OOTP Chapter Thirty-Three: "Fight and Flight"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* A mercifully short chapter, this – only eleven pages long.

* Umbridge’s breathing is “ragged” now. Is this meant to be another example of Sadist!Umbridge? Like getting a thrill of pleasure at the prospect of using the weapon on the students?

* It “seemed incredible to Harry that twenty feet away there were people enjoying dinner, celebrating the end of exams, not a care in the world…” Meanwhile, it seems incredible to me that JKR has to keep resorting to this sort of contrast to emphasise Harry’s emotional state. Couldn’t she try something new once in a while?

* What’s with this emphasis on Umbridge struggling to keep up with Hermione? It’s been mentioned twice now on the first two pages (“Hermione marched purposefully across the grass – Umbridge jogging to keep up” and “She… plunged straight into the trees, moving at such a pace that Umbridge, with her shorter legs, had difficulty in keeping up”). Is it just meant to belittle Umbridge even more by making her seem physically weak and weedy, since constantly comparing her to a toad just isn’t enough?

* Umbridge isn’t doing a very good job controlling Harry and Hermione, is she? You’d have thought that as the person with the wand and no moral scruples about using it, she’d be able to force Hermione to slow down and tell her what exactly the weapon is.

* Also, how does the school make sure that no animals ever run out of the Forest and endanger pupils? There don’t seem to be any physical fences or other boundaries which could prove a hindrance, and we’re never told of any invisible magical field either. What if the Acromantulas (say) grow too numerous to support themselves off what they can catch in the Forest, and decide to spill over into the Hogwarts grounds?

* Maybe the plan is to just keep feeding them Hufflepuffs so that they’re too full to go after any of the more important students. That’s why the school authorities keep Hufflepuff as a sort of rag-bag House with no real distinguishing characteristics; it’s so that they know who can be sacrificed without real loss.

* In the finest tradition of HP villains, Umbridge suddenly has an attack of stupidity and angers the centaurs enough to make them all go after her.

* “Nooooo!” shouts Umbridge as the centaurs drag her off. Is it just me, or is that the sort of dialogue you’d expect in a comic book rather than a (supposedly grown-up) novel?

* Hermione’s worried lest Grawp kill the centaurs. Personally my money would be on the centaurs winning: they’re faster, more intelligent, more numerous, and their bows give them greater range.

* Now Harry’s started spitting at Hermione, who’s just saved Harry from being tortured and got rid of Umbridge for them. What a charming boy he is.

* Harry and Hermione’s friends appear, and say that Ginny was the best out of all of them at fighting off the Slytherins. As if we needed to be told.

* Ginny’s set her jaw “so that the resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking.” There is a striking resemblance, but probably not in the way JKR thinks.

* Ginny’s acting “coolly” again, a sure sign of danger.

* So Harry was all upset a few pages back because he and Hermione supposedly didn’t have enough time to go back to Hogwarts and retrieve their wands, but now they’ve got enough time to fly all the way to London? Seriously? Isn’t there a better plan they could think of? Like, I don’t know, going back and trying to convince Snape? Or using Umbridge’s fireplace to try and contact the Weasleys? Are they really stupid enough not to think of any alternatives? On second thoughts, don’t answer that last one.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

You're right, Umbridge didn't cast any kind of silencing charms on the room, did she? So someone might hear if they all screamed at once. It's worth a shot.

I really wish Umbridge had been halfway competent in this scene. It could have been truly chilling.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

To be fair, is anyone in the HP series really competent? I would think that having magic would help, but very few examples come to mind.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I don't know; I think if you're incompetent to begin with, having magic would just give you more--and possibly more dangerous--ways to screw up.

As for whether anybody is competent in general, that would depend on how you define the word. Is it being good at your job? Getting others to do what you want? Accomplishing other goals? Winning at quidditch? ;-)

Snape is competent to the extent he's allowed to be, despite the obstacles thrown in his way, and unlike Harry, who has to be spoon-fed his victories by the author. Maybe that's one reason Snape is so popular: Most people know what it's like to struggle to achieve things despite overwhelming odds, so he's easy to identify with, unlike the designated heroes.

[sunnyskywalker]

Interesting question.

Grubbly-Plank at least knows her subject, so there's another possibly competent person. Not that she's around much to assess her other abilities. Sprout and Pomfrey also seem to know what they're doing most of the time, but we don't know whether they're especially competent outside their particular fields because we rarely if ever see them outside that context. (Okay, Sprout can launch attack plants and not die, at least.) Flitwick is great at Charms and dueling and terrible at class management or acting in loco parentis for the Ravenclaws. McGonagall has a similar profile (great at her subject, but look at the bullies who flourish under her watch). Who knows about Sinistra... maybe she's too competent to appear in the books.

Slughorn can brew complex potions successfully, and appears to have some ability to innovate, or at least to recognize when someone else's innovation will work. He also networks pretty successfully and has a lot of former students who still like him, and appears to have succeeded at helping a fair number of them get jobs. He can also apparently get celebrities to attend his parties, at least undead ones. He's a total failure at recognizing when someone is a charming psycho until thwacked over the head with evidence, but to be fair, hardly anyone else caught on to Tom either.

Lockhart, of course, succeeded brilliantly at memory charms and convincing everyone he was all that and a bag of chips. And he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids!

Fred and George are successful innovators who can also read the market and give consumers what they want, very profitably, including scoring government defense contracts as well as dominating their niche of the popular consumer market. They also seem to have managed to avoid getting a public reputation as bullies, whatever some people might think of them in private, which is success of a sort.

Ludo Bagman succeeded at Quidditch and popularity, well enough to keep himself out of prison.

I think overall there's a lot more characters who are competent in a particular skill than in long-term, macro-level concerns like planning their careers, orchestrating social change, or opposing Voldemort. The ones who are better at those sorts of things tend to be Slytherins when we know their houses - Slughorn, Lucius Malfoy (who is at least a mover and shaker for a few years), Snape for the never-ending spying gig, young Tom for snowing everyone and getting away with murder for years.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Albus Dumbledore managed to arrange himself a long and safe life, political influence almost all the way to the end, being thought of as a great fighter against Big Bad Dark Wizards with hardly doing anything ...

[sunnyskywalker]

Also true! He failed at things like keeping his students safe, but if he wasn't particularly trying, we can't really say it was due to incompetence, can we?

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I mostly meant that magic makes it much easier to accomplish a lot of things, especially in that universe. If I could just wave a magic wand and have all of my work done then I would probably be more competent, but I would probably also become incredibly lazy in a short period of time. But I would still get more stuff done by virtue of the fact that I had to do less to accomplish it.

It would also be really easy to mess up, though, so I can see your point.

[sunnyskywalker]

If we could just zap all the dust bunnies and ring-around-the-bathtub etc., we'd have so much more time to waste on the internet do other, more interesting things. (Why cleaning spells aren't the ones they drill into every kid until any witch or wizard with a brain cell can do them in their sleep, I don't know. Are they worried that it'll make cleaning up forensic evidence too easy and thus encourage crime?)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because they are afraid they won't be able to justify enslaving house elves if wizards could do their own housework better and faster. And they have to have somebody to boss around, right?

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

If I could just wave a magic wand and have all of my work done then I would probably be more competent, but I would probably also become incredibly lazy in a short period of time.

That reminds me of an old comic book I have. It's about these space travelers who go to a distant planet where only one person is left alive. The man explains he's the last survivor of a once-thriving civilization that created a fatally useful invention: a machine that allowed them to instantly bring into being anything they wanted. All they had to do was imagine it. When they got bored with whatever they'd imagined, it would disappear. With this invention, they no longer had to work, let alone struggle, so they had nothing to do but sit around and have fun. Eventually, even that became boring, so one by one, they all literally died of boredom. At the end of the story, the man tells the space visitors that they're also figments of his imagination, and he's become bored with them, too. They beg him not to wish them out of existence, but he does, and they disappear. That's the end of the story.

Not only is that story more interesting and imaginative than anything in the HP books--the proof being that I haven't read it in over 30 years, but I still remember it vividly--but it also explains why wizarding civilization is so backward: Their magic makes them lazy, so they have no reason to advance, either socially or technologically.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a really interesting idea. It would definitely explain why wizarding society never really made it past the Industrial Revolution. I mean, why innovate when you can get everything you want without having to work for it? As a side note, I wouldn't really consider what they do at Hogwarts as "working". I mean, it doesn't seem like waving a wand and memorizing words would be that hard. You would just have to have the right genetics. Eew.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Well, sure. That's why they're so conceited about their innate superiority and contemptuous of non-magical society. After all, if they get along just fine without technology or social advancements, why would anyone else need them? They set the standard for human excellence, after all.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I'm just waiting for a few hundred years to pass and the muggles to invent some sort of technology that can nullify or reveal the effects of magic- or better yet, duplicate its effects. I doubt the wizards will be as haughty then.

As vague as JKR's explanations of how magic works are, I have a hard time believing that no muggle government has ever become suspicious of wizards and decided to keep tabs on them. I mean, it isn't like they do that great a job of hiding themselves when in public. They can't figure out how to dress themselves in a non-conspicuous manner and they talk about magic and such right out in the open. At the very least they would be seen as some sort of weird cult, and thus worth investigating. Couple this with the experience of all those prime ministers and surely they are bound to figure something out. The wizarding world (ironically) lacks imagination and creativity, but that's something that muggles have in spades.

Or maybe I just say this because I would find it really satisfying. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

So... the Muggles would be the villain in the Incredibles? That would be kind of neat!

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Yes, but not necessarily villainous, you know. The WW is a pretty potent threat and they would be pretty justified in addressing it.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, I agree there's more than enough unprovoked attacks by wizards on Muggles to justify some self defense! But wizards would probably see it as some upstarts creating ridiculous mechanical substitutes to usurp wizarding powers and going on supervillanous rampages (and what's with that concept in The Incredibles, anyway? why wouldn't he go rescue people from mines or other jobs superheroes used to do to put himself forward as a substitute? it's not like you need to rampage around a city to create a disaster, after all!).

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, I kind of wondered about that too. I mean, he essentially was kind of a Batman (as far as the gadgets go) when all the other heroes were like that from birth. The Incredibles has kind of a weird message if one thinks about it- "if you weren't born with cool abilities, then you shouldn't try to improve your lot or it will make you evil." Huh? Wasn't that the movie that had the line "if everyone is special then no one will be"?

[sunnyskywalker]

And they even threw in that Mr. Incredible was kind of a jerk to the kid at the beginning, which... was retroactively justified? Huh? And the whole scandal thing at the beginning had a point about superheroes causing a lot of destruction, and it was never resolved whether they could superhero (...it's a verb now...) less destructively. And since there don't appear to have been any supervillains either until poor gadget kid grew up, you have to wonder what the implications of that are. (Supervillains' kryptonite is lawsuits, maybe?)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, Mr. Incredible's attitude was what made me much more sympathetic towards Incrediboy/Syndrome. I mean, if he had explained that he didn't want to involve a minor like him because it was too dangerous and he would feel terrible if something happened, that would be one thing. Instead, he rather rudely told the kid that he "works alone". I actually had a lot more sympathy for Syndrome than I think I probably was supposed to- while his actions were still wrong, I can definitely see why he ended up that way.

And I think that I may have just summed up why I dislike Harry Potter and a lot of other fantasy/superhero stories I have been exposed to. It's always about the special people, and what's annoying is that it's pretty rare that they actually had to work at becoming special. Studying hard and dedicating a good portion of one's life to becoming a good mage or hero is one thing, but when they are just born with it I already start losing sympathy for them. "Aww, poor baby! You can't help the fact that you are genetically better than everybody else! Let me weep single tears for your super-special and tragic life!" Oh wait- I'm just a gross average person, so I'm sure they wouldn't want my sympathy anyways.

Good to see that modern eugenics are alive and well. *barf*

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"You know, Mr. Incredible's attitude was what made me much more sympathetic towards Incrediboy/Syndrome. I mean, if he had explained that he didn't want to involve a minor like him because it was too dangerous and he would feel terrible if something happened, that would be one thing. Instead, he rather rudely told the kid that he "works alone". I actually had a lot more sympathy for Syndrome than I think I probably was supposed to- while his actions were still wrong, I can definitely see why he ended up that way."

I'd always assumed that that was sort of the point, that Mr. Incredible had helped to create Syndrome through his own arrogance and rudeness.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That's true, though I always thought that he kind of got off the hook for it in the end. Eh, I might be wrong.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

And I think that I may have just summed up why I dislike Harry Potter and a lot of other fantasy/superhero stories I have been exposed to. It's always about the special people, and what's annoying is that it's pretty rare that they actually had to work at becoming special. Studying hard and dedicating a good portion of one's life to becoming a good mage or hero is one thing, but when they are just born with it I already start losing sympathy for them. "Aww, poor baby! You can't help the fact that you are genetically better than everybody else! Let me weep single tears for your super-special and tragic life!" Oh wait- I'm just a gross average person, so I'm sure they wouldn't want my sympathy anyways.

Good to see that modern eugenics are alive and well. *barf*

It doesn't have to be handled that way, though. I'm reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and in those books, being a demigod or demigoddess is actually a liability because some angry or jealous god or goddess is always siccing monsters on you, trying to get you killed. Normal people, or Mortals, in those books aren't regarded as inferior, just different, and even luckier than the demis because they don't have to deal with monsters and prophecies. There's something called the Mist, which is like Obliviation, that keeps Mortals from seeing the truth about gods and monsters, but it's far less toxic than Obliviation because it just causes temporary confusion and forgetfulness. Some Mortals can see through the Mist, which can make them very useful to the superpeople.

Regarding series that don't feature innately superior characters, in Warriors, any cat can be a great leader or healer. They just have to be willing to work hard, be responsible, follow the rules, treat others with respect, and be the best cat they can be. It's a very democratic series, which I think is probably why it's my favorite.

In the Series of Unfortunate Events, although it's clear to the reader that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Beaudelaire are extraordinary children, their genius is presented matter-of-factly in the narration. And they always succeed by pooling their talents, working together, and doing what's right.

I think the difference between these three series and the ones you dislike is that Percy Jackson, Warriors, and SUE are all written by mature adults with good values who want to present healthy role models to their readers. HP and the other "special people" stories are wish-fulfillment fantasies written by immature adults who have never gotten over their childish desires to have everyone adore them and every good thing in life drop into their laps by magic just because their Oh-So-Specialness makes them deserve to have the entire universe bend itself to their wills.

These are yet more reasons why people like Snape so much. He's one of the "special people," but he's not treated like one. And his particular talent, Potions, required years of hard work and study to master. So he's kind of a stealth "normal person" among the "special ones."

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, I think that you are right. Mary Sues and wish fulfillment fantasies are pretty common among younger writers (and believe me, I thought up some pretty horrendous ones when I was a teenager), but it takes maturity to realize that characters who are not idolized for passive accomplishments (the Boy Who Lived, anyone?) are much easier to relate to and ultimately make for a more satisfying story. I have to say that while I am not that great of a writer, at least I can write characters who don't get everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Good point with Snape, too. Potions seems to be one of the only things taught at Hogwarts that doesn't involve wand waving and rote memorization. I can respect him for mastering it.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I only watched a Percy Jackson movie, haven't read the book. My impression was that 'Muggles' are treated as collateral damage or hostages to be held at ransom in the gods' internal bickering. I couldn't care less who had Zeus' lightning, nor did I get the feeling Percy went after it because he cared about the fate of humanity rather than the danger to himself and his mother. (And the way he arranged his step-father's death is worthy of Hermione. Was that in the book?)

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's one reason Snape is so popular: Most people know what it's like to struggle to achieve things despite overwhelming odds, so he's easy to identify with, unlike the designated heroes.

That is so true. And it's incredible frustrating, that the rare competent person always get the short stick and gets maligned and/or ridiculed by all the 'heroic' morons.
Huh, that makes HP much more 'real' than I ever thought. Just not in a good way.