Ron's Huge Letdown

As we have thoroughly discussed throughout the Harry Potter series, the bildungsroman/coming of age story is one, if not the most important theme in the series.  This theme particularly stands out to me because, I feel a personal connection to Harry, Ron and Hermione’s coming of age because, I grew up along with them and went through some of the same internal conflicts they did, fortunately without blowing up my aunt.  By the end of this drawn out coming of age story, I was really hoping for more from Ron Weasley. 

I was really disappointed with just about everything having to do with Ron throughout the entire Deathly Hallows book.  I was hoping for so much more from him.  J K Rowling ended the Half Blood Prince with Harry, Ron, and Hermione all not returning to Hogwarts, which had me hoping that we would finally get Ron’s big moment that I’ve been waiting for since Order of the Phoenix, when I felt Ron was finally stepping out from Harry’s spotlight by becoming a prefect.  But then he goes and leaves Harry and Hermione in the middle of nowhere because he thought they would be closer to finding and destroying Horcruxes than what they were.  I thought this was so out of character and selfish for Ron.  Yeah he came back and saved Harry, but I really didn’t like that whole situation because one minute he was ready to sacrifice everything to help Harry and the next he was just ready to give up when it wasn’t going how he had planned.  It was great that Ron came back, saved Harry and destroyed the Horcrux, but I felt that all of it was overshadowed by him leaving.  It wasn’t how I thought his coming of age story would end.  I though there was too much build up for it to end how it does.

Aside from that, I also thought the epilogue was slightly disappointing on Ron’s behalf.  I was happy he ended up with Hermione, but then again I feel like he could still be in the shadows of her.  I wanted Ron to branch out from Harry and Hermione after leaving them in the forest because, for me, I thought their friendship had changed after that.  The conclusion to Ron’s coming of age story wasn’t what I was hoping for, but nevertheless I loved the ending of the series and all of the other answers to the continuous problems dealt with by Harry.