GOF Chapter 3: The Invitation

[oryx_leucoryx]

This is the obligatory Dursley chapter, in which we are treated to the home life of this family and learn how inferior they are to wizard families.

Dudley takes up a whole side of the square kitchen table. Ahem, I doubt a square kitchen table (as opposed to a dining room table) was designed to seat 8 people, 2 on a side. His parents excuse away his teachers' accusations of bullying. As opposed to the Weasleys who never receive reports making such heinous accusations against the twins (we'll see the school does occasionally owl their parents, but I don't see any awareness that some of what the twins do is bullying behavior). (This starts the theme of parents dealing with wayward sons in this book.) Dudley is forced into a diet of fruit and vegetables rather than his favorites. From the descriptions we get of the food Harry eats at Hogwarts I get the feeling Harry's favorites are closer to Dudley's than to the health foods, nor does he limit his intake. But somehow Harry remains thin, regardless of whether he gets starved by Petunia or stuffed by Molly or the House-elves.

Changing the food choices of the entire family is a good thing! However adjusting Harry's serving size to Dudley's (perceived?) emotional needs isn't. I don't begrudge Harry for working around a diet he doesn't need, but then I also sympathize with Dudley who does. Changing eating habits of years is hard.
This is also the place to say Dudley must have grown up as an emotional wreck. Knowing that his parents were capable of such physical and emotional deprivation of someone in their care - what if he ever failed to please them? I think a big part of his misbehavior is both making sure his parents know he *isn't* Harry as well as wanting the reassurance that they still love him, no matter what anyone else thinks.

Of Harry's 4 sources of help only one sends food he appreciates. Odd that even Hagrid managed to send an edible birthday cake. But how edible is it (or any of the others) 3 weeks later?

Harry is surprised that the Weasleys wrote directly to the Dursleys. Vernon is embarrassed that they didn't know how many stamps to use. But really, how hard is it to find out? Didn't they go to the post office to buy the stamps? What does it say about the exchange rate between Galleons and pounds that a family so poor finds it reasonable to spend on so many stamps for one letter? Molly's letter sounds as if she is trying too hard to make the Quidditch World Cup sound special and to make Arthur sound important. And of course she doesn't have enough imagination to realize that sending a letter by owl isn't normal for the Dursleys.

Harry is offended on Molly's behalf when Vernon calls her 'dumpy'. Since Molly likes Harry nobody is allowed to notice she is overweight.

I must say that the scene where Harry threatens Vernon with Sirius looks a lot less humorous now that I have seen Harry enjoy torturing a man for punishment, and Sirius engaging in Muggle-baiting.

If I am correct in my understanding that Ron is claiming that he and Molly wrote their respective letters at about the same time, then I am impressed with the UK post. Molly's letter arrived on Saturday morning. Pig arrived the same morning. Considering the speed of owls elsewhere, it looks as though Ron's letter was sent earlier that morning. So a letter got delivered the morning it was sent?

I am less impressed with the Weasleys. They plan on taking Harry regardless of the Dursleys' consent. One could argue that eventually Molly and Arthur realized their sons were not exaggerating when they said Harry had been imprisoned and starved, but seeing how Arthur views the treatment of Muggles, both in this book and in COS, I doubt this made a difference.

Harry is happy specifically because Dudley is suffering and he isn't. The seeds of the bully of HBP and war criminal of DH.

Comments

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

He looks at the marginalia and sees that the previous owner of the textbook has solved it - in the key parts of every sentence, there is a helpful note scribbled between the lines. He uses it for his own translation. He ends with the best translation in the class and gets praised for it.

As relevant an analogy as my cooking examples... :-)

Obviously we both agree that "the final result" shouldn't be the overriding criteria for judging/grading a student's work.

Another example: in a woodworking class students are given printed instructions on how to build a cabinet. This is an advanced woodworking class, to get into it students had to demonstrate a certain level of skill and knowledge.

All students save one follow the instructions they were given, and end up with adequate cabinets. But one student discovered notes from a student who took the class in a previous year, and by following those notes ends up with a cabinet that is stronger then those made by his classmates. The instructor praises the student for the innovations he thinks the student made solely on his own, not knowing that the student in question actually followed the notes of another student.

The instructor gushes that he hasn't seen such a talented student in years; the student allows the instructor to continue to heap praise on him and hides the fact that he's using someone else's notes.

The student with the notes ends up being considered the best student in class, gets the highest grades, but just continues to use the earlier student's notes without spending any time actually becoming a good woodworker on his own.

The student gets an "A" for the class at the end of the year because the instructor never caught on, most of the rest of the teachers at the school think the student is suddenly a master carpenter because of how much his instructor has raved about his abilities...but once the class has ended, the student can't even fix a broken chair leg.

But because he got such good grades in class, and his teacher raves about him to anyone seeking references, the student ends up as first choice for construction jobs over his fellow ex-classmates, where he's responsible to build structures that people will live or work in...and which end up collapsing because the student never actually LEARNED anything in the master class, only followed someone else's notes without giving those notes any deeper thought, and especially not letting his instructor know that he found someone else's notes that improved upon the original project. The student therefore consistently handed in superior work which the instructor assumed was the student's own innovations.

But hey, it's all about the final result, isn't it?

I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't want to live in a house built by someone who'd gone to the head of their class by copying someone else's work. And I sure as hell wouldn't want to go to a doctor who'd gotten thru medical school using someone else's notes to get good grades, but never actually LEARNED anything from said notes!

If it really is nothing but the end product/final result that counts, then it should be perfectly okay to submit term papers written by someone else. What Harry did was no different than if he'd had some other student outside of class brew the potion while Harry just went thru the motions within the classroom, and then just before it's time for Slughorn to grade it, duck out into the hall or open a window to grab the other potion from the other student and present it to Slughorn as his own.

Harry, in using the HBP's recipes, just went thru the motions of making a potion, but it was really Snape who did the work.

[ioanna-ioannina.livejournal.com]

Yes. Exactly. I cannot agree more. It´s all about the final result - and the final result is a pupil who can understand, what and why is he throwing into cauldron. Who cares about single essays and school potions, they are nothing but steps to the final result.
But Harry is not allowed to learn (by his author).
So... *shrugs*
:-))