Let's Read Tales of Beedle The Bard, part one: The Wizard And The Hopping Pot.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Thought of starting a Let's Read of ToBtB. Let's say I have mixed feelings about it so far... :/



General Plot of the Story: Muggle-loving father dies and leaves his Muggle-hating son a slipper (presumably because the guy was...weird. :P). Guy's a jerk to other people because they can't use magic. The titular pot starts to go ballistic. Guy can't take it any more and changes his ways. Muggles get well again. Guy fits slipper on hopping pot (I shit you not), and the pot hops away...honestly, it's kind of like an acid trip. Bizarrely sweet, though.

Dumbledore's commentary (call it All There In The Manual): Dumbledore says, and I quote, "A simple and heartwarming fable, one might think -- in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop." (11) Well, good to know that Dumbledore's crankiness/bitterness has survived from beyond the grave. :P (Speaking of which, what's the commentary doing there? Is Dumbledore -- ghost-collaborating with Hermione? Is Hermione relaying his instructions? Is Harry? I'm so confused. XD) Nothing really of interest here (well, other than the bit about Beatrix Bloxam and the "ARGH KILL IT WITH FIRE!" reaction that a lot of the kids had to her...interpretation of "The Wizard And The Hopping Pot").

Thoughts: I will admit -- risking my own life -- that this is actually sort of sweet. Or would be, if the wizard had done the deeds he did out of the goodness of his heart (or if he wanted to change). *Cough* A Christmas Carol. *Cough* Mostly, he had a change of heart if only to shut the pot up. That said...it's mostly okay, so far. Not bringing out the nerd rage yet. (Well, other than Dumbledore's commentary, but...um, yeah)

Dumbles Rage-O-Meter: 5. It's bad, but it's within tolerable range. Continue. :)

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/(well, other than the bit about Beatrix Bloxam and the "ARGH KILL IT WITH FIRE!" reaction that a lot of the kids had to her...interpretation of "The Wizard And The Hopping Pot")./

I think that Beatrix Bloxam was supposed to be a parody of Laura Mallory and the other crazy Christian fundamentalists who scream about how Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and corrupts children, etc. The kids' reaction to her sugar-coated version of the story is JKR's way of poking fun at parents who say that Harry Potter is too dark for their children to handle.

/Or would be, if the wizard had done the deeds he did out of the goodness of his heart (or if he wanted to change). *Cough* A Christmas Carol. *Cough* Mostly, he had a change of heart if only to shut the pot up./

Yeah, that bothered me a little too, when I first read it. The son didn't help the Muggles because he realized that it was the right thing to do; he mostly did it just to shut the pot up. I know that at the end, we're supposed to conclude that he had a change of heart, but he could have just as easily continued to help Muggles because he was afraid that if he didn't, the pot would start making a racket again.

And as Dan Hemmens pointed out in his review of "Beedle the Bard," while the moral of the fable is that wizards should help Muggles, none of the wizards that we see in the books seem to follow that moral. We don't really get any instances of wizards using their magic to help Muggles. We don't hear anything about wizards using their magic to cure diseases, help the poor, preserve the environment, or anything of the kind, which kind of sends mixed messages.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. :)

"
Yeah, that bothered me a little too, when I first read it. The son didn't help the Muggles because he realized that it was the right thing to do; he mostly did it just to shut the pot up. I know that at the end, we're supposed to conclude that he had a change of heart, but he could have just as easily continued to help Muggles because he was afraid that if he didn't, the pot would start making a racket again.

And as Dan Hemmens pointed out in his review of "Beedle the Bard," while the moral of the fable is that wizards should help Muggles, none of the wizards that we see in the books seem to follow that moral. We don't really get any instances of wizards using their magic to help Muggles. We don't hear anything about wizards using their magic to cure diseases, help the poor, preserve the environment, or anything of the kind, which kind of sends mixed messages."

*This!* :D

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

And as Dan Hemmens pointed out in his review of "Beedle the Bard," while the moral of the fable is that wizards should help Muggles, none of the wizards that we see in the books seem to follow that moral. We don't really get any instances of wizards using their magic to help Muggles. We don't hear anything about wizards using their magic to cure diseases, help the poor, preserve the environment, or anything of the kind, which kind of sends mixed messages.

In fact, Hagrid, Dumbledore's man through and through, explicitly says that witches and wizards keep themselves hidden specifically because if they didn't, Muggles would want magical help.

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe that's the moral he and a lot of other wizards got out of the story as kids... Heck, maybe that was the original moral, and Beedle reinterpreted it for his own reasons.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That always seemed like a silly reason to keep separated from muggles. I mean, don't you think the muggles would be able to help THEM with their technology that they actually had to invent rather than having everything handed to them on a silver platter? Or at the very least, the muggles might be able to school them in common sense. ;-)

[https://me.yahoo.com/a/gNLVidA.xeLuPiOU_2B_USM.HYNFjA--#b0b6b (from livejournal.com)]

I think it was good enough justification to Harry in the first book, to explain that there was indeed a magical world entirely separate from the one he knew, and this was why he'd never heard of it before.

This falls over completely in following books which try to tell us that being concerned about Muggles is a virtuous thing. It would have all worked much better if JK hadn't gone into all that pureblood/mudblood business, or at least kept it confined to some idea of races amongst wizards.