As other people commented, I saw Ginny as a character made solely as a plot device for Harry as well. When I tried to flesh her out mentally, nothing really stuck - there was nothing there for me to really emphasize with so I wrote her off as mobile scenery. This was true right up until the end of Book 6 when Harry dumps her "for her own good" and she says she's got better things to do than wait around for him. But then she does wait around, so so much for that idea.
I think this is why I like the idea of Harry paired off with either Ron or Hermione better than Ginny - they're real, fleshed out people. Or at least, more than Ginny is/was. (Incidentally, I think that's also the real reason that Harry let them come with him on the Horcrux quest and left Ginny behind.)
I too was especially disappointed by the morality in DH, particularly because JKR had almost shown some gray morals earlier. The four big issues I have with DH:
1) Snape's reason for joining the "good" side: throughout the whole series, I thought that Snape was a deeply unpleasant person who was none-the-less doing his best to atone for past mistakes. He was someone who was in many ways a horrible person, but he wasn't evil. I thought it was a good message that just because someone is awful doesn't mean they're evil. Sometimes very unlikeable people are also very good people.
Then in DH, JKR threw all that out. It turns out that Snape's betrayal of Voldemort was all because Snape loved Lily (and way to hold a grudge there, heroine! Your old best friend is getting publicly abused by his worst enemies and when he says one very horrible to you after your [to an adolescent boy] humiliating rescue, you don't let him apologize or explain. Way to drive him right into the arms of evil! Sorry, tangent). My point is that Snape never admitted he was wrong - he just switched sides because Voldemort destroyed something he loved. Almost like Snape had this toy he liked and then Voldemort smashed it so Snape went tattling to Dumbledore to get even. I really thought that Snape had turned against Voldemort because he realized he didn't like torturing people, or he knew it wasn't true that pure bloods were inherently better, or he realized that killing people is wrong or something, not just "You hurt me personally and I'm going to make you sorry!"
2) My friend pointed out that Dolores Umbridge went from being an evil person symptomatic of the problems with wizarding society to being a stooge of the main evil, and therefore dismissible. When she became a Death Eater, she changed from being a representative of the casual abuses of people with power to the sort of ineffable evil of the Death Eaters. That almost absolves the wizarding world of responsibility - she wasn't really an evil petty bureaucrat put into power by an incompetent and occasionally uncaring government, she was a deep evil only waiting for her chance to join Voldemort's team.
3) It would have been easy enough for Harry to ask the goblins if he could keep the sword of Gryffindor until after the quest, but instead the heroes steal it and bolt. I mean, they might not have said yes, but they never even tried. And now that I think about it, that's sort of the same point as and brings us to:
4) Where you already mentioned how Harry cast the Cruciatus and JKR spun it like that was a good thing. Because it's Harry, it's okay.
In spite of all this questionable morality, CoS (and PoA) are probably my favorite HP books. It was a good adventure, if not a very deep one. Cute. Also, I am a huge fan of reptiles and snakes and there was a very big lizard that liked turning things into stone and crawled through pipes. What's not to love?
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Date: 2008-11-11 01:54 am (UTC)I think this is why I like the idea of Harry paired off with either Ron or Hermione better than Ginny - they're real, fleshed out people. Or at least, more than Ginny is/was. (Incidentally, I think that's also the real reason that Harry let them come with him on the Horcrux quest and left Ginny behind.)
I too was especially disappointed by the morality in DH, particularly because JKR had almost shown some gray morals earlier. The four big issues I have with DH:
1) Snape's reason for joining the "good" side: throughout the whole series, I thought that Snape was a deeply unpleasant person who was none-the-less doing his best to atone for past mistakes. He was someone who was in many ways a horrible person, but he wasn't evil. I thought it was a good message that just because someone is awful doesn't mean they're evil. Sometimes very unlikeable people are also very good people.
Then in DH, JKR threw all that out. It turns out that Snape's betrayal of Voldemort was all because Snape loved Lily (and way to hold a grudge there, heroine! Your old best friend is getting publicly abused by his worst enemies and when he says one very horrible to you after your [to an adolescent boy] humiliating rescue, you don't let him apologize or explain. Way to drive him right into the arms of evil! Sorry, tangent). My point is that Snape never admitted he was wrong - he just switched sides because Voldemort destroyed something he loved. Almost like Snape had this toy he liked and then Voldemort smashed it so Snape went tattling to Dumbledore to get even. I really thought that Snape had turned against Voldemort because he realized he didn't like torturing people, or he knew it wasn't true that pure bloods were inherently better, or he realized that killing people is wrong or something, not just "You hurt me personally and I'm going to make you sorry!"
2) My friend pointed out that Dolores Umbridge went from being an evil person symptomatic of the problems with wizarding society to being a stooge of the main evil, and therefore dismissible. When she became a Death Eater, she changed from being a representative of the casual abuses of people with power to the sort of ineffable evil of the Death Eaters. That almost absolves the wizarding world of responsibility - she wasn't really an evil petty bureaucrat put into power by an incompetent and occasionally uncaring government, she was a deep evil only waiting for her chance to join Voldemort's team.
3) It would have been easy enough for Harry to ask the goblins if he could keep the sword of Gryffindor until after the quest, but instead the heroes steal it and bolt. I mean, they might not have said yes, but they never even tried. And now that I think about it, that's sort of the same point as and brings us to:
4) Where you already mentioned how Harry cast the Cruciatus and JKR spun it like that was a good thing. Because it's Harry, it's okay.
In spite of all this questionable morality, CoS (and PoA) are probably my favorite HP books. It was a good adventure, if not a very deep one. Cute. Also, I am a huge fan of reptiles and snakes and there was a very big lizard that liked turning things into stone and crawled through pipes. What's not to love?
Ed: Sorry for writing such a long post...