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The
Psychology of Ron Weasley
by J.
L. Matthews
At first
glance, you probably won't be too surprised to see me
writing for a
Ron Haters Unite website. Anyone's who's read
'Enemies of the Heir' will
automatically think of me as the Official Ron Weasley
Demoniser. Character
Assassinator, I've been called. Really!
However, I prefer to think of it
more as... Character Reality Checking.
We'll
start with Enemies of the Heir. No point bothering
with the two
prequels - Ron's not in them that often, and to be
honest, I've gone right
off them. So Enemies it is. And he does not
come off well.
Before I
leap right in, let me make a confession. *looks
left and right* I
actually *whispers* like Ron! It's true! I've
got a soft spot for lovable
jokers. I really don't loathe and despise him in
the way I do, say, Seamus
or Hagrid. (Some people actually write fanfics
about Seamus. WHY??? What
significant function has he ever played in ANY of the
books? And don't get
me started on Hagrid. Let's just say I won't be
mourning him if JKR decides
he's going to get it.) Admittedly, most of the
stuff I do to Ron will be
making him look like an idiot, but all the same, I still
have a certain
amount of affection for him. If anything happens to
him in canon, I'll miss
the guy, y'know? In the words of Jessica Rabbit,
"He makes me laugh".
However,
that doesn't mean I have to make him a hero. Just
because he
amuses me doesn't mean I have to keep portraying him as
Harry's loyal
sidekick, always there, always willing to sacrifice
himself for his friends.
It's not that he's not any of those things. But
he's not JUST any of those
things.
He's
also petty, immature, desperately insecure, at the mercy
of all sorts
of suppressed ambitions, and prone to the most furious
fits of jealousy.
Goblet
of Fire. Harry has just been flung into the
Triwizard Tournament.
We all know what happens - Ron refuses to believe
that Harry didn't cheat
his way in, is angry that he didn't share the secret and
stops talking to
him. Eventually, they patch things up and all is
well again. But while
they're arguing, Ron's pretty harsh towards him, although
to his credit, he
does make one attempt at reconciliation.
Prisoner
of Azkaban. Scabbers disappears in
circumstances which makes it
look like Crookshanks has killed him. Hermione gets
dropped completely as a
result. Now, Hermione could have been more
understanding of Ron's feelings,
granted. But on the other hand, Ron kept the
argument going for far longer
than it really should have done by refusing to even try
and make it up. In
the end, as with the GOF example, it takes a crisis to
get him to change his
mind.
So here
we have psychological flaw number one.
Willing to believe the worst
about his friends if something unusual happens.
Number
two - Proud. Very proud. That sort of
primitive pride which acts to
rescue one's self-esteem even when there's nothing really
to be proud of.
Proud enough that admitting he might be wrong poses a
major threat to his
self-esteem and is more important than making up with his
friends.
Then
there's his background. He's the youngest of six
boys, with a younger
sister. Oldest brother a former Head Boy with a
successful and glamorous
job abroad. Not only that, he's also incredibly
stylish.
Brother
number two touted as a potential international Quidditch
star,
someone who could have been the next Viktor Krum if he'd
wanted to be.
Brother
three - another Head Boy who is far and away his mother's
favourite
(who always sticks up for him and virtually screams at
the twins when they
tease him? Who always tells the others they should
be more like Percy?
Molly.) He's also making inroads at the Ministry.
Brothers
four and five - they're funny and popular, everyone likes
them,
they seem to get on far better with the opposite sex
(Fred anyway, George
could be gay for all we know), and they know what they
want to do with their
lives. They want to own a joke shop, and they could
well do it too. They
have a talent for making people laugh.
Sister -
doesn't have any of the above, but as the youngest and
the only
girl, she doesn't need to. She stands out anyway.
Her very femininity will
mark her out as different from her siblings.
What
does Ron have? Nothing. He's not on the
Quidditch team. He's not
academically brilliant (he's not stupid, but he's not
straight-A brilliant
either). He's probably spent most of his life being
compared to his
brothers. It happened at my school - if you had an
older sibling, you'd be
routinely compared to them, for better or worse. It
was annoying enough for
those who just had one (I was fortunate enough to be the
firstborn) but if
you have five, and those five are all noteworthy
individuals in their own
right, think what that must feel like. That's a
hell of a lot of pressure
to do something special. If Ron wants attention,
he's really going to have
to work at it.
This
wouldn't be a problem if Ron was an introverted loner who
liked
spending time on his own, felt frankly embarrassed by
anyone lavishing
attention on him, and just wanted a quite life. But
he isn't like that is
he? He's a Gryffindor. And like most
Gryffindors, he has a taste for
adventure, he likes the old limelight, he wants to be
noticed. He wants to
be a hero. Why else do you think he lets himself be
captured in that chess
game? Not just because it's the only way, but also
because he wants to be
seen as noble. This comes across a lot more clearly
in the movie, by the
way. OK, so he doesn't have a lot of choice in that
particular situation,
but the thought of nobly sacrificing himself and having
his friends mourn
over him as a hero can't have been offputting.
Then
there's that Erised image. Very touching and all
that, but it's a
little over the top. Natural though for someone
whose brothers have already
done it all between them. Doing it all by himself
is about the only thing
that could top it. But is it really within his
capabilities? To be
brutally honest, no.
Again,
that might not matter if he was the head of his little
gang. The
undisputed leader. But he's not, is he? He's
had to vie with his brothers
for attention all his life, he gets to school and who
does he end up
socialising with? Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived.
Who gets attention for something he doesn't even
remember. And the girl he fancies? Hermione
Granger, who's top at everything. She's smarter
than him and not sensitive
enough to trouble trying to disguise it or at least make
it less obvious.
(Not by pretending to be a brainless bimbo, but just by
not showing him up
in class like she does.)
All
together, it's a recipe for disaster. Overlooked at
home, overshadowed
by his friends, and no obvious characteristics or talents
to mark him out.
And he's desperate to prove himself. It's not a
good combination, and
already we've had flashes of sheer vindictiveness on his
side. For these
reasons, he worries me. All it would take is
another argument, a more deep
rooted one, and he'd be easy prey for anyone promising
fame in his own
right. I'm not saying he'll go over to the dark
side, but there is a real
possibility of him getting manipulated into doing
something rash that he'll
later regret. He's a weak link, let's say.
All it would take is one
provocation too many... This quote from Enemies of
the Heir sums it up
pretty well.
"Ron's
a cool bloke with people he likes, but with people he
hates, he's a
nasty vindictive piece of work. He's almost as bad as
Malfoy. Worse, in a
way. At least Malfoy gets it all out of his system by
mistreating people he
hates. Ron's too fundamentally decent to sink to that
level, so he lets it
all build up inside until he can't control it anymore.
And you know what
Gryffindors are like at self-control..."
Ron's
tragedy can be summed up as this - he's downtrodden,
overshadowed....
and ambitious. And yet he's also a nice guy,
decent, honest, kindhearted.
He's Slytherin material, and yet he's not cunning or
ruthless enough to
actually be one. In a way, it would have done him
good to end up there. It
would have marked him out straight away as different.
Attention would have
been his by right, with no need to work at it. The
whole school would have
sat up and taken notice. It would have been his
turn to find out what
unwanted fame's like. I changed Ginny's house to
Slytherin in my fic - but
maybe Ron would be better off as the Slytherin Weasley.
But he isn't. And
that is why I fear for the boy. He has the ambition
without the
determination, the anger without the self-control.
He's brave but he wants
too much to be seen as brave. Most Gryffs are brave
but they're not
bothered about being recognised as such. It's
Slytherins who want the
limelight and the attention, but they're also cunning
enough to achieve it,
and ruthless enough not to be bothered by little things
like decency and
ethics (most of the time). Ron has the fatal mix of
Slytherin ambition and
Gryffindor decency, and it'll prove his undoing in the
end.
Maybe
not. Maybe Rowling'll prove me wrong. But
until then, that dark side
of Ron'll continue to worry me. It'll continue to
make itself felt in Slyth
Rising. And it'll continue to annoy Ron lovers
everywhere. Ron Weasley is
not the equivocal good guy he's sometimes made out to be.
But he's not all
bad either. His tragedy is that he's torn between
the two. Maybe his
triumph will lie in learning how to overcome his dark
side, before it
overcomes him.
(The
above article represents the views of J. L. Matthews
only, so send the
flames to me and don't pester the good people who run
this site.)
Bio: J.
L. Matthews is a well-known fanfic writer,
specialising in
Slytherins, both her own and Rowling's. Particular
faves are Snape and
oddly enough, Lucius and Narcissa. (The story of
the Malfoys is worth a
series in itself.) Her works include the cult
series Slytherin Rising, and
the Rules of Being a Successful Slytherin.
Forthcoming works include
Quidditch in Bed, a response to the Textual Sphinx
Literary Challenge. By
day, you'll find her flogging cheap jewellery to the
masses. By night,
she's shackled to her word processor and internet
connection. Her dearest
wish is to one day have a life.
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