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Character analysis
Because JK Rowling did the tell and don't show thing when it comes to James Potter's maturity, there was a split in the fandom between whether to believe he truly changed or not, but I think based on the circumstances in which that James's life changed, I choose to believe that he changed with it.
First of all, there is a biological issue and that is that the human brain does not fully develop until well into the age of 20s, so from the outset I have reason to assume that simply due to physical development, a 15 year old James would not be the same as the James who died at 21 in the same way as a 10 year old is not similar to his 15 year old version
But what really leads me to be positioned in the belief that he mature were all the changes that occurred in his life in that period of 6 years, if we compare the 15 year old James and a 20 year old, 1 year before his death, the truth is that they are quite different people.
The 15 year old James, seems above all like a normal teenager in the sense that it seems that his only concerns at that moment are mundane: getting good grades on exams, playing quidditch, having fun with his friends as well as being pampered by his parents.
In short, a fairly comfortable life that a priori does not seem to require many responsibilities beyond those conventional for someone of his age.
But 20 year old James' life has taken quite a few turns, some of which are good and others quite unpleasant.
Legally, he is an adult and has been orphaned, which means that he no longer has parental support and is fully responsible for himself. Now he must decide how to manage money, for example, and assume the consequences of these decisions because his parents are no longer here to take care of him or help him (in addition to the emotional consequences that being an orphan can cause to a person), related to the above, he now has a wife and a son which adds even more responsibilities.
Also, another thing that differentiates him from the 15 year old James is that he is no longer a student safe within the walls of Hogwarts and now he has to face the real world and the crises that the magical world is going through, the most immediate obviously being Voldemort's war, in which he takes sides and was presumably forced to witness or learn of the deaths of many people he came to know, maybe even to be friends, as Moody tells Harry when he shows him a photo of the original order of the phoenix there were many casualties during the first wizarding war and this is going to be reinforced by Sirius when he talks about the first war magical in GoF and by Lily with the letter she sends to Sirius, so all of them including James have had to see the death of a lot of partners and even friends after leaving Hogwarts, something that James15 obviously didn't have to go through.
Once I compared these 2 stages of James' life, I think there had to be a change in him due to all the important things that happened in his life.
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I don't know, I think the books are Harry's story and I think part of it is that he could never really know his parents, it's part of his tragedy and growth, they're gone and he could never bring them back. I mean up until the third book he didn't even remember their voices.
I know lots of people like the Marauders and that era (and granted Rowling created very interesting adult characters so I understand the fascination), but I think Harry's parents don't have clear personality on purpose, since I think Harry's arc is about finally getting over the trauma of their death and accepting death as something inevitable. It doesn't matter if they were assholes or brave or kind or good or bad, Harry reconciled it all and accepted them for what they were, i.e. two people who loved him very much, who had died for him and who would be with him always ("until the very end", as James said before Harry dies).
Tldr: I think the books are about Harry accepting death and I don't think his parents' personality is important, they're meant to be ghost hanging over him and at the end Harry accepted them for what they were.
I love your explanation and it actually made me tear up a bit. I lost my mother when i was a child and barely have any memory at all. I identify with Harry in all his stages: believing deceased parent is the idealised version people talk about; realising deceased parent may have been an arse; accepting that it doesn't matter, that death is inevitable and so is life.
I'm extremely sorry for your mother, it is a horrible thing to go through, living without a parent is a very sad thing because they're supposed to guide us and give a certainties, and I don't think we will ever truly be ready to say goodbye, no matter our age.
I think the beautiful thing about this series, and part of why it has enduring fame, is that the central theme of the acceptance of death, ours and our loved ones, is eternal. Death is really just another part of life, which is why it doesn't really matter who actually were Lily and James, just that Harry accepted their death and finally let them go so he can truly find himself and reconcile with their memory.
Accepting the death of a parent is never easy, and grief it's not linear. It's good that you found your own way to reconcile yourself with it and I don't think it's fatalistic to see death as inevitable, on some way I really do think it's true that the people who love us never really leave us. Hugs ❤️
I totally agree with your point about Harry accepting death as inevitable being a theme. I think that having both Dumbledore and Voldemort try to be the masters of death and both meeting their ends arguably because of those ventures and having Harry becoming the master of these items on accident and pretty much rejecting the title really shows the themes that the author was trying to convey with the younger generation being able to do and learn what the older generation just couldn't. I think even though I don't agree on a personal level, forgiving James and Snape, is part of this theme as well. Because the older generation just couldn't get past their grudges and their personal hatred of each other but Harry and his friends were able to understand more nuance in the situation and I think that their ability to go past grudges was important to this theme.
The problem with the James flashback is that it doesn’t really show any context. Readers come away from that thinking less of him, that he’s immature, a bully, a complete dickhead, or whatever, but he’s disciplined and dedicated enough to be a top student, a standout even among a pretty talented group of peers.
And he was picking on somebody who was a piece of shit; a racist, a psychopath, a devout follower of a truly evil wizard. Snape barely has any remorse for his actions later that lead to James dying and Harry nearly dying - only his crush matters.
In fact, it’s quite telling that Snape never matures, he remains stuck in his limerent youth; still a bully, still a complete and utter tosser, yet somehow his story is redemptive because he repented for some small measure of his sin.
Ya they were always jumping each other too. The flashback isn’t significant because of what James does, it’s because of what Snape says to Lily. Otherwise it was just one in a bucket of them messing with each other.
You also have to remember that the wizarding world assesses risk different than we do. This is the same school that saw four 11 years olds out of bed after hours and were like “ah well, time to put them in the death forest to hunt a unicorn killer with nothing but a dog for protection.”
Hogwarts is just different. Their candies can cause physical pain. They have practical jokes that offer injure people, but it doesn’t matter cause healing is so easy.
Fred and George shoved someone into the vanishing cabinet, causing serious injuries, because he tried to take points away from them. The student often effectively drug or poison each other by slipping joke potions into their food or drinks.
Snape was in the Nazi youth. His friends tormented people based on their blood status. James might’ve taken things too far, idk. But if you’re gonna pick on someone based on anything, picking on them based on their adoration of wizard hitler is pretty fair game.
I mean, I'm not sure that's entirely true, the implication I got was that James was one of those annoying people who got top grades by barely studying
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Each of those things would be an improvement on what Snape actually did - led an entire family to their doom, just to please a truly evil master, and he only repented when he realised that it wasn’t some anonymous family, but the family of his fantasy girl.
Had Voldemort chosen Neville, Snape wouldn’t have cared that the Longbottoms died - that’s the true measure of the man. He was a selfish dick and his fangirls refuse to accept it because he once did something vaguely human, maybe.
Having a wake-up call when someone you care about is affected by your choices does not make someone a bad person. By your logic, anyone who becomes an LGBT ally when a family member comes out of the closet is just as bad as if they had stayed a homophobe.
The main point of disagreement, I think, comes from the fact that everyone has different defitions of "James changed".
By a very strict, by-the-book definition, yes James changed, as every single human being does when going through 6 years of their lives, specially when you go from teenager to adult. It's also undeniable that he must have matured in many ways, through the normal process of life and as you said, going through a war and losing his parents.
What however, a lot of people say when they argue that "James didn't change/mature" is that we have no proof of anything tangible that he did.
Trying to save his family by sacrificing his life is the epitome of braveness, but we know that it's something he would have already been capable of doing when he was 15. While that doesn't take away from the greatness of the action, it's not a show of change.
As you mentioned at the beginning, this is an issue of show vs tell. I actually started to write an essay about this a while ago, of show vs tell and Snape vs James, and how they're both treated by the narrative. The very short summary is that James is first introduced as a perfect hero, wealthy, handsome, brave, selfless, while Snape is shown as a villain, ugly, selfish, (and as we later learn, poor when he was a child). They're both complete and utter opposites.
When it's revealed that James and Snape hated each other as teens, we of course side with James, and who wouldn't? Snape must be lying when he's badmouthing James, he's a horrible person anyway who only hates James because James is good at Quidditch, the athletic hero that he is.
Yet, in one single scene in OotP, everything changes, and we're shown that James had a very ugly side to him. We had been told that he was great, but we're suddenly shown that he was... maybe not so great. We're shown that maybe the Marauders could be the liars in this instance, that maybe Snape had been saying the truth, or at least his perception of the truth that doesn't sound so outrageous now.
That's why there's such a wide interpretation of James's character, I think. For some, being told that "nah, he was the bestest of bestest people" by his best friends and a teacher or two to his orphan son a decade after his death is proof enough that he "grew up". For others, that scene in OotP struck them so hard with its revelation that they find it impossible to trust the words of people who had previously either straight up lied or lied by omission about James.
Lastly, the one thing that holds people up from believing that James "grew up" is that we have no idea what he thought about his actions as a teen. We don't know if 20 year old James was ashamed of what his 15 year old got up to. Maybe 5 years later he still thought Snape deserved to be humiliated, choked, tied up, insulted, and sexually harassed for the one crime of walking nearby a bored Sirius. We don't know. And I'm not just talking about Snape, but hexing people down the corridors for fun, risking killing people by letting out Moony at night and finding it hilarious, this kind of stuff. That's the one big missing piece for me, to properly acknowledge that he had some character arc.
So yeah, he grew up and matured, as we all do, but how much is the question.
I never thought james was an irredeemable bully solely because he bullied a wanna be deatheater scum who was already hanging out with future deatheaters and calling muggleborns slurs
James was a bully. Fullstop.
Snape wasn't a sympathetic victim, but he was nevertheless a victim.
Although Snape's reactions coloured people's perception of James.
It's very likely that James and Sirius relentless bullying pushed Snape even harder in the wrong direction, but the tendency was there, and that's the difficulty with bullying. Sadly it's very realistic to assume that James was truly a full blown bully and asshole. But the thing is, most bullies don't bully everyone they come in contact with. That's why it's so often ignored. Bullies usually get along very well with most of their peers. They're often well liked by everyone except their scapegoat whom they torture relentlessly. They look good, have good grades, and they choose victims no one wants to stand up for. Their victims are fat, or neurodivergent, or socially awkward, poor, or in some other ways strange.
In Snape's case it so happens that he later went on to become a nasty person and it seemed that James' bullying was justified, and that's when people saw him differently. And he grew out of most of his behaviour, might even have regretted it.
But the scene on the train showed, he didn't choose Severus as his victim because he saw that he would be nasty. He chose him because he had shabby clothes, a strange name and was a Slytherin. So he was definitely a bully and Snape didn't 'earn' it somehow. He was targeted because James was a bully
I’m not entirely sure exactly what your opinion is. You think James was more mature by the time he died than he was when he was at Hogwarts?
I disagree that 15 year old James was a “normal teenager”. Bullying is not normal. And neither is being classist or sexist.
How was he sexist?
And idk about you, but I have absolutely zero qualms about “bullying” someone who sympathizes with Nazis, plans to join the main Nazi group after school, invents Dark stuff to help himself and the Nazis, etc. I don’t give a shit if me and my friends call him out and attack him for being a dick, since he and his friends are out there attacking other students just for existing.
How was he classist or sexist?
And James' behaviour was normal. On the playground, how do you think someone would be treated if they aspired to be a Nazi when growing up?
It is a recent thing where people start to cry when about fairness and the open market of free ideas when they get punched in the face. Before the 10s, they'd get smacked and people would laugh.
Controlling to Lily, made fun of Severus for being working class.
My grandparents’ country was occupied and starved by the Germans in WW2 and I find it silly at best, offensive at worst, to compare a fictional group of wizards to the Nazis. Please educate yourself and refrain in future.
James didn’t bully Snape for being a potential future DE (the DEs didn’t even exist at that point). In fact James tells us out of his own mouth why he bullies Snape. “Well, it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean…”
The Death Eaters did exist at that point. 1. They were already being called that when Voldemort tried to get hired at Hogwarts,.which was years before. 2. Voldemort was already being called You Know Who by Lily. Meaning he was already enacting terror on the Wizarding world. And Lily says Snape can't wait to join him, so it was known Voldemort had followers.
The death eaters definitely existed while Snape and James were in school, long before actually. Thats a fact. I'm not sure how you could say otherwise honestly.
When was he controlling of Lily?
He wasn’t the one who tried emotional manipulation on Lily, that was Snape with his “We’re best friends” line after calling Lily a mudblood.
He wasn’t the one that actively tried to control who Lily associated with, that was Snape when he tried to say he wouldn’t let Lily fall for James’ “tricks”.
Oh, stop it. If you had any respect for your grandparents' suffering, you wouldn't use it to act indignant so that you can try and win an argument.
The Death Eaters are comparable to Nazi Germany. They had extremist views about blood purity and the belief that they were innately powerful. When they held a position of power, they started rounding up members of the out group and executing them.
Snape was a piece of shit. He was an aspiring Death Eater. It is normal that someone who finds bigotry deeply offensive would put Snape on his shit list.