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Harry
Potter and the Good Life |
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| A
speech given by Steven S. Tigner |
| Associate
Scholar of the CAEC |
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| What
follows is an excerpt of Tigner's speech. |
| Use
the link at the bottom of the page to view and print the complete transcript. |
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| Harry
Potter and the Good Life |
| Harry's
life in the Muggle world of the Dursleys was a grossly exaggerated caricature
of the real and imagined tribulations of ordinary childhood. Harry is a
sympathic character for us because we recognize in him the hauntings of
our own childhood, the sense that we are underappreciated, misunderstood,
oppressed by rules and arbitrary authority, victims of bullying. All that
Harry faces helps highlight for readers certain contrasts between the good
life and the bad as Harry experiences them in the Muggle world of the Dursleys
and the wizarding world of Hogwarts and beyond. Good and evil are afoot
in both worlds, but while living as a Muggle in the Muggle world, the evils
he encounters are largely beyond his control, while in the wizarding world
at Hogwarts, he has a measure of control over what he is to become. J. K.
Rowling provides Harry with an imaginary world in which he can live out
the hopes of every child. |
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| Part
of Harry's joy in learning that he is a wizard is simply the joy of discovering
an intriguing fact about his heritage, something over which he had no control,
but which is of keen interest and great consequence nonetheless. There is
another part of Harry, however, over which he does have control: not the
“given” of his first nature, but the person into which he makes
himself through the choices embodied in his own acts that go toward forming
his second nature, his character. |
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| Character
excellence “is a state of character concerned with choice,”
as Aristotle observed. In one of those key moments of illumination that
Harry experiences in the counsel of Dumbledore, the wise old Headmaster
explains, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are,
far more than our abilities” (II.333). |
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Copyright
2002
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| Center
for the Advancement of Ethics and Character |
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