Dumbledore the master manipulator, "For the Greater Good", and all that is typically the stuff of bad fanfiction. But, at the same time, there seem to be strains of a certain degree of manipulation throughout the series -- for example, Harry himself speculates in PS that Dumbledore knew what was going on, although he didn't react negatively to the perceived "manipulation."

We are of course aware of Dumbledore's plan involving the Scarcrux, where he tried to set things up so that Harry would make the choice to die. (Although he did theorize that Harry would survive)

In HBP, he's aware from the very beginning of Malfoy's assassination plot. However, he seems to almost go out of his way to try to redeem Malfoy -- but in the process, he ends up risking Katie, Ron, and then later the entire school once Malfoy lets the Death Eaters in. That particular decision struck me as incredibly risky -- it was through consuming literal luck in the last bit that no one besides Dumbledore was killed in the attack.

So, anyway, just how "manipulative" is Dumbledore really? He's not the kind of guy who sets things up and laughs maniacally when no one is looking, but he's not all sunshine-and-roses either.

 

Please. Just don't.

 

I think the words "manipulative" and "Dumbledore" together carry a heavily negaive stigma, especially on DLP. Everyone here knows Dumbledore wasn't a white knight, he pulled strings to set up his master plan, but the important thing to take away from this is that Dumbledore, despite his flaws (and everyone has them) was a good man. On that, I think, we can all agree.

Where you take your interpretation of that in writing fanfiction is another matter.

 

As much as any other good person. Nobody is all sunshine-and-roses. People, good and bad, try to influence the world around them to achieve the outcome they want. It's them just being human.

 

Dumbledore is indeed manipulative, but he is hardly the dark lord some describe

 

The question to ask those who accuse him of manipulation, I think, would be how to orchestrate any war effort without being at least somewhat manipulative. And it isn't like people didn't accept that.

Dumbledore lived a life wherein he knew that power would ultimately corrupt him, and yet people kept turning to him, thrusting power and responsibility into his hands because of his competence. They were like, "shut up and take my money."

Part of responsibility is a certain measure of authority and control. He had to manage resources and individuals (as resources in and of themselves) for a collective purpose, which is always hard to do and which will almost always reflect at least partially badly on whoever is charged with making the hard choices.

Of course he was manipulative, but what world leader isn't? This guy was THE wizard. So much pressure and responsibility. He was a world leader in the sense that he was actually leading a considerable portion of the entire world.

EDIT: Perhaps one of the only differences, that I can find, between Harry and the rest of the people following his orders willingly (and Harry even follows them willingly to a great extent: "Dumbledore's man") is that a lot of what Harry did had to be voluntary, for Old Magic reasons.

 

Dumbledore exerted control and influence over a great many things, either directly or more commonly indirectly, but he wasn't manipulative. "Manipulative" has a pejorative element to it, an implication of self-interest or malice or underhand motive of some kind. Dumbledore was none of these things.

At all times Dumbledore has the unfortunate position of having to balance his responsibilities as a leader with his wish to encourage individuals' freedom and happiness. His natural instinct is to let things be, to allow people to do what they want and be happy, but sometimes he has to exert control in order to further the goal of Voldemort's defeat.

The perfect example of this is Dumbledore telling Harry the prophecy. Now, a lot of people say Dumbledore was manipulative for not telling Harry the prophecy sooner. The opposite is actually the case: Dumbledore didn't tell Harry the prophecy because the prophecy would make Harry unhappy, because he cared about Harry too much as an individual. We are told as much in OotP. Dumbledore telling Harry the prophecy earlier would be him giving greater priority to the "war leader" side than the "let Harry be happy" side. Interfering with a child's natural development to prepare them for a war is manipulative; withholding uncomfortable truths about the world from children until they're mature enough to hear them is normal good parenting. In an ideal world, Dumbledore wouldn't have told Harry the prophecy until he was an adult.

In Harry's particular case, Dumbledore seems to have arrived at a particular compromise between the war goal and Harry's personal happiness. This compromise is letting Harry decide for himself how much he wants to be involved. This is rather the opposite of manipulative. Throughout the series Dumbledore empowers Harry's ability to choose, and every bad situation Harry enters is either through his own choice or through the plans of Voldemort.

Philosopher's Stone: Harry chooses to go down the trapdoor when he could have stayed safe in the Common Room.

Chamber of Secrets: Harry chooses to go down into the Chamber instead of telling the staff where the entrance is and what the monster is.

Prisoner of Azkaban: Harry chooses to follow Sirius Black to the Shrieking Shack when he kidnaps Ron, then chooses to try to protect and rescue Sirius.

Goblet of Fire: Voldemort plan.

Order of the Phoenix: Harry chooses to go to the Department of Mysteries to rescue Sirius (ignoring Dumbledore's instructions not to pay any heed to his visions in the process).

Half-Blood Prince: Harry chooses to go with Dumbledore to the cave, he chooses to come out from under his invisibility cloak and fight.

Deathly Hallows: Harry chooses to go to the forest to apparently die, when he could easily have stayed in the castle and continued to fight or fled.

The only real time Dumbledore has sent Harry into a dangerous situation was by assigning Harry the horcrux hunt (or effectively assigning it to Harry by only telling him about them). And by that time Harry was pretty much an adult.

 

It would be well and good if Harry had been an adult and choosen to involve himself in this stuff.

But you are forgetting that he was 11 years old and as an responsible adult you don't let a 11 year old fight against a serial murder of so much power that grown adults piss themselves just when saying his name, even if said child wants to.

That being said I still love Dumbledore and he is always thrust between his responsibilitys as a war leader and his love for Harry.

I also think that some of you are way overthinking some of this stuff. The reason why Dumbledore let so many shit happen was because the story would be boring if Dumbledore interfered with every adventure Harry was on and JKR didn't invest too much thought in the first books trying to explain every outrageous idea Dumbledore came up with eg. detention at the forbidden forest.

The only reason of that detention was for Harry to meet LV and make the story more exciting I think Rowling didn't gave any thought how Dumbledore would be perceived by the reader for allowing such a thing to happen

 

You do realise that it wasn't actually Dumbledore's plan for Harry to fight Voldemort, either in the forest or over the stone right?

What annoys me the most about the trope is the use of "Greater Good" - a philosophy which Dumbledore has distanced himself from more than sixty years ago and has rejected by placing Harry's happiness over his plan.

 

It would be impossible for anyone to be in his situation without dabbing their fingers into the honeyed web of manipulation.

 

It all depends on how much ruthlessness you assign to Dumbledore's actions, and how much negativity you associate with the term "manipulation". Some believe that he placed Harry with the Dursleys and sent Hagrid to get him etc. because it would make him easier to manipulate and shape for the destiny Dumbledore foresees. But it's obvious Rowling didn't intend to write him as such, so he probably just lacks good judgement.

However, there are obvious instances of Dumbledore manipulation in the series, the biggest and most obvious one is the entire "Prince's Tale" chapter, where Dumbledore plays Snape like a fiddle. This post explains it pretty well.

 

Well, Dumbledore did, in fact, admit to conspiring in child neglect. He outright stated that he sent Harry to the Dursley's for the specific purpose of lowering his self-worth.

 

No he didn't.

 

Well, of course Dumbledore is not going to come out and say, "Oh, Harry! I purposely sent you to the Dursley's so you would grow up with low self-worth and, thus, be willing to jump in dangerous situations on a moments whim!"

You as the reader must put the pieces together and use common sense.

I'm not saying that Dumbledore was rubbing his hands together in manic glee while taking joy in Harry's suffering. But he did want to make sure that Harry knew about the hardships of life so, in the future, he would be well prepared to handle whatever adversities would surely come his way.

 

I really need to learn this thing you call common sense, where one ignores any available facts and pieces together information obtained from imaginary evidence.

 

The available facts show us that Dumbledore did manipulate events to a certain extent.

You would have to be highly ignorant to think anyone in his position could possibly survive or complete his goals without a bit of manipulation.

Severus even accuses Dumbledore of manipulating him and, in response, Dumbledore said that they have been testing Harry and trying his strength up until then.

It does not take a genius to see that Dumbledore manipulated people. You would have to -- and I'm not accusing any particular person -- be a very stupid person to think he didn't manipulate people every once in a while, especially when one of the more intelligent characters of the series acknowledges that Dumbledore manipulated him and Harry.

 

The problem with such a generalization is that everyone manipulates people to some extent, be it in HP world or in real life. The question is whether the manipulation was of malicious intent or not.

 

Well, I've never once accused Dumbledore of having malicious intentions.

I have no doubt that he protected Harry to a degree that we'll never truly know. The fact that, aside from his adventures, Harry was mostly safe while in Hogwarts, despite the fact that magic existed, is quite dangerous, and Harry Potter had many enemies, tells me that Dumbledore probably had some way of keeping him safe.

All I'm saying is that Dumbledore needed to manipulate people to a certain degree. I have no doubt that he manipulated Hagrid once or twice but, at the same time, truly cared for the giant. And I have no doubt that he manipulated Harry, but still greatly cared for the boy.

He was one of the more powerful Wizards in the world, not just magically but politically as well. It was impossible for him to survive without manipulating others.

 

Well, fine then, Dumbledore has manipulated people, Harry has too, so have Hermione, Ron, Remus, and even Hagrid. What's your point?