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]

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.