Philosopher's Stone Chapter Four

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

 

Hagrid's here.  I hope everyone is delighted.

PS Chapter Four

 

*Dudley asks where the cannon is.  It’s worse than that Dudley.

 

*You should let Hagrid in muggles, or he’ll break the door down... too late.  Hagrid’s rule is to knock twice then break down the door. 

 

*Hagrid immediately recognises that Dudley is truly a Dud.  I mean he is fat after all...

 

*But as for Harry, the Lily Sue essence shines out of his eyes...

 

*Like all muggles, Vernon is ridiculous and worthy only of contempt.   Hagrid is at least as much given to bullying tendencies as Vernon is, but bullying is always OK when directed against muggles or if a Gryffindor does it.

 

*It is readily apparent why Dumblesnore sent Hagrid to do this job instead of someone competent.  Hagrid worships Dumbledore like a pet dog would.  Generally he doesn’t exhibit a mental age any greater than that of an eleven year old boy so in a weird sort of way, he is like an equal for the little oddball who has never had a single friend in his life before.  Dumblesnore doesn’t have to give him any specific instructions because he knows that Hagrid will act in the necessary way just by being himself.  The fact that he intimidates the Dursleys just as a way of normal interaction and is the first person to really fawn over Harry makes Harry perma-bond with him.  We see this has consequences for little Harry that go on for years.  You all know the rest.  Harry will carry an illegal dragon to the top of the Astronomy tower for Hagrid and then take the fall for him; Harry’s loyalty towards Hagrid will not waver despite Hagrid sending him unwittingly into the lair of man eating spiders and forcing illegally bred Blast Ended Skrewts on him and his peers.  And Harry is even prepared to risk expulsion by slipping past a herd of murderous centaurs to teach English to a giant just because Hagrid expects it of him.  The point that is relevant right here and now is that Harry will certainly accept Hagrid’s loyalty to Dumblesnore and his prejudices against Slytherin House just as Dumblesnore planned.

 

*Ah, Hagrid wouldn’t say no to some strong liquor or substance if only the Dursleys kept such things.  Wonderful isn’t it, how JKR views alcoholism and worse addictions as being either comical or endearing?

 

*I would give out Vernon’s advice about Hagrid to anyone; “don’t touch anything he gives you.”  In fact, I would deliver it more emphatically than I would have done with regards to the early Ronald McDonald.

 

* “Keeper of the Keys” is just a grandiose title that actually doesn’t mean anything – the kind of thing Dumblesnore would dish out to his pet as if it were a dog biscuit.

 

*Young and friendless as he is, Harry cannot see Hagrid’s boorish behaviour towards the Dursleys for what it is.  The Dursleys have always kept him downtrodden, so naturally it would gratify him for someone to bully them in turn.  Just as Dumblesnore planned...

 

*So finally we see the letter.  Was it what you were expecting when you first read the books everyone?  Apparently 31^st July is a cut off date for Hogwarts applications... Hagrid cut it fine.  I don’t suppose Snape would have procrastinated about it or wasted time with the bizarre stalking game.

 

*Poor owl, imagine being shoved in Hagrid’s pocket.

 

*In the UK edition, Hagrid’s letter to Dumblesnore begins “Mr Dumbledore.”  I imagine no treats for Hagrid for that? :p

 

* I think it requires clarifying that anti-muggle bigotry is only bad if it comes from certain characters.  It is perfectly OK coming from anyone sorted into Gryffindor.  So Hagrid’s open contempt for muggles in general, is nothing whatever like the Death Eater’s mindset.  All clear?  Good.

 

*From what we see of Lily from Snape’s memories, she comes across as the sort of character who would be really full of herself at becoming a witch and probably unbearable towards her ugly, non magical sister during the holidays.  However, Lily is a Mary Sue – everyone should be besotted with her, it’s in the script.  So Petunia’s just a worthless, envious hag, just as Hagrid would probably describe her if he got tired of using the word ‘muggle’ as an insult.

 

*Car crash?  No car crash or any heavy impact could kill Lily and James!  It was Voldemort and his flash of light!  He was “here in a flash and gone without a trace.”

 

*Actually Hagrid having the job of telling Harry his story is convenient from the broader storytelling point of view.  JKR knew her limits in the early series.  She gave out details on the wizarding world sparingly so as not to use up all her ideas too quickly.  Harry being so dull and incurious about his surroundings facilitated this.  So does Hagrid’s account of that night with all its gaping holes.

 

*Hagrid can’t spell.  It’s that curious theme of stereotyping again; the designated evil characters try to stereotype Hagrid for being a half giant, but in the Potterverse, the stereotypes against giants and half giants seem to be basically true.

 

*Voldemort didn’t dare try taking the school?  More likely he was procrastinating for eleven years about attempting it.  He was a master of procrastination if nothing else.

 

*Nicer people than Lily and James “yeh couldn’t find...” hmmm.  Lily turning nice is actually less believable than James Potter turning from arse to wonder from age 15-18.

 

*The list of the fallen, the McKinnons, the Bones and the Prewetts were the best witches and wizards of the age.  Given the way JKR’s informed attributes for characters tend to match the text, it’s just as well we don’t know anything about them.  That way their reputation with the fan base is untarnished.

 

*Voldemort had an unnaturally high pitched voice (for a wizard).  Who here thinks he should have been given a hissing impediment instead?

 

*Hagrid sticks up for the memory of Lily and James against Vernon in the true Gryffindor fashion – by attacking/ intimidating someone who cannot adequately defend himself.

 

*Voldemort died or gone?  Watch more low grade horror movies, magical folk!

 

*I bet Harry and Hagrid would have enjoyed the reminiscences more if they had culminated with a boa constrictor eating Dudley.

 

*Uh Oh, Hagrid really is like Dumblesnore’s dog here... except for the fact that he arbitrarily attacks Dudley and not the muggle who actually insulted Dumbledore.  Hagrid has no interest in putting his handiwork right.  One might have expected Dud to have lasting animosity for wizards in general after this.

 

*Here begins another theme – covering up for Hagrid.  There is a LOT more of it to come.  A possible analogy is that of little kids covering up for alcoholic adults.

 

*Hagrid, allowing you to stay at Hogwarts is not the sign of a great man!

 

*Harry gets the mouldy old coat, Hagrid gets the couch.  Good Night!

Comments

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

It's more the difference between, "Oh, Muggles, they're such children that we need to wipe their minds, never mind that we might do serious brain damage because hey, we're just that much more freaking awesome" and "We want to kill and oppress Muggles" (you can leave off the term, "offspring" since they're Muggles, too.) It's called an "imperialist mentality" or, to be more literate, "the White Man's Burden" (from Kipling) where certain societies see themselves as being so much more advanced, to the point of thinking of themselves as more "human," that they can destroy cultures and people in the name of inherent superiority. Imagine someone saying, "They're so silly," about a real culture. Imagine them behaving the way Arthur Weasley does toward Muggles. The entire WW seems to think it's all right to manage the affairs of these inferior Others. The only difference is that the Death Eaters are more explicit in their views.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what I was getting at, yeah. In the end, both the goodies and baddies look down on Muggles; any difference between their prejudices is one of degree more than anything else.

[chalts.livejournal.com]

Except that the 'Muggles are children' mentality exists in the largely prejudiced-but-not-entirely-evil wizarding government, and is not presented as something that's noble or good. It's not even subtext to say that the Wizarding world is extremely effed up; that was a core point of the books. If you think Rowling is advocating that, then you seriously fail at reading.

It's certainly true that on some level, Arthur and Hagrid have internalized the prejudice, but it's still several orders of magnitude different than what the Death Eaters want.

And 'offspring' is important because some Muggle offspring are wizards, and the Death Eaters hate them as much, if not more, than they hate Muggles.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Do we really fail at reading? You see, in the very last scene of the last book, the hero's best friend is confessing to confunding a Muggle, and the hero is waving this away. And "All is Well".

Worse yet, in her interviews, the author is insisting that her hero, in spite of all textual evidence to the contrary, is truly good.

In other words, I disagree that the "Muggles are children" attitude is confined to the Ministry. Practically the first thing we see an adult wizard do is an act of Muggle-baiting, and the hero is delighted by it - as are (initially) we readers. And both Ron and Hermione are shown to confund and mind-wipe Muggles without said Muggles' knowledge or permission. These are the good guys!

If the attitude were confined to the Ministry, which (as you say) is clearly shown as imperfect, I wouldn't have such a problem with these books.

[chalts.livejournal.com]

I think you're taking a gag far too seriously. But even then, just because Harry doesn't stop and lecture his adult friend on misuse of the confundus charm doesn't mean that we're supposed to 'approve' of it. In fact, it's funny precisely because it's wrong. Ron's audacity in getting away with something he really shouldn't do is the amusing part; it's a trope as old as fiction, and unless you take these stories way too damn seriously, I can't see how this should offend people.

I'm not even saying that many of the good guys in HP aren't deeply flawed.

Harry can be remarkably thoughtless; Hermione tends to think she knows best for other people; Ron and Ginny have nasty tempers; Snape is a complete dick; Dumbledore tends to take big gambles that sometimes backfire.

But it's silly to say that there's not a clear, wide gulf of distinction between the flaws of the good guys and those of the bad guys.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

"But it's silly to say that there's not a clear, wide gulf of distinction between the flaws of the good guys and those of the bad guys."

Well, yes. The bad guys are overt about it, the less bad guys are insidious about it. In the same way that Star Trek's Federation is a nasty imperialistic regime run on the principles of the Smooth-Foreheaded Man's Burden. The Death Eaters talk a lot about killing Muggles (though the only such killing I can remember off the top of my head is Frank Bryce, and that was because he Knew Too Much rather than because he was there), whereas the protagonists happily mindwipe them for their own convenience, leave them with armed Death Eaters about to recover consciousness (okay, that's another possible Muggle killing on the part of the Death Eaters), cheerfully abandon their Muggle family over the holidays to be with their substitute wizarding family, destroy their Muggle parents' identities (in a sense killing them) and sending them off to Australia, then angsting about how hard it was to do that... I'd prefer the Death Eaters - at least they're easier to thwart.

[night-train-fm.livejournal.com]

The Death Eaters talk a lot about killing Muggles

Voldemort makes a bridge collapse and attacks at least one Muggle town during the gap between OotP and HBP. Muggle-hunting becomes a sport during his takeover of the government, and he sics Dementors and the likes of Fenrir Greyback on people who oppose him as a matter of course.

Not to mention all those Muggle-borns who were rounded up and falsely accused of 'stealing magic' during DH, who would probably object to urbanman's claim that the DEs' greatest aspiration is 'to do nothing at all' (seriously, where'd that come from?)

Death Eaters and inertia

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

They could have enacted their plot to take over the Ministry at any point during Order of the Phoenix or Half Blood Prince, but did nothing. They could also have done it at any time from the 'fifties to the time of Voldemort's first fall, but did nothing significant during those decades.

Re: Death Eaters and inertia

[night-train-fm.livejournal.com]

They still killed many people and terrorised many others. I don't think that counts as 'doing nothing', no matter when they may have done it.

They could also have done it at any time from the 'fifties to the time of Voldemort's first fall

As early as that? What's your evidence?

Re: Death Eaters and inertia

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Public opinion in the fifties is likely to have been less Muggle-born-friendly assuming Wizarding Britain followed a similar liberalisation pattern to real-world Britain, and given how easy DH shows Imperio is to cast, it really doesn't seem hard given that Voldemort had people in the Ministry from fairly early on (assuming Rowling keeps her maths straight). There would have been fewer people needed out of the way or enslaved. Or Voldemort could just have joined the Department of Mysteries on the strength of his researches and intellect and got close enough to important Ministry officials to Imperius them himself.

Re: Death Eaters and inertia

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Just a single generation before the series, Sirius Black reported that it would have been a real possibility to make muggle hunting legal.

In the magical community people live longer so liberalisation patterns would take longer to occur than in real-world Britain. Certainly in the 'fifties, there would have been a great part of the Wizengamot and important Ministry staff who agreed entirely with Death Eater ideology so there would definitely have been much less for the Death Eaters to do in order to take over in that era than during the time of the series.

[summeriris.livejournal.com]

Harry is a child who has been abused by these people from day one. Of course he is pleased to see them intimidated, who wouldn't be? I don't like the Muggle baiting in the books either, but I look on them as the author holding up a looking glass to the society that she lives in. You ad I live in that society as well, and every one in this society has their own little niggling prejudices. Nobody likes to be reminded of their own prejudices, we don't like to think that we can be that petty, but the sad truth is nobody's perfect. Like the saying goes, and these books do a very good job in this regard, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. If you are not completely perfect, and nobody is, in this regard don't throw stones at Hagrid.
If you have such a problem with the books and you don't like the mirror Rowling holds up for us to see ourselves in, do yourself a favour and not read them. Constantly inflicting something like that on yourself can give you an ulcer. They are not pleasant. You cannot change the books, they are what they are.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

...but I look on them as the author holding up a looking glass to the society that she lives in.

Which would be fine if these were books written for adults. They aren't. They're written for children. There was some discussion either on this thread or the previous one about a fanfic in which Harry makes some rather sophisticated points about the futility of Quidditch when the Seeker position is added. It was mentioned that an eleven year old talking like that was slightly unbelievable.

I would suggest that an eleven year old or nine year old, much closer to the target audience of these books than the adults who post here, are even less likely to say, "Ooh, look, the author is holding up a looking-glass to our society;" they're more likely to say, "but Hagrid didn't get in trouble when his pet bit somebody and Harry even saved Buckbeak so that stupid kid that got bit by Granny's dog is just being stupid and the dog shouldn't be put down."

And then imagine this hypothetical kid and its friends trying to "save" the rabid dog.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the discussion about Quiddich is in the chapter five post.

On another note, why would anyone try and limit what other people talk about?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I don't like the Muggle baiting in the books either, but I look on them as the author holding up a looking glass to the society that she lives in.

And I think you are giving the author far too much credit. I doubt she intended anything so grand as that when she began these books; they just struck me, back in the days of PS/SS and COS, as a fun, high-energy, childish lark. I could believe she wanted to mirror society and encourage readers to examine their own prejudices if she had (1) shown us one single Muggle who was worthy of respect, AND whom one of the "good guys" respected, and (2) shown us one unambiguously good Slytherin who was actually redeemed. A Slytherin child who was a friend/ally of Harry's would have been a relief, too.

As it is, these books enshrine prejudice as valid. Not quite the same thing as critiquing it!

And I'm not criticizing Hagrid. You'll note above that I said I basically liked him, and compared him to Saint Peter.

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

It's so sweet of you to be concerned about our members' health!
I share your humanitarian instincts, and since you have such a problem with people discussing the books unfavourably, and worry that reading stuff you don't like could cause an ulcer; I have done you a favour and banned you.