[This message has been edited by Silver6 (edited April 27, 2004).]
Just some thoughts, you might be right. Hopefully we can get some more opinions in here.
So I can see that only the girls get true definition as being different and having true potential outside of sports. This is something I don't think is a highlight of the books, but since I had to think about it a bit; it doesn't hurt the story that much.
Harry alone I could deal with as being the way he is portrayed, but I wish the male children had a bit more diversity...
LDS
And yes, the superficial mindset, which JK Rowling apparently thinks is universal among teens, was rather annoying.
First of all, the characters grow with each book. Most eleven-year-olds are not well defined in real life. They are instruments of social life and peer pressure. With each book, however, the characters become better defined. Ron stays in Harry's shadow, but we see that he doesn't like it there, for example.
But back to the first book. Hermoine is more than brains...when Ron says for her to hear that she doesn't have any friends she goes to the bathroom to cry all day. This was terrific characterization. We see that she's more than books and know-it-all attitudes. She has feelings, and they got hurt. In the same scene, we recognize that while Ron said what he did, something any kid might say (they can be cruel) he felt bad about it when he saw how it affected her. There's some characterization.
At the end, Hermoine comes to understand that there are more important things than books. (Although it is a part of who she is to be bookish and know a lot of things.)
All of them are impossibly curious and nosey, which we see continuously.
Ron is characterized as wel. He's the second youngest of seven kids, and he feels dwarfed by his brothers and sisters. He hates being poor, but you also have a sense that he's also quite proud of his family, even if he'd love to distinguish himself in some way. It is ironic, therefore, that he ends up with Harry as a best friend, who will inevitably drawf him as well.
Harry, meanwhile, wants the love of his aunt and uncle, who are the only parents he has ever known. (You don't get this at all int he movie, one of my qualms with it.) He might not have been so upset about being an orophan if he had gotten the parenting he needed from his foster parents. He has had to look for strength inside most of his life, though finding friends, and in fact, the equivalent of family at school meant the world to him.
I could go on, but have I made my point yet? You're suggesting that the characters are shallow because we don't spend much time thinking about schoolworkd for the boys? Books and classes aren't everything, and in point of faact, it is just the setting for the book, not what the book is about at all. Therfore, we don't need to hear that much about the kids in relation to their classes. We see it when we need to. But actually, Harry talks quite a bit about his classes at fist, how difficult they were. We don't get his exact scores, but that's a good thing, because Rowling wants many kids to be able to identify with him. I thought this was a clever bit of information to leave out. But we do get as much as we really need to know about his classes, and frankly, I didn't find quiddich came up that much in the first book. It was given less time than his classes, and indeed, less time than the plot of the book. But many kids, especialy boys, like sports very much. I never found that Harry was more into it than anyone else, nor that it consumed him. He likes it very much, but then again, that's rather a characterization of him too. He becomes more into it after he finds out his father was a seeker too, and he wants to feel a connection to his father, or to any father figure.
Though, one thing I have to say, I don't buy the excuse that kids aren't "fully formed". By the age of 8, every child is very different from each of his friends, and it's readily visible. Just because they have childish desires and act like children, it doesn't mean they're flat and two-dimensional. I rather prefer Orson Scott Card's treatment of child characters--he takes into account their childishness, but they're still complex individuals who often have equally complex desires and motivations. But I digress.
~L.L.
Seriously, though, I still don't get what many of you are talking about. Let's digress from the book itself for a while. Because one thing that amazes me about these books is the number of people who identify with and relate to the characters. This leads me to believe that the characterization is rich and complex.
Back to the books. What is missing from Harry's character dossier? We've got history, motivation, physical appearance, attitudes, friends, goals (mostly to live and get through school, but he does have a seriously evil bad guy after him, so that makes sense), desires....I'm not seeing the stereotypes. I'm not seeing the lack of development. I actually am seeing a boy who not only has history and character in book one, but who grows and develops with each book. Each book is older, clearly,a nd so is each Harry.
I have an idea...let's see if someone can answer this question: What steretypic mold is does Harry fit into? This will help further the discussion, I think, because at this point i think I'm missing something. So if you could describe the specific steretype that Rowling is using in developing Harry, I'll see if I can't understand where you're coming from a little better.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited May 03, 2004).]
Anyways, Harry does fit the orphan stereotype pretty well. He is unhappy with his home, which is more than justified. He starts off shy and eager to please to anyone who shows an interest in him.
I think the missunderstanding is that in the first book the characterization does not deviate from stereotyping that much. They all start out as more cardboard cutouts than children. Fortunately they do change and grow as the books go on, but I can agree that it could have been done better.
One very important point to remember is that the Harry Potter books are the most sucessfull books so far. J.K. isn't hurting for $$$ like some authors are. So even if the characters could have been better, they did the job.
I think the reason I liked the fifth book so much is because the characters diverged so much more and started to show more individuality. I have to say Luna is one of my favorite characters, I wish she had been around earlier.
LDS
Rux
quote:
If Harry's actions were predictable, then that must have stemmed from adequate characterization.
To a point that does stand to reason, however, by "predictable" what I was trying to say was that the characterization she was using seemed stereotype-expectant and not dynamic, which works great for the supporting cast but from the main character .... I'd expect more.
And Rux,
I didn't know where that name was derived from, actually I always somehow passed it off as a pathetic play off of the word, "Serious," and so "Sirius Black," to me, was a connotatively cheesy antagonist name you'd expect from a really-really bad comic book ... but I guess you learn something new everyday.
[This message has been edited by Alias (edited May 11, 2004).]