Draco: Worth the Price?

[regan_v]

Man what a week. Many people on my flist spent hours setting up shop on a second platform (or third and fourth), which has been a huge time hole. And those who maintain hp fannish infrastructure have been working their tails off; when I read those terse, organized, focused posts by scribbulus_ink (who is working long hours to try to back up all the Snupin

Comments

[pir8fancier]

I think part of the disconnect is that the book is written from a very tight third person POV. Harry's POV. This makes the book myopic. We end up loving Harry to a ridiculous amount, but it doesn't give us much opportunity to discover other characters unless it's via Harry's interaction with other characters. Like Dumbledore insisting that Snape is on the side of the Order. Most "fattening" of characters occurs in flashback scenes, like Snape's confrontation with James, which gives us a more comprehensive view of both James AND Snape. Or Snape's final pensieve scenes, which is really her only opportunity to redeem Snape. Harry's interaction with the world of adults allows us to see nuances in Snape's character. He is the ONLY Slytherin with ANY dimension of character. A flaw I have lamented about through six books.

She tries a similar passive technique with Draco in book 6. Unfortunately, it's too little and too late. We have Moaning Myrtle exposing Harry another side of Draco (again OFF the page sympathy), but Draco follows it on the heels of this revelation by trying to cast a Cruciatus on Harry. Again, from Harry's POV this is pretty "unforgivable." (A scene that will be, unfortunately, repeated in the last book where Harry casts a Cruciatus with little provocation--don't get me started.)

Because Draco has very little interaction with the adult world, Harry and Draco's interactions always occur within the confines of their vicious schoolroom rivalry. Largely, we only see one side of Draco. The side Harry sees.

Those tantalizing moments you listed where Draco elicits sympathy, love and/or affection are either off the page (as in the case with Myrtle), or where he is merely a kid in an adult world. Take him out of the schoolroom, and you have someone that we might be interested in knowing. Someone who is more than JKR's cardboard rendition. The Draco in the beginning of the book 7 is almost catatonic with fear; the Draco who does not expose Harry to Voldemort is a Draco who for whom the shoe has dropped. He stands nothing to gain by keeping Harry's identify a secret. Indeed, he stands a fair chance of redeeming his family's standing by exposing Harry. But he does not.

Granted, this next bit is culled from my own personal analysis of the books, but I honestly can't see this any other way.

Snape was a 16-year old boy who sat back and watched Dumbledore ignore Sirius Black's attempt to murder him because they were going to war and Dumbledore needed the marauders to defeat Voldemort.

Draco was a 16-year old boy who nearly bled to death and watched Dumbledore more or less ignore Harry's casting of a spell about which he knew nothing and to which he did not know the countercurse because Dumbledore needed Harry to defeat Voldemort.

Snape was a young man who was blinded by the tales of wizarding glory fed to him by Voldemort. Right off the bat he was a player in that world, not ignored, not trivilized because of the importance of the marauders. One wonders how long it took for the veneer to fade.

Draco was a young man who was blinded by the tales of wizarding glory fed to him by his father. Despite his youth, he was a player in that world, not shadowed (as they had been for five years) by Harry Potter light. I think that the scene in the bathroom is evidence of the veneer cracking, and his inability to kill Dumbledore evidence of it being all sanded down to nothing.

Snape's sword of Damocles fell when Lily Potter was murdered. A foolish young man whose chickens have come home to roost.

Draco's sword of Damocles fell when he let in Fenir Grayback. A foolish young man whose chickens have come home to roost.

The Draco we see in the last book? I think that Snape understood that Draco very well. A proud young man who pride was nearly his undoing. Something Snape was an expert on. That's why I finished Help Wanted the way I did. With Snape giving Draco another chance. Although I think Snape is a far better person, because Dumbledore's forgiveness was little short of blackmail, and Snape's mercy had no demands.

This is why I don't see Draco Malfoy as a self-serving little snot who deserved worse. We really don't know him. And we can't know him because of the limitations of the POV in the book.

[firefly124]

I'd never really seen those parallels between Draco and Snape, but you make excellent points.

[pir8fancier]

I think there is room for discussion, certainly. I think any definitive assessments of his character is up for grabs as far as I am concerned.

[ook]

Snape followed Voldemort out of a desire for power, status, knowledge and wanting to belong to a group. Draco (who already had power, status and wealth) simply followed in his father's footsteps, taking the path of least resistance. Snape was incredibly brave (who admitted he'd made a mistake), but Draco was a cowardly wuss who was still fighting against the Light when Harry rescued him (Draco was never "redeemed" in any fashion). I can easily see why there is so much disappointment that Draco survived.

[pir8fancier]

I'd like to have asked your opinion of Severus Snape on the morning after the Potters' murder. Draco doesn't have a chance to redeem himself. The book ends when he is 17-years old. I'm not saying he's a good character. I'm saying that there is an ambiguity about this character. That the POV of this book lends itself to a limited exploration of a majority the characters, even, say, Harry's mother, who is at the end of the series, STILL a Mary Sue. That the Slytherins come off as totally evil is not, I think an even-handed treatment of them, but it might be a realistic viewpoint from the eyes of a teenage boy.

[ook]

I see your point, but Snape wasn't entirely responsible for the Potters' murders -- there was also Pettigrew and the general bungling of the Order. And Snape didn't willfully put an entire school of students (and their Headmaster) in danger like Draco did. Draco was a LOT more irresponsible than Snape and yet I did't see Draco being penitent about his crimes. I think he was just glad he escaped with his life.

[pir8fancier]

He didn't turn Harry in when he had the chance. I guess I feel that it's an incomplete character analysis. I could easily say that we never saw that scene where Draco repented and you could say that it never happened. And we both could be right! This is preciesely why I felt the last book was incomplete in a sense. Certain character arcs were left hanging and woefully incomplete.

[ook]

Yeah, DH was a VERY incomplete and unsatisfying book. It really needed another year's worth of work (as well as some actual editing). *sighs* :/

[pir8fancier]

Don't get me started! My assessment exactly. It needed another six months at a bare minimum. If she'd spent another year on it, she could have written a masterpiece. It's a first draft. At best.

[regan_v]

This is very persuasive. Because the more I thought about how one person after the other is willing to sacrifice himself for Draco (there is no other character in the book, bar Harry, who evokes that protective urge in such a range of people. At least, that we see) . . . the more I concluded that this can't be a coincidence. Really. I think she's trying, however awkwardly, to convey something there about Draco's worth. But the POV is so limiting, and it just doesn't come off.

I think this long comment (for which I thank you, dear) deserves to be posted as stand-alone meta. Not buried here.

[pir8fancier]

Another parallel between Snape and Draco. Dumbledore's insistence of their relative moral core. I've always thought of Dumbledore as the divining rod in the book. The people he trusts are the people the reader should trust. Or at least forgive.

[regan_v]

I've always thought of Dumbledore as the divining rod in the book.

I think you're right, although that might be because of the Harry POV (since Harry's journey revolves around coming to accept AD's wisdom, and following AD's instructions); therefore, Dumledore's judgement sort of has to be trusted.

And yet, this is only true during Harry's lifetime. Back in the day, obviously AD had very poor judgement. I mean, Grindelwald the Dark Lord as his close friend? There's a good story to be written somewhere, about how AD evolved during the period between his sister's death and when Harry meets him.

[pir8fancier]

Dumbledore never moved me precisely because I saw him as one-dimensional (I obviously like my characters with some flaws). And the revelation of his association with Grindelwald sort of perked me up a bit, but then the expose of Snape's pensieve scenes where he willing admits to using Harry as bait and sacrificing Snape's soul made me dislike him intensely. Even though that was sort of a subtext in both This Boy's Life and Help Wanted. The sacrifice of innocents for the "greater good." This doesn't jive with the re-emergence of twinkly, kindly Dumbledore in the "death" scene. Or at least I found it sort of clumsy. There is never any real recognition on Harry's part that he was a sacrificial lamb, and I sort of felt that the re-emergence of wise Dumbledore was a sweeping under the rug of this plot point.

Dumbledore remains problematic for me.

[imkalena]

Dumbledore remains problematic for me.

I'm pretty clear on despising him. :)

[pir8fancier]

I was all prepared to accept a less than perfect Dumbledore, and then he reprises his role from the first couple of books as the all-wise, all knowing mentor. It was a disconnect. Another disconnect.

[imkalena]

Well . . . I figured that part was all about Harry. I assumed there was as much Harry's Inner Life involved in King's Cross as there was Actual Visitation Involving Dumbledore's Spirit . . .

I didn't mind that the last incarnation of Dumbledore twinkled at Harry; I minded that Harry accepted that part of him and and chose to completely ignore any character flaws. It's a growing-up story, right? I don't understand why Harry's growing up -- which I thought was so he could become his own man -- specifically included his following Dumbledore's every order/whim. He didn't ever become his own man; he went back to earlier in his childhood and erased his new, more sophisticated (if equally one-sided) view of DD with the old, worshipful one.

And actually, if Harry had melded both views and come to the middle, *genuinely* growing up, I probably wouldn't be quite so tweaked about Dumbledore's ruthlessness. Or maybe I still would, anyway.