This isn’t even an attack on JK Rowling. It’s just looking back on it, there are a lot of deeply flawed characters in HP. And I’m mainly thinking of the adults.
Snape is the obvious one, even if he’s technically on the good side. But James Potter was also an arrogant bully, just a charismatic and intelligent one.
Lupin was my favorite DADA teacher and top 5 characters overall, but his struggles in the later books leading him to almost abandon his wife and child due to his insecurity really rubbed me the wrong way. Of course Harry knocked some sense into him, and he did go back and tend to his family, but it permanently left a bad taste in my mouth.
Sirius was cool as hell, and was a very loving uncle/godfather to Harry. But he also mistreated Kreacher which partly led to his demise. I guess the “norm” in the wizard world was that house elves were practically slaves so it was considered “normal behavior”, but his brother Regulus was able to overcome that pretty well.
Dumbledore’s the obvious big target. He knew that Harry was a Horcrux, but still led him on the whole way through. And the whole sending Harry back to the Dursleys thing, even if Lily’s charm only worked then, he still visited the Weasley’s just fine. And of course his past with his family and Grindewald and all. A LOT has been discussed around the big D, I won’t bring up everything else.
There are others, like the two wizard presidents, flawed in different ways.
I’ll look past the main trio’s flaws, because a) they’re kids/teenagers, and b) it’s their story to come of age and mature after trials and tribulations, so they’re better flawed than to be Mary Sue and Gary Stu’s.
On the flip side, some of the supposed “evil” characters also have redeeming qualities. Narcissus Malfoy saved the plot due to her motherly love. Harry’s aunt, despite hating his guts due to her resentment towards Lily, still took him in. I already mentioned Regulus and Snape (the latter I still consider creepy, and he only worked for his personal motivations until the very end, never out of good or evil).
Wormtail is an interesting one, because it’s less that he has a redeeming quality, more that his main character trait ended up becoming his character resolution, similar to the climax of Lord of The Rings which I will consider peak fiction (pun somewhat intended).
There’s the stable characters with no significant divergence: McGonagall was always cool, the Weasley parents were always loving and kind despite their quirks/somewhat overprotectiveness, Moody was the badass paranoid war vet. And the obvious bad guys like Lucius, Umbridge, and Bellatrix made it easy to hate them as villains.
I guess this post developed from “huh, some of the good guys were kinda assholes” into “People are not always black and white, the good have bads and the bads have good”, and I suppose that’s the takeaway.
Turning this around to JK Rowling, I guess this applies to her as well. Despite her views, she still managed to write a sensational series that’s forever ingrained into our culture, and that’s not an easy feat.
What do you guys think? This might have been a fairly basic observation and a topic for middle school essays, but I’m just coming to terms with it, and I wanted to share with a community of readers.
by Megabot555
5 Comments
I agree – but that’s part of coming of age. We idolize our adult mentors and family members when we’re young and as we get older we see their flaws. Lupin, Snape and Sirius, etc were all human and the product of their environment and past traumas. I can appreciate them now because we do what we think is right at the time, but later realize we were wrong or misguided.
Lupin was deadass wrong to abandon his wife and child, but he thought being an absentee dad was better than dooming them to a life of being outcasts in the wizarding community. It was foul of him, BUT in his tortured mind – it was the loving thing to do for his family.
Can anyone of us as adults relate and empathize with making similar (or not so similar) mistakes in life? We get called out on it, learn and move on.
Harry Potter is a series that doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life and adulthood, and shows how it can overcome.
I’m glad the adults have flaws.
That was kind of the point. No one is all good or bad. The world isn’t good guys vs death eaters.
One of the things I respect about Rowling as an author is that her characters have some grey to them, and that even in a children’s book people die in the war. Too many children’s books have unreasonably lucky heroes who never get hurt, which is a really bad message for kids in the real world who are suffering pain and loss.
But now Rowling’s work has been ruined for me by her asshole personality. It’s impossible for me to read it without being turned off by her. Kind of like trying to watch a rerun of The Cosby Show without thinking of the horrible stuff Cosby did.
Disagree on Sirius, he hated kreachur specifically and was regarded as generally kind to house elves. Kreachur worshipped his abusive family and hated Sirius too for how he rejected the family
If you study anyone long enough, you’ll decide they’re shitty people