lots of times in my life, I have written to avoid human beings, not understand them. So although I'm a character-driven writer by most standards, I avoid thinking about that as much as possible.
I've been pondering a few comments I've seen recently on writing, where something is praised for being IC ("in character") or OOC ("out of character.") I personally think that I always write slash in character unless it's crack, but I do remember comments to the contrary. Nor can I disagree, owing to the nature of the internet medium. In my experience, disagreeing on character requires raised voices, and ultimately, waving hands. Sometimes people getting excited or upset and dropping books, or even throwing them. And an emphatic, firm voice saying, over and over, "You don't understand! He wouldn't do that!" who might, or might not, be the author.
Still, I haven't posted on the craft for awhile, so here's a thought experiment: Who, precisely, is Harry Potter, as canon constructs him? What can we be reasonably sure canon Harry requires when we take him on as an adult character?
One truth: people change.
Another: We carry our childhoods around inside us.
Do you have the personality you had at 10? Do you still stumble making friends with people of the opposite gender, wonder how to talk to people from halfway across the world, forget to write thank you notes, wear the colour red to the exclusion of anything else? Do you sleep with your old blanket?
I like hanging out with adult!Harry because in fact he has changed from childhood. JKR, who regardless what you might say of her writing, is highly observant concerning growth stages,takes Harry through some of those changes as we watch.
At 14 he’s got a near-hopeless crush and is painfully self-conscious, missing all hints and embarrassing himself regularly. At 15, he’s full of rage and carries it about with him, lashing out at friends and enemies, refusing to seriously consider the consequences for what he says. At 16, Harry’s more thoughtful, less threatened by others’ statements; he can give as good as he gets not only to Draco Malfoy, but to adults as well - adults as different as Snape and Scrimgeour. While still assaulted by doubts toward his second crush, he goes for what he wants. Finally, At 17, he struggles between following his intuition and following good advice, and ultimately uses his brains and his heart to solve the problem of Voldemort.
Along the way, we get glimpses of the person Harry is becoming. Being frightened doesn’t stop him. When protective, he attacks. He is always willing to risk himself to save someone else, and he needs someone with a cooler head to keep him oriented. He will never betray his friends, although he’s perfectly willing to fight with them, and he does see and understand (some at least) of their flaws as well as virtues.
When I read a comment on someone's fic that Harry’s acting “OOC”, often I don’t agree. An adult behaving differently from a child is not OOC - that’s simply life. Children try on many personae as they grow up - I tried to make fun of that reality using James in Squib. Most parents eventually figure out these persona experiments with the first child and cope. I had a neighbor who had fully-grown adult children and a 12 year old. When she became 13 (as manifested by bursting into sobs and running on a regular basis) he told me, "I'm just not sure I can go through this again." It had never occurred to me till then that what's new and horrible for the one experiencing it actually is just a familiar story for adults.
When Harry acts a way he wouldn’t have at 14, I want to know how he got there, but I'm quite willing to believe that events in his life, and simple maturity, did it. I'm more suspicious of some things: if he's acting like am emo muggle, smoking moodily and staring at the furniture as the house burns down, I'm going to need convincing. Still, that's where writers get to stretch, right?
But there are certain things we do not escape, however old we get. My mother died last month, and I found true what I’ve read many times: there is a different sort of loss when one’s mother dies. She was, after all, the first person most of us ever knew; she was just there, standing between us and the terrifying Outside. Now, in some ways for the first time, I’m a grownup, and there is no horizon of other grownups -- no father, no mother, no one of their generation who knew me as a child.
We carry the dynamics of our family with us into all our relationships, unless we do really, intelligent work to change - even then, there’s only so much changing we can do. Usually, it’s more adjusting than truly re-making ourselves as people. So the heart of what Harry is can only be seen by looking at how he grew up.
Most importantly, he was abused. He was definitely emotionally abused, and physical abuse of some kinds at least accompanied it. He was underfed, overworked, locked up in a dangerous room (what would have happened to Harry if the Dursleys’ house caught fire? Assuming his magic didn’t help him?) and regularly targeted by bullies with tacit or overt permission to hurt him physically all they wanted.
So when thinking about Harry, I have to take into account the fact that he grew up an abused child in his family of origin. He remembers no other family.
Nor can he escape abuse while at Hogwarts. He is set about by adults without good boundaries - except for McGonagal, in whom he’s fortunate. His greatest mentor, the man he adores, basically views him as a piece in a cosmic chess game who must die at the right time in order for Voldemort to be checkmated. The other most powerful adult subjects him to constant public and private verbal abuse, humiliating and belittling him. Between the two, that sense of personal value, already crushed by the constant negative criticism he receives from his family, has little hope of flowering.
The third important ongoing adult in his life is Hagrid, himself requiring protection. Harry’s loyalty, whether it is innate or an intuitive response to finally having people in his life he wants to keep around him, requires him to learn denial and secretiveness the way children of drug abusers do - rescuing them from dangerous mistakes, lying for them, breaking rules for them. Harry has chosen to take on a sibling role in a family whose "parent" gives them the script of being the equivalent of children of alcoholics.
Women in his life are pretty much either bad memories, such as Petunia, or nurturers. His sense of who women are and how they relate to him is therefore skewed. Since the first positive female figure in his remembered life is Mrs. Weasley, it’s inevitable that she would become in many ways his sense of what an ideal woman is. And, remember, canon Molly Weasley is loving, bossy, fiery, controlling, judgmental, and self-sacrificing. What little we see of Ginny Weasley is the same, except for the self-sacrifice.
Harry finds another possible father figure in Sirius, but here again there are no boundaries. Sirius is not an especially sympathetic character. He was a bully who dragged James into bullying with him; he’s vengeful, unkind to his house elf, fond of Harry because he’s his father’s son, and of course seems often to forget that Harry is not his father, but his own person. In fact, when Harry behaves otherwise, he passively-aggressively attacks Harry for that, shaming him for not doing what his father would have. Harry, who has conceived an overwhelming admiration for his father as children often do for dead-therefore-perfect parents, tries harder to be what Sirius thought his father was.
None of these things portend well for Harry becoming his own person, secure and comfortable in the choices he makes and has made.
There are certain characteristics of abused children which resurface regularly. They have low self esteem, no sense of what a healthy family looks or behaves like, a fear of being caught out for the terrible people they are. They have trouble in relationships - not just romantic ones, but many kinds. They struggle with boundaries; they don't quite understand appropriate and inappropriate behavior to others in different roles. They often love people who are not good for them, but behave the way one of their adult "parents" did.
Many have trust issues. Harry, for example, through seven years of abuse, never thinks to go to an adult for help, except to Sirius for advice and comfort, which he fails to get. Hermione, with her healthy family, thinks of appealing to adults regularly, but doesn’t force it.
That inability to expect help from adults inevitably segues into a rejection of authority; a rejection which can only be solidified seventh year, when Harry learns how little he knew Dumbledore. Fans, of course, have noticed Dumbledore’s exploitation of Harry for years, from preparing him as a weapon against Voldemort, to enabling his more extreme risk taking,to demanding unquestioning personal loyalty, to completely ignoring him and explaining nothing when Harry is a risk. Harry never notices the exploitation; to have an adult pay attention to him, and speak respectfully to him as long as Harry did what he wanted, was enough.
Finally, there’s Harry as a soldier - younger than most westerners who fight in combat, he’s been a target his entire life; a target and an icon -- which is, Harry discovers, just another kind of target. Regularly attacked simply for existing, he has to shove aside any other considerations much of the time simply to survive. A series of close calls and attacks - and his own slow deterioration toward doing the Unforgivables himself - reminds us that in war, people do what they have to do and pay for it later, if they’re lucky. That’s what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is - after all, it was named to explain the number of combatants coming home with it.
That’s Harry as he comes to us after Deathly Hallows. The PTSD is probable, and the survivor of abuse is certain. What can we do with that Harry which is in character, then? And what kind of life will that person lead?
Next, I'll post on some of the answers I find in my own characterization of Harry.
The annoying thing about character is that it requires us to understand human beings in general to write good ones. Lots of times in my life, I have written to avoid human beings, not understand them. So although I'm a character-driven writer by most standards, I avoid thinking about that as much as possible.
I've been pondering a few comments I've seen recently on writing, where something is praised for being IC ("in character") or OOC ("out of character.") I personally think that I always write slash in character unless it's crack, but I do remember comments to the contrary. Nor can I disagree, owing to the nature of the internet medium. In my experience, disagreeing on character requires raised voices, and ultimately, waving hands. Sometimes people getting excited or upset and dropping books, or even throwing them. And an emphatic, firm voice saying, over and over, "You don't understand! He wouldn't do that!" who might, or might not, be the author.
Still, I haven't posted on the craft for awhile, so here's a thought experiment: Who, precisely, is Harry Potter, as canon constructs him? What can we be reasonably sure canon Harry requires when we take him on as an adult character?
One truth: people change.
Another: We carry our childhoods around inside us.
Do you have the personality you had at 10? Do you still stumble making friends with people of the opposite gender, wonder how to talk to people from halfway across the world, forget to write thank you notes, wear the colour red to the exclusion of anything else? Do you sleep with your old blanket?
I like hanging out with adult!Harry because in fact he has changed from childhood. JKR, who regardless what you might say of her writing, is highly observant concerning growth stages,takes Harry through some of those changes as we watch.
At 14 he’s got a near-hopeless crush and is painfully self-conscious, missing all hints and embarrassing himself regularly. At 15, he’s full of rage and carries it about with him, lashing out at friends and enemies, refusing to seriously consider the consequences for what he says. At 16, Harry’s more thoughtful, less threatened by others’ statements; he can give as good as he gets not only to Draco Malfoy, but to adults as well - adults as different as Snape and Scrimgeour. While still assaulted by doubts toward his second crush, he goes for what he wants. Finally, At 17, he struggles between following his intuition and following good advice, and ultimately uses his brains and his heart to solve the problem of Voldemort.
Along the way, we get glimpses of the person Harry is becoming. Being frightened doesn’t stop him. When protective, he attacks. He is always willing to risk himself to save someone else, and he needs someone with a cooler head to keep him oriented. He will never betray his friends, although he’s perfectly willing to fight with them, and he does see and understand (some at least) of their flaws as well as virtues.
When I read a comment on someone's fic that Harry’s acting “OOC”, often I don’t agree. An adult behaving differently from a child is not OOC - that’s simply life. Children try on many personae as they grow up - I tried to make fun of that reality using James in Squib. Most parents eventually figure out these persona experiments with the first child and cope. I had a neighbor who had fully-grown adult children and a 12 year old. When she became 13 (as manifested by bursting into sobs and running on a regular basis) he told me, "I'm just not sure I can go through this again." It had never occurred to me till then that what's new and horrible for the one experiencing it actually is just a familiar story for adults.
When Harry acts a way he wouldn’t have at 14, I want to know how he got there, but I'm quite willing to believe that events in his life, and simple maturity, did it. I'm more suspicious of some things: if he's acting like am emo muggle, smoking moodily and staring at the furniture as the house burns down, I'm going to need convincing. Still, that's where writers get to stretch, right?
But there are certain things we do not escape, however old we get. My mother died last month, and I found true what I’ve read many times: there is a different sort of loss when one’s mother dies. She was, after all, the first person most of us ever knew; she was just there, standing between us and the terrifying Outside. Now, in some ways for the first time, I’m a grownup, and there is no horizon of other grownups -- no father, no mother, no one of their generation who knew me as a child.
We carry the dynamics of our family with us into all our relationships, unless we do really, intelligent work to change - even then, there’s only so much changing we can do. Usually, it’s more adjusting than truly re-making ourselves as people. So the heart of what Harry is can only be seen by looking at how he grew up.
Most importantly, he was abused. He was definitely emotionally abused, and physical abuse of some kinds at least accompanied it. He was underfed, overworked, locked up in a dangerous room (what would have happened to Harry if the Dursleys’ house caught fire? Assuming his magic didn’t help him?) and regularly targeted by bullies with tacit or overt permission to hurt him physically all they wanted.
So when thinking about Harry, I have to take into account the fact that he grew up an abused child in his family of origin. He remembers no other family.
Nor can he escape abuse while at Hogwarts. He is set about by adults without good boundaries - except for McGonagal, in whom he’s fortunate. His greatest mentor, the man he adores, basically views him as a piece in a cosmic chess game who must die at the right time in order for Voldemort to be checkmated. The other most powerful adult subjects him to constant public and private verbal abuse, humiliating and belittling him. Between the two, that sense of personal value, already crushed by the constant negative criticism he receives from his family, has little hope of flowering.
The third important ongoing adult in his life is Hagrid, himself requiring protection. Harry’s loyalty, whether it is innate or an intuitive response to finally having people in his life he wants to keep around him, requires him to learn denial and secretiveness the way children of drug abusers do - rescuing them from dangerous mistakes, lying for them, breaking rules for them. Harry has chosen to take on a sibling role in a family whose "parent" gives them the script of being the equivalent of children of alcoholics.
Women in his life are pretty much either bad memories, such as Petunia, or nurturers. His sense of who women are and how they relate to him is therefore skewed. Since the first positive female figure in his remembered life is Mrs. Weasley, it’s inevitable that she would become in many ways his sense of what an ideal woman is. And, remember, canon Molly Weasley is loving, bossy, fiery, controlling, judgmental, and self-sacrificing. What little we see of Ginny Weasley is the same, except for the self-sacrifice.
Harry finds another possible father figure in Sirius, but here again there are no boundaries. Sirius is not an especially sympathetic character. He was a bully who dragged James into bullying with him; he’s vengeful, unkind to his house elf, fond of Harry because he’s his father’s son, and of course seems often to forget that Harry is not his father, but his own person. In fact, when Harry behaves otherwise, he passively-aggressively attacks Harry for that, shaming him for not doing what his father would have. Harry, who has conceived an overwhelming admiration for his father as children often do for dead-therefore-perfect parents, tries harder to be what Sirius thought his father was.
None of these things portend well for Harry becoming his own person, secure and comfortable in the choices he makes and has made.
There are certain characteristics of abused children which resurface regularly. They have low self esteem, no sense of what a healthy family looks or behaves like, a fear of being caught out for the terrible people they are. They have trouble in relationships - not just romantic ones, but many kinds. They struggle with boundaries; they don't quite understand appropriate and inappropriate behavior to others in different roles. They often love people who are not good for them, but behave the way one of their adult "parents" did.
Many have trust issues. Harry, for example, through seven years of abuse, never thinks to go to an adult for help, except to Sirius for advice and comfort, which he fails to get. Hermione, with her healthy family, thinks of appealing to adults regularly, but doesn’t force it.
That inability to expect help from adults inevitably segues into a rejection of authority; a rejection which can only be solidified seventh year, when Harry learns how little he knew Dumbledore. Fans, of course, have noticed Dumbledore’s exploitation of Harry for years, from preparing him as a weapon against Voldemort, to enabling his more extreme risk taking,to demanding unquestioning personal loyalty, to completely ignoring him and explaining nothing when Harry is a risk. Harry never notices the exploitation; to have an adult pay attention to him, and speak respectfully to him as long as Harry did what he wanted, was enough.
Finally, there’s Harry as a soldier - younger than most westerners who fight in combat, he’s been a target his entire life; a target and an icon -- which is, Harry discovers, just another kind of target. Regularly attacked simply for existing, he has to shove aside any other considerations much of the time simply to survive. A series of close calls and attacks - and his own slow deterioration toward doing the Unforgivables himself - reminds us that in war, people do what they have to do and pay for it later, if they’re lucky. That’s what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is - after all, it was named to explain the number of combatants coming home with it.
That’s Harry as he comes to us after Deathly Hallows. The PTSD is probable, and the survivor of abuse is certain. What can we do with that Harry which is in character, then? And what kind of life will that person lead?
Next, I'll post on some of the answers I find in my own characterization of Harry.