What’s wrong with Ginny?
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:date: 2019-07-17T23:50:28
:category: literature
:tags: review, harryPotter, blogComment, zettelkasten, plot, story
(my comments on “`The Character Development of Ginny Weasley`_”
by `u/goodlife23`_)
For me the main idea of everything written (originally, I have
this from an excellent book by Walter Kerr “`How Not to Write
a Play`_”) is that the plot (and character development and many
other things in any literary work) is about a character moving
from point A to point B. That’s all the play (novel, short story)
is about! Why did she move from A to B? What were the obstacles
on the way? How did she overcame them? Actually points A and
B are not so important as the travel between them.
One of the most horrible sins of any literary work is when in the
first act of a drama the character (let’s say Draco Malfoy or
Severus Snape) is in point A (marked Death Eater believing
honestly in the pureblood ideals), and in the second act he is in
point B (member of the Order of Phoenix fighting pureblood
mentality). Change happened sometime during the intermission.
That’s completely and absolutely wrong! The most important part,
the only part we are interested in, is how he changed. What moved
him to leave the Voldemort’s camp? Was it difficult? What
obstacles he had to overcome? What precious things he had to
sacrifice and leave behind? This is for example problem of most
stories with Severus Snape as the main character. In books we
have rather horrible person persecuting Harry just because he
looks like his dad. Then suddenly in the story he is fair, a bit
hurt by the nasty Dumbledore, smart guy who is the best friend
with Harry without much problems. WHAT? How did they get there?
Why Severus changed his attitude towards Harry? How did Harry
struggle to accept this change? etc. The story in this area
I rather like (“`Becoming Harriet`_” by Teao; another problem is
that amount of smut is so big that it hurts the narrative) is
exactly with this problem. Suddenly without any transition, Snape
is the only professor who was always honest with Harry (WHAT?),
desperately hoping for just treatment for his Slytherins, etc.,
and Harry (well, Harriet, it is a gender bending story) accepts
it immediately without any objections (WHAT?).
The similar thing happened to Ginny in the books. She starts as
a very shy girl with her elbow in the butter dish when seeing
Harry, then she is a damsel in distress (OK, that part is
covered, that’s what CoS is about), a princess saved by her
knight in (not so much) shining armour from a dragon, and then
… she is completely forgotten. Suddenly she shows up two and half
books later as a self-confident sport-loving the most pretty girl
at Hogwarts well prepared to be the girl for Harry (and there is
not much else for her goals in life apparently). We are told,
that Hermione had told her (behind the scenes, we don’t even know
when that conversation happened) to date around to get
a confidence (pretty stupid idea, if I may say so) and she
changes somewhere behind the scenes (aside from one scene when
Harry and Ron found her kissing somebody, we don’t even know
anything about that process). There is a hint to something in my
beloved line ‘“Lucky you,” said Ginny coolly.’, but it has never
been developed into proper substory (which is huge mistake,
IMHO). That’s COMPLETELY WRONG! We are interested in the process
how a girl, who was shy and horribly abused by Tom Riddle
(emotionally, physically, perhaps even otherwise), changes into
the fiery Ginny we all know and love. We don’t know and we are
never told.
Difference between Luna and Ginny is interesting. The story arch
we are here following is not actually change in Luna herself (she
is mostly the same all time she is present), but the journey is
Harry’s (and ours) discovery who she is. He first thinks (with
everybody else including Hermione) she is just Loony, crazy girl
spitting out nonsense. And gradually he finds out she is actually
rather smart, shockingly honest, and absolutely faithful to her
friends, so he ends to take her to the Slughorn’s party, and she
then follows the group to the Department of Mysteries and
co-leads the Dumbledore Army during DH (another horribly
situation where everything interesting with Ginny happens
somewhere in background). However, given Luna is not the main
heroine of the story (contrary to Ginny, who should be the one),
it is possibly easier to forgive her disappearance in the
background, when she is not needed for the main storyline.
.. _`The Character Development of Ginny Weasley`:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HarryandGinny/comments/ceiyfj/the_character_development_of_ginny_weasley/
.. _`u/goodlife23`:
https://www.reddit.com/user/goodlife23/
.. _`How Not to Write a Play`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Not_to_Write_a_Play
.. _`Becoming Harriet`:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/4876630
