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]

The decline in schools came way before the Teach to the Test.

No argument there, that's why homeschooling's mushroomed in the past two decades or so...

But it was just a general decline overall; I remember seeing a news report a few years ago showing a history textbook from the 70s, and the allegedly same textbook (same title, same editors, same publishing company) that was currently being used, and the size had diminished by about 100 pages. What had been a paragraph devoted to JFK's presidency and his assassination had been reduced to just one paragraph in the newer book.

And they showed the same thing had happened to the English/Grammar and Literature textbooks, basically kids were now getting a Reader's Digest version of great literature.

But the "teach to the test" mentality has been a fairly recent development, I think it took over starting in the 90s, and I suspect it has a lot to do with this "it's only the end result that matters" attitude that some people have.

When our parents (who survived the Carboniferous Epoch) talked about how things used to be and how they'd gone downhill, maybe they were right.

My grammar is atrocious. The only reason I can write a fairly literate sentence is because I read so much as a child, I just wrote sentences based on what I read. But we were never taught grammar in my school system. Not in elementary school, we were taught the alphabet and how to print in first grade, by third grade we were taught script writing, with requisite vocabulary words, and we were taught how to read.

We read a lot. By the upper elementary grades, that is ALL we did in the name of "English Class"...

In junior high they tried some experiment with us that I guess was supposed to be some sort of grammar instruction, but it seemed more like training to become a spy, it was all code, nouns were "1", verbs were "2", adjectives were "3", adverbs were "4", prepositions were "P", determinates were "D", that's all I can remember...

The teacher would either hand out sheets, or write on the board, something like "D 4 3 1 2 3 D 4 3 1", and we'd have to write a sentence based on the code. Or we'd get a sentence in English: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," and we'd have to translate it into the correct code.

Nobody, absolutely NOBODY in my school understood it. First off, by that point most students didn't even know a noun from a verb, to this day I couldn't tell you a preposition from a proposition!

Meanwhile at home, my mother would show my sister and me how when she was in school, they learned how to diagram sentences. We couldn't understand THAT, either, but my mother didn't question our teachers, I guess she figured it was a type of "New English", akin to the "New Math" that was all the rage back then.

Based on my poor grades in the spy code class in junior high, I got tracked onto Level 3 in my high school, which had 4 levels, #1 being the highest and #4 being lowest. I had 4 years of "English" in high school, which consisted of reading one book or play after another, and being tested on our comprehension of what we'd read. Not ever was I taught about proper sentence structure or proper punctuation.

Not that my friends who had Level 1 and Level 2 English fared any better -- they just got what were deemed "harder" books and plays to read than us dummies on the lower levels.

BTW, I ended up getting A's and B's in all my subjects, and my guidance counselor DID try to convince me to take Level 1 and 2 courses, but I was lazy like Harry Potter and figured I'd be happier taking home a report card full of A's and B's I didn't have to work hard for, than a report card of B' and C's...and like I said, the higher level English classes wouldn't have helped me when it came to grammar, anyway.

But it's something that to this day I'm self-conscious about, so I beg everyone's forgiveness beforehand anytime you see a glaring grammatical/punctuation error in my writing (I absolutely have NO clue to the proper placement of commas, for instance).

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Well, commas are tricky little buggers anyway. I'm a bit of a grammar nazi and I still get confused by them occasionally, lol. I think they're probably the most subjective punctuation, outside of semi-colons maybe.

My pet peeve is apostrophe abuse. It's rampant. *checks self*

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help that there are at least two schools of comma use. In one, you put commas just about everywhere. In the other you don't put commas unless someone holds a gun or wand to your head. I've taken to the Shakespearean approach - add commas where I'd expect an actor to take a breath.

Apostrophes! OMG! *reels* *falls* They don't teach proper comma insertion in schools. My college grammar teacher told us that they stopped doing that somewhere in the mid-1960s, along with a few other "improvements." There's a rule on how to do it and people don't know it! I went to private schools off and on when my parents could afford it so I did learn the rule in the 1960s but, to test out this theory, I asked my husband how he determines where to place an apostrophe when he writes. He said he doesn't - back in school he just memorized the words that took them. I asked the youngest, who is now 19; she said you put the apostrophe between the ultimate and penultimate letters (not her words, btw.)

!

For semi-colons - you stick them between items on a list following a colon. For anything else, I use it when a period seems too final but a comma seems out of place. I'm like majorjune here - most of this sort of thing I learned from seeing it in books.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

I like the Shakespearean approach myself, though I'd never named it. I think you've officially christened it. ;) Also, have you read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves?" I LOL every time I see the title alone.

Lack of teaching would probably explain why I now see official documents, advertising campaigns, and even pieces of journalism written by people who haven't a clue what to do with apostrophes. It makes me cringe. It's not like it's all that *complicated* after all! (Makes me glad that I went to private school after grade 2.)

!!

The way I learned to use semi-colons (IIRC) is in lists or when the following clause could stand on its own as a proper sentence (but for some reason you want one sentence instead of two). If it can't stand on its own, use a comma. (I admit I'm rather too fond of semicolons in academic writing; it makes my papers unreadable, lol.) I agree that reading a lot helps a lot - I'm a bibliophile myself, so that's probably taught me quite a bit too.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

I've taken to the Shakespearean approach - add commas where I'd expect an actor to take a breath.

That's my understanding of comma use (remember, I never was actually TAUGHT grammar in 12 years of public schooling), that they are used where there would be a pause if the sentence was spoken out loud.

I asked my husband how he determines where to place an apostrophe when he writes. He said he doesn't - back in school he just memorized the words that took them.

That's basically what I remember, we were given weekly vocabularies to memorize. Altho I do have a faint memory of being told about its use in contractions (turning is not into isn't, for instance) and to indicate possession (Harry's wand for instance). Or to indicate where a letter has been dropped from a word, as in Toys 'r' Us...

Other than that, I haven't a clue.

she said you put the apostrophe between the ultimate and penultimate letters

Huh?

For semi-colons - you stick them between items on a list following a colon.

I did not know that. :-)

For anything else, I use it when a period seems too final but a comma seems out of place.

Yeah, that's basically how I do it, too.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Huh?

Sorry, getting school-ish. I had my grammar book out for another message board and it started to possess me, sort-of like a certain diary we all know... ;) She said the apostrophe goes between the last and second-to-the-last letter. Which is what someone would guess on seeing most contractions. All of the 'not' contractions are like that. As you mention, the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letter(s) in a word (isn't, would've) and they also show possession (Harry's wand, the Dursleys' kitchen.)

I think a lot of this stuff is intuitive if you read a lot. You've seen how it's done in edited books, you notice when things look right.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

My pet peeve is apostrophe abuse. It's rampant. *checks self*

I don't think I'm too bad when it comes to apostrophes, altho I must admit to occasional confusion on the proper use of "its" or "it's"...

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Think of it this way - if you can say "it is" instead of "it's", then you put the apostrophe where the 'i' of 'is' used to be. If it belongs to it, like the car's gas tank or the chair's cushions, it's "its" gas tank or cushions, just like "his" or "her."

(BTW, I use either " or ' to close off words, mainly because I'm lazy as all get-out and, sometimes, my shift key is hard to depress.)

I love the headwall icon, btw. I feel that way a lot.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Think of it this way - if you can say "it is" instead of "it's", then you put the apostrophe where the 'i' of 'is' used to be. If it belongs to it, like the car's gas tank or the chair's cushions, it's "its" gas tank or cushions, just like "his" or "her."

Yeah, that's basically what I do, but sometimes there are phrases where it seems to be a gray area, and I get confused.

Doesn't take much to make me confused... :-P

I love the headwall icon, btw. I feel that way a lot.

Same here, which is why I snagged it from wherever I snagged it from...

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

There are tests on the internet that purport to be actual tests from 1800s eighth grade tests. Not too easy. I'm not sure they're bona fide; wish I knew for sure if they were or not. My dad dropped out of school in the 8th grade (1917) and he was an absolute font of knowledge. He read a lot, which, I think, enhanced what he'd learned. If you watch those Jay Leno man-on-the-street interviews, you can see how things have changed.

On grammar, see my answer to condwiramurs. They stopped teaching almost everything related to English and now, the attitude is, if you understand me, why bother with the right usage of a word? I'm a "descriptive rather than prescriptive grammar" type myself. Colloquial usage is fine with me and more natural to the language. A lot of what they teach (like split infinitives) was taken from Latin (the so-called "perfect language") and has no bearing on what the English language is actually like (you can't split a Latin infinitive because it's all one word; the English word is two words and can be split.) They also added elements of philosophy: a double negative = a positive, when, in language, a double negative can serve to emphasize something ("I ain't done nothing wrong!") Philosophy is a very exact form of writing that doesn't apply in normal conversation so why use conventions that stem from it in grammar?

Still, language is meant to communicate so, if it takes me too long to figure out what you're trying to say, then you (not you personally, I haven't had a problem in reading your posts) need to learn how better to communicate or resign yourself to being misunderstood. It's galling when university students don't know how to place an apostrophe, for instance, or uses "too" instead of "to" which, in a few cases, actually can affect the meaning of the sentence. I wish I could remember the couple of instances where it made a huge difference in posts I read elsewhere! I do recall a time when my roommate had me worried - I asked what time it was and she said, "10-2." (just read it phonetically since it was spoken.) I thought she meant "10:02" and I was late. She meant "10 till (the hour, 9.)" I wasn't late.

We didn't get the 1-2-3 method of grammar. We did get to diagram sentences with the little arrow pointing to the direct object, underline the noun and the verb, put a slash between the subject and the predicate (now, there's a fanfic some English major ought to write!) When I took grammar in college, we tossed that out the window in favor of Sentence Trees, diagrams that look like word mobiles on hangers. I liked it. It's more practical than the old diagramming and it's more descriptive of the actual language.

Oy, read and comprehend and infer and find subtext. Heh. Isn't that what we do here? ;)

[ioanna-ioannina.livejournal.com]

Now I can understand why here English grammar is taught "on the basis of Czech"...
I hate it. English grammar is the only grammar I never understood (as opposed to the other 6 or so other languages). I still feel pretty insecure when speaking English because of it. If I can´t understand how the language works... :´-((
It makes me very sad. :´-((

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

A lot of what they teach (like split infinitives) was taken from Latin (the so-called "perfect language") and has no bearing on what the English language is actually like (you can't split a Latin infinitive because it's all one word; the English word is two words and can be split.)

I have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about! (sigh)

I have no idea what an infinitive is, let alone what a split one looks like.

The only thing I know about prepositions is that the word "to" is one, and that you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but I think I do it all the time! :-P

We didn't get the 1-2-3 method of grammar. We did get to diagram sentences with the little arrow pointing to the direct object, underline the noun and the verb, put a slash between the subject and the predicate (now, there's a fanfic some English major ought to write!)

Yeah, that's what my mother had been taught, and what she tried to show to my sister and me, to great failure. Like I said, instead of questioning if we were actually being taught any sort of grammar, she just thought that it must be a "New Grammar" just like the "New Math" we were being taught. And since my sister and I could write fairly literate sentences, my mother didn't realize that there was a problem.

I only found out how bad my school system was in my 9th grade French class. Our teacher, a very volatile French Canadian, had to spend most of the year teaching us what we should have been taught in 8th grade (whole other story, that)...

So there we were at the beginning of June, temps in the upper 80s in a postmodern building, all steel and glass and no air-conditioning, baking in the sweatbox of a classroom, and didn't even have curtains/shades to keep the sun out, and our sweaty teacher was trying to teach us some aspect of French grammar.

Part of the blank look on our faces was due to the heat, but most of it was because we had no idea what he was talking about. He kept talking about prepositions and definitives and determinates and predeterminates and presdestination (for all I knew at that point)...

We could see his frustration building. Nothing, and no one, should get Mr. Fournier mad; you wouldn't like it when he's mad.

He finally starts teaching us in English, stating, "Well you know, in English grammar..."

We had no idea what he said after the word "grammar"...we still looked like jack-lighted deer.

Mr. Fournier noticed our faces, and asked (actually more of a statement), "Tell me you have no idea what I'm talking about!"

So we told him that indeed, we had no idea what he was talking about. He literally screamed, "What do they teach you in English class?"

So we explained about all the books and plays we had to read and be tested on. Mr. Fournier broke his piece of chalk in half, as was his wont when angry, and then he collapsed onto his desk chair and proceeded to break a couple of pencils in half, as was his wont when he was really angry.

Then he noticed how scared we all looked. He sighed, and in a much softer, sad voice said, "I'm not mad at you kids. I really feel very sorry for you, and that this town has such a lousy school system..."

He then went on to explain what he thought had happened...seemed there had been a big scandal about 10 years previously, where students graduating from high school in my town who'd gotten A's in English, went on to college -- some to Ivy League colleges -- where they found that THEY COULDN'T READ. Or couldn't read much past a 6th grade level. All these previous straight-A students flunked out of college because they couldn't keep up with the reading assignments.

But they'd been able to write beautifully, in fact that is why many of them were able to get into Ivy League schools because they were able to write so well.

So apparently my town went to the other extreme, decided to emphasize reading over writing, so my generation ended up with students who were able to read at grade level or above, but for the most part couldn't write an intelligible sentence if their life depended on it.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Now I'm imagining an encounter between Mr Fournier and Professor Snape.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Me, too!

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Me, too!

Snape simmers like a crockpot, and sometimes smolders, but only erupts when severely provoked.

Mr. Fournier, OTOH, was like a defective pressure cooker, he'd build up steam with the least provocation and then explode, leaving a mess! LOL

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Now I'm imagining an encounter between Mr Fournier and Professor Snape.

Mr. Fournier was very short, and very volatile...definitely could see him as Flitwick! LOL

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about! (sigh)

This part's simple. And, Mr. Fournier is right, they really should have mentioned since it really is simple. An infinitive is the "to -" form of the verb. To go, to sleep, to sit, to scream like an irritated French teacher... ;)

In the Latin languages, the infinitive form usually has an ending tacked onto the word, like "comprender" in Spanish - "to understand ('comprehend' is the mental translation I used in class to remember it.)" Just like in Latin but, I didn't take Latin, I took Spanish. That ending is a part of the word and can't be split off. So, we conjugate the Spanish verb as I "compro", tu "compras", el/ella "compre" and on to the multiple personalities of we, y'all and them. All one word. Can't be split.

(Oy, I may be channeling Mr. F. here because I feel the same way - how on earth do they expect students to learn another language if they don't teach the first language effectively? Don't people think??? Only, I'm taking a very nice on-line Welsh course that doesn't teach grammar overtly at all and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's all listen and repeat, just the way you learn your first language as a kid.)

Still, I can see why your school system swung wide the other direction if that was the case. Not only were their methods ineffective, they were shamed in front of very important peers.

Really, though, I haven't noticed anything off about your posts. Maybe it was the love of reading that did you good in the end. :D And, grammar or its lack doesn't shut down a reasoning mind. Reason isn't tied to grammar any more than grammar is tied to reason.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Really, though, I haven't noticed anything off about your posts.

Thanks.

Maybe it was the love of reading that did you good in the end. :D

That's exactly it.

My mother worked a job where she was on call 24/7; back in the 50s you didn't have daycare like you do today, her only option for my sister and me was to enroll us in a private school that had both a nursery school and an elementary school, and taught under the Montessori system.

I started attending when I was 2 1/2 years old, and they started us off on phonics right away, so that by the age of 5 I actually could read quite well.

When I turned 6 a public school opened just a block and a half from where I lived, so my parents switched my sister and me to that school. My sister had attended first grade in the private school, and when the public school tested her prior to accepting us for admission, she did so well that the accelerated her one grade, so that she started in third grade instead of second.

My parents claimed that I did as well on the test I was given, but that the school officials claimed that they could accelerate two girls from the same family. Whether that was true or not, I also suspect the fact that my sister had already had one year of "real" classroom experience, while I'd only had what the public school consider extended kindergarten, had a lot to do with it.

So I ended up being put into first grade with kids who couldn't read at all, when I already knew how to read, and also write to a limited extent. I was totally bored in the class, always read ahead, and when I finished a class assignment first (as I usually did), I'd read the dictionary that every student was given and which was kept in our desks.

By the time I was in 3rd grade, my teacher actually told me to STOP reading the dictionary, as I'd get "too advanced"! :-P

Years later I found out that my sister did the same thing, read the dictionary while waiting for the other students to finish an assignment or test, and that in 5th grade she also was told to stop reading it because she'd get "too advanced". That was the same year I was told the same thing, so the teachers must have been comparing notes in the teachers' lounge...

Can you imagine telling a student that it is WRONG to learn more, and that one shouldn't try to become "too advanced"?

Anyway, by the time I finished elementary school, I'd read the whole Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare set that my parents owned, and I was taking college and adult-level books out of the library to read. So when I started to write fiction and plays in junior high, I just wrote my sentences like how I'd seen sentences written in books, newspapers, and magazines.

So I'm a parrot, I can mimic good grammar, but I have no understanding of it.

Reason isn't tied to grammar any more than grammar is tied to reason.

No, but as someone else pointed out, poor grammar makes it harder to communicate your ideas to others; it doesn't matter how good your reasoning and ideas are, if in the end no one can understand what you are trying to say.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I hopped schools. Sometimes private, when my parents could afford it, sometimes public. I had the same problems you did - I skated through the classes (in everything but math - I really suck at math.) I was the kid who hid fun books in the desk and took peeks while I thought the teacher wasn't looking. I got so many funny looks from using adult-level vocabulary that I purposely dumbed my speech down to avoid being noticed. I also read when I started to school because my mother, who hated to read and had problems with dyslexia, ran her finger under the words as she read to me so I picked them up. I also was the student the teachers picked on to read to the class if they had to run out for something back in elementary school.

I usually say that the private schools let me coast two years into the next public school I attended. It really threw me when we moved to MA and the husband said that kids in the public schools did better than the kids in the private schools. I thought I'd entered the Twilight Zone.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

I also read when I started to school because my mother, who hated to read and had problems with dyslexia, ran her finger under the words as she read to me

My situation was the exact opposite -- my mother LOVED to read, the Book Section of the Sunday NY Times was the first section of the paper she'd grab (followed by the crossword, which she did in ink), and she never had to force my sister or me to read, she set an example by her own behavior. As I mentioned, she worked a job that was 24/7, so her free time was limited, and reading was one of the things she made time for.

I also was the student the teachers picked on to read to the class if they had to run out for something back in elementary school.

No, in my case that was another thing that my teachers reprimanded me on...if we had to read aloud, I was always scolded for "reading too fast" for the rest of the students to follow. And it wasn't like I was deliberately rushing, it was just that whatever they had me read was like 2 to 3 years beneath my reading comprehension, so I just read it straight thru with no pause, while my fellow students stumbled over words they didn't recognize.