OOTP Chapter One: "Dudley Demented"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* So, having done COS, I thought I’d have a bash at Harry Potter and the Capslock Button of Doom, or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix it's sometimes called.

 

* OOTP was where the series started to jump the shark for me. Prior to it, Harry had been a fairly bland but basically nice boy; after JKR discovered the capslock button, though, he went rapidly downhill. IIRC, this is the first book where I started actually disliking Harry.

* No, Harry, I don’t think the neighbours avoid you because of your scruffiness. More likely, it’s due to your egoism, recklessness, unfriendliness and general lack of empathy.

* Well done, Harry! Truly, thinking to hide somewhere where your relatives can’t see you is a masterstroke of genius, indicative of a brilliant mind.

* Is it possible to grind your teeth loud enough to drown out the sound of a TV? Anyway, I shudder to think of what the Dursleys’ teeth must be like. Wouldn’t all that grinding wear them down something terrible?

* For all that JK Rowling seems to link Dudley’s lack of interest in the news to a general lack of moral virtue, it should perhaps be pointed out that Harry only follows the news because he thinks it might involve him, rather than out of any general desire to find out what’s happening in the wider would.

* Given that Harry’s apparently ignored and maltreated at home, you might expect him to be glad of Mrs. Figg inviting him to tea. This seems to be one of the occasions when JKR’s desire to make Harry into a normal everyman character clashes with what a real person in his situation would be like.

* According to Harry, the Dursleys are “astonishingly stupid”. I’ll just pause there to let the irony of that description sink in.

* Dudley and his gang go around vandalising, smoking and throwing stones at people. Yep, it’s a jungle out there on the mean streets of middle-class, suburban Surrey.

* “‘Give ’em a lifelong siesta, I would,’ snarled Uncle Vernon.” Just to remind us all that he’s racist, and therefore evil. Unlike Rubeus “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad that wasn’t in Slytherin” Hagrid, Albus “Good Slytherins really belong in Gryffindor” Dumbledore, or indeed Harry “Squib-hexer” Potter.

* A helicopter’s almost crashed in Surrey. Wiltshire’s the next county but one. Just thought I’d point that out… :p

* “Look,” said the neighbours, “that Potter boy’s grubbing around in the dirt again. Better stay away from him, he might turn violent if we come too near.”

* Uncle Vernon is trying to strangle Harry, just like Homer does in The Simpsons, providing yet more evidence that the Dursleys’ treatment of Harry is just cartoon violence, not meant to be taken seriously.

* Harry’s already using outraged italics on the Dursleys. Fortunately, though, we’ve so far been spared the ANGRY CAPSLOCK OF RAGE!

* How does Harry know that the sound was made by someone apparating? It may have sounded like it; but, given that Harry’s been thinking about magic a lot recently, he’d be quite likely to think that about any loud noise.

* Harry does eventually conclude that he’s mistaken, which is impressive given that Hermione isn’t here to tell him what to think.

* Does it not occur to Harry that Voldemort’s rise might appear in the wizard papers as it would in the Muggle ones – i.e., a series of unexplained disappearances, the significance of which has not yet been realised? Why assume that the front page will be the only place to find information? Although I suppose that NewspaperReading!Harry wouldn’t give Hermione the chance to make a long expository speech in a later chapter, so on second thoughts it’s no wonder that idea was dumped.

* These next four paragraphs really encapsulate all the problems with LaterBooks!Harry. We have the inability to come to the most obvious conclusions (hey, Harry, do you think that the reason Ron and Hermione aren’t telling you anything is that they’re worried their owls might be intercepted, just like they say in their letters?), the angriness and lack of proportion (yeah, Harry, throw those chocolates away! That’ll show ’em!), and the unjustifiable sense of entitlement (I saw Voldemort come back, therefore I deserve a key role in the war!).

* “Nevertheless, it was quite galling to be told not to be rash by a man who had served twelve years in the wizard prison, Azkaban, escaped, attempted to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place, then gone on the run with a stolen Hippogriff.” All this, of course, proves that Sirius is not in fact rash: a truly rash person wouldn’t have been able to plan ahead enough to escape Azkaban in the first place; and, even if he did so, would almost certainly not be able to avoid the largest manhunt in recent wizarding history for almost a year.

* “How could Dumbledore have forgotten him so easily?” Thus commences Harry’s “jilted lover” act, which will last right up until the end of the book.

* I quite like the word “wending”. It adds a certain old-fashioned charm which seems to fit well with the quasi-Victorian wizarding world.

* Nice to see JK Rowling equating becoming a boxing champion, with all the self-discipline and hard work that implies, with juvenile delinquency.

* Come to think of it, why’s learning to box inherently more likely to lead to petty crime than, say, attending the Hogwarts duelling club? Both teach skills that could be turned towards negative ends, after all.

* Harry’s longing to vent his frustration on Dudley’s gang. As Jesus once said, “If your enemy slaps you on the face, just turn the other cheek. Unless you’re feeling irritated and you want to vent a bit of anger, of course, in which case you can use your magical powers to provoke him into a fight which you’re guaranteed to win, and proceed to seriously kick arse.”

* All the houses of Privet Drive have “perfectly manicured lawns”. Clearly mowing your lawn is a sign of great inner evil.

* Actually, magically replicating the effects of a Dementor attack on his cousin would be totally IC for Harry. His behaviour often reminds me of that quote from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: “Bullying is wrong. But destroying someone’s mind with magic is A-OK.”

* Do Dementors normally make you go blind? I don’t remember that from other books; or, at least, I don’t remember it being emphasised as much as it is here.

* Erm Harry, what’s so unbelievable about Dementors in Little Whingeing? The wizarding and Muggle worlds are one and the same, after all, so there’s nothing to stop them from gliding over to your place – it’s not like Lucy Pevensie suddenly finding a talking beaver in her home in England, for example. And you know that Voldemort is back, you know that he’s been obsessed with killing you for the past fourteen years, you know that the Dementors used to work for him and might well go over to his side again. Is it really so difficult to put two and two together and work out that Voldemort might have turned some Dementors and sent them to try and kill you? That would be wrong, but still a reasonable conclusion to reach.

 

Comments

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

If wearing the ring makes people see their dearly departed, why didn't Marvolo see ghosts?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

And what about TOM wearing it? Sluggy said he flashed it around, IIRC, but wasn't apparently having chats with anyone incorporeal.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

That's another glitch. You have to take it off and turn it in your hand in order to call the dead. Just wearing it doesn't do it.

Of course that's according to Beedle, who we have no evidence ever had possession of any of the Hallows. He may have made that part up to make it all sound more mysterious, or make it sound more like a *story*. That's one of the problems with stories that end up being true. You can't depend on what you are told in them, because you don't know where they've been...

In fact it sounds like it would be perfectly in keeping for Death to have booby-trapped the stone so that holding alone it would make you see ghosts, to the point that *there was no getting rid of them*. Which would drive you nuts eventually. Maybe setting the stone in a ring to keep it from making contact with your skin was the whole idea behind that.

But you might still see them whenever you brushed your hand across it. Unless they had to be called *deliberately*. Which seems to be the case. Harry wasn't *wearing* the ring on his march through the forest. And when he dropped it all the shades disappeared.

[oryx_leucoryx]

It doesn't, you have to turn it in your hand three times, like the legend said and like Harry did. And you can't turn in your hands a ring with a huge stone if you are wearing it.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

So, then, why did DD put it on? I thought - but, maybe, it's fandom again - that he put it on to see Ariana. He would know how to properly use the ring since he was such a big Hallows fan.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, Terri's idea is that he turned the ring over 3 times, he actually saw 'Ariana' and she convinced him that if he just put the ring on everything will be alright, he'll see the proof that she has forgiven him or something along the lines. IOW anyone who activates the ring is driven to suicide one way or the other.

[ioanna-ioannina.livejournal.com]

Maybe it burnt him, when he was turning it in his hand? (I don´t remember, who told he got burned because he put it on, Snape? If so, Snape was not there, so it could be only a guess.)