I’ve
always had a tendency to gravitate toward supporting characters. By narrative necessity, protagonists tend to
get weighed down by extreme drama and hardship, and while that’s obviously a
plus for storytelling, it can sometimes get a little heavy. Supporting characters, then, are often
allowed to be a bit more fun, since they don’t have as much plot to carry. In good stories, they’re still given meaty
material and opportunities to prove their mettle, but there’s more breathing
space. More variety, too – there isn’t as
great a need to make them relatable to the Everyreader/viewer, so you get a
wider assortment of traits and quirks.
There
are oodles of interesting supporting characters in the Harry Potter series, many of whom I enjoy more than Harry, but Ron
is a personal favorite. With his average
magical aptitude, academic performance, and athletic ability, he’s not the
obvious Achiever that Harry and Hermione are.
In a way, he’s the Xander to Harry’s Buffy and Hermione’s Willow – to the
untrained observer, he has nothing valuable to contribute and is perhaps, if
anything, a liability in a serious fight (plus, he’s an eternal smart-aleck.) Like Xander, though, he’s not one to be
discounted.
Ron’s
greatest quality is probably his loyalty.
From a young age, he falls in with Harry and remains at his side through
all sorts of unspeakable danger. In The Prisoner of Azkaban, he famously
gives a more powerful, more notorious wizard the ole “if you want to kill
Harry, you’ll have to go through us” routine despite his own serious injury. Not that he’s Harry’s yes-man – they clash
often enough, and both boys can be pretty stubborn when they think they’re
right – and they do fall out on occasion.
Ron is especially susceptible to sulky overreactions once he becomes a
teenager; Harry’s fame and seeming inherent specialness is the most common
sticking point, since Ron is sensitive about his own perceived
run-of-the-mill-ness. When it really
matters, though, Ron always has Harry’s back and puts his life on the line
numerous times.
Aside from
that, Ron has enough common sense to make up for his lack of book smarts (he’s
been known to point out the important, obvious things that Harry and Hermione
miss when they overcomplicate matters,) and as the only one of the trio to grow
up in the wizarding world, his cultural knowledge often comes in handy. When the situation is particularly grim, his
wise-cracking brings some much-needed relief – there are probably entire months
of Harry’s life in which he wouldn’t have smiled if not for Ron. And for all that Ron can be oversensitive,
obtuse (especially where romance is concerned,) and reckless, his default
reaction is always to protect his friends.
Ron has
a reputation for being something of a fraidy-cat – the movies really amplify
this – but I don’t mind that he gets scared, because he still risks his life anyway. I’ll leave you with the spider sequence from The Chamber of Secrets, to highlight how
brave Ron is even when he’s afraid. So, 12-year-old
Ron enters the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night, where he is
confronted and pursued by dozens of supersized versions of his absolute
greatest fear (that, by the way, want to eat him,) and all he has to defend
himself is a malfunctioning wand. In that
state, he has wits enough about him to drive a severely-damaged car through an
off-road, wooded area swarming with giant killer spiders. In short?
Ron Weasley is a badass.
No comments:
Post a Comment