Excuses for Hagrid’s Brutality
Feb. 5th, 2012 08:49 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockSigh. I just realized we may have to give Hagrid a partial miss for his crimes. It might not be the case that Rita’s simply right about the nature of half-giants, or at least of this half-giant: that they are naturally as brutal as they are stupid.
I’m speaking here of his active crimes of violence, not his repeated crimes of endangering children through incompetence and denial that dangerous creatures, are.
We saw Hagrid engage in acts of violence three times:
In book one, Hagrid got angry because someone insulted Dumbledore, and in retaliation Hagrid tried to turn the insulter’s son into a pig. He succeeded only in giving the (blameless, so far as he knew) child a pig’s tail, which was removed eventually by Muggle surgeons. The victim endured a month of terror and abject humiliation, six months of constant pain, and PTSD that endured to our last canon view of him.
In book four, a visiting dignitary insulted Dumbledore, and Hagrid slammed the wizard up against a tree and tried to choke him. To put this in context, Hagrid is almost twice as tall as an adult male, and three to five times as broad. So the visual image the reader should be creating is best approximated by imagining Vernon Dursley slamming around and choking a slight four- or five-year-old child, such as we imagine Harry to have been.
And in book five, Dolores Umbridge very sensibly decides to sack Hagrid for his gross incompetence on the quiet and with backup. And he responds by violently attacking her and her entourage. (We have Harry’s witness of the incident: Umbridge and her entourage knocked politely and entered quietly, if at a godforsaken hour. After she/they talked to Hagrid for a time, Hagrid started roaring in fury and then banged open the door of the hut. At which point Harry saw “a massive figure roaring and brandishing his fists, surrounded by six people, all of whom, judging by the tiny threads of red light they were casting in his direction, seemed to be attempting to Stun him.”
IOW, Hagrid apparently initiated the violence, and the Ministry flacks are trying to make him go quietly without hurting him.
And then when someone stuns (not hurts or kills) Fang, “Hagrid gave a howl of fury, lifted the culprit bodily from the ground, and threw him. The man flew what looked like ten feet and did not get up again….”
I remind the reader, this is the equivalent of a large, robust man physically assaulting a very small child.
Then McGonagall (who had not witnessed any of the preceding) dashes out, seeing only that Hagrid is fighting physically with Umbridge and several Ministry officials.
She screams, “Leave him alone. Alone, I say! On what grounds are you attacking him? He has done nothing, nothing to warrant such—”
(Jumping to conclusions a bit, Minnie? He attacked them. Though Umbridge had clearly anticipated that he might.)
And Minerva is hit by four stunners. (Not five. Which suggests that Hagrid has by then killed/hurt/incapacitated yet another of the Ministy officials who are trying only to stun him and remove him peaceably from Hogwarts grounds.)
“COWARDS!” bellowed Hagrid. “RUDDY COWARDS! HAVE SOME OF THAT—AN’ THAT---”
And he proceeds to knock cold the two nearest Ministry officials; the third (and final) flinches back and falls over a colleague’s body, and Hagrid takes that opportunity to gather up Fang and run away to join Albus Hood in the Sherwood Forest.
Leaving the almost-dead Minerva to be taken up by those whom she’d attacked and by them tenderly brought to Pomfrey for resuscitation.
Which they did.
Evil, evil Ministry! Saving the life of (and failing to press charges against) someone who’d attacked Ministry officials performing their official duty!
And Hagrid---how well does he conform in these scenes to Skeeter’s worst prognostications regarding giant blood?
Abjectly stupid and given to outbursts of violence, anyone?
*
Only—here’s the thing.
First year, the magical attack against Dudley—if Hagrid had transformed a wizard’s child into a pig, or given a witch’s son a pig’s tail—well, any half-way competent witch or wizard parent could probably have undone the spell hirself. At worst, the parents would have taken the child to St. Mungo’s and, after six hours in the waiting room while the actually WORRISOME magical mishaps were triaged around the unhappy trio, a mediwitch would have set the child to rights in half a minute. Painlessly, scarlessly, with no lasting effects.
The attack against Dudley was significantly hurtful mostly because the parents were helpless to reverse it (and no one else offered to). So Dudley suffered a month of an utterly humiliating deformity, six months of pain after surgery, and a lifetime of an impossible-to-explain intimate (sexually-charged) scar. (In 100 Years of Solitude, a pig’s tail leads to lifelong celibacy and eventual suicide from the protagonist’s attempting to remove it.)
But does anyone care to try to make the case that these consequences were (or could have been) foreseen by someone like Hagrid?
In fact, had Hagrid’s spell actually been fully successful, Dudley would never have suffered even emotionally. He’d have been a pig, caring only about being fed and shitting. It was his dad who would have suffered, watching his cherished son contentedly wallowing at his feet.
So. Hagrid only ever meant to hurt Vernon, not Dudley; he didn’t register that the readily-reversible spell he cast was not, in fact, easily reversed by Muggles; and it’s wildly unlikely that he understood, even after the fact, that he had inflicted lifelong terror and sexual humiliation on a little boy.
Regarding his other crimes of violence, his physical assaults upon much smaller, comparatively helpless humans….
Well. What, exactly, did we speculate was the effect of prolonged exposure to Dementors?
Hagrid spent several months in Azkaban. What HE recognized as his incarceration’s effect was the one that the Ministry hoped to achieve: he wasn’t willing ever again to plan to do anything that he understood to be considered a Ministry-recognized crime, lest he be thrown back to the Dementors.
What did Lupin claim to be the effect of long-term exposure? To be reduced to “something like itself… soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.”
So in justice to Hagrid, I must state: of the three times we see him viciously assault helpless victims, the first time he couldn’t comprehend how truly heinous the assault was (not possessing either the experience or the imagination to realize the attack’s full horror for a Muggle victim). The second and third attacks, came after Hagrid had been subjected to long-term Dementor exposure.
So we don’t know if he’d have reacted with such animalistic brutality before.
Indeed, Minerva’s reaction suggests that she believes he would not have. She’ s known him for forty years or more, and she assumes instantly that if he’s fighting, it’s because the others attacked him.
I’m speaking here of his active crimes of violence, not his repeated crimes of endangering children through incompetence and denial that dangerous creatures, are.
We saw Hagrid engage in acts of violence three times:
In book one, Hagrid got angry because someone insulted Dumbledore, and in retaliation Hagrid tried to turn the insulter’s son into a pig. He succeeded only in giving the (blameless, so far as he knew) child a pig’s tail, which was removed eventually by Muggle surgeons. The victim endured a month of terror and abject humiliation, six months of constant pain, and PTSD that endured to our last canon view of him.
In book four, a visiting dignitary insulted Dumbledore, and Hagrid slammed the wizard up against a tree and tried to choke him. To put this in context, Hagrid is almost twice as tall as an adult male, and three to five times as broad. So the visual image the reader should be creating is best approximated by imagining Vernon Dursley slamming around and choking a slight four- or five-year-old child, such as we imagine Harry to have been.
And in book five, Dolores Umbridge very sensibly decides to sack Hagrid for his gross incompetence on the quiet and with backup. And he responds by violently attacking her and her entourage. (We have Harry’s witness of the incident: Umbridge and her entourage knocked politely and entered quietly, if at a godforsaken hour. After she/they talked to Hagrid for a time, Hagrid started roaring in fury and then banged open the door of the hut. At which point Harry saw “a massive figure roaring and brandishing his fists, surrounded by six people, all of whom, judging by the tiny threads of red light they were casting in his direction, seemed to be attempting to Stun him.”
IOW, Hagrid apparently initiated the violence, and the Ministry flacks are trying to make him go quietly without hurting him.
And then when someone stuns (not hurts or kills) Fang, “Hagrid gave a howl of fury, lifted the culprit bodily from the ground, and threw him. The man flew what looked like ten feet and did not get up again….”
I remind the reader, this is the equivalent of a large, robust man physically assaulting a very small child.
Then McGonagall (who had not witnessed any of the preceding) dashes out, seeing only that Hagrid is fighting physically with Umbridge and several Ministry officials.
She screams, “Leave him alone. Alone, I say! On what grounds are you attacking him? He has done nothing, nothing to warrant such—”
(Jumping to conclusions a bit, Minnie? He attacked them. Though Umbridge had clearly anticipated that he might.)
And Minerva is hit by four stunners. (Not five. Which suggests that Hagrid has by then killed/hurt/incapacitated yet another of the Ministy officials who are trying only to stun him and remove him peaceably from Hogwarts grounds.)
“COWARDS!” bellowed Hagrid. “RUDDY COWARDS! HAVE SOME OF THAT—AN’ THAT---”
And he proceeds to knock cold the two nearest Ministry officials; the third (and final) flinches back and falls over a colleague’s body, and Hagrid takes that opportunity to gather up Fang and run away to join Albus Hood in the Sherwood Forest.
Leaving the almost-dead Minerva to be taken up by those whom she’d attacked and by them tenderly brought to Pomfrey for resuscitation.
Which they did.
Evil, evil Ministry! Saving the life of (and failing to press charges against) someone who’d attacked Ministry officials performing their official duty!
And Hagrid---how well does he conform in these scenes to Skeeter’s worst prognostications regarding giant blood?
Abjectly stupid and given to outbursts of violence, anyone?
*
Only—here’s the thing.
First year, the magical attack against Dudley—if Hagrid had transformed a wizard’s child into a pig, or given a witch’s son a pig’s tail—well, any half-way competent witch or wizard parent could probably have undone the spell hirself. At worst, the parents would have taken the child to St. Mungo’s and, after six hours in the waiting room while the actually WORRISOME magical mishaps were triaged around the unhappy trio, a mediwitch would have set the child to rights in half a minute. Painlessly, scarlessly, with no lasting effects.
The attack against Dudley was significantly hurtful mostly because the parents were helpless to reverse it (and no one else offered to). So Dudley suffered a month of an utterly humiliating deformity, six months of pain after surgery, and a lifetime of an impossible-to-explain intimate (sexually-charged) scar. (In 100 Years of Solitude, a pig’s tail leads to lifelong celibacy and eventual suicide from the protagonist’s attempting to remove it.)
But does anyone care to try to make the case that these consequences were (or could have been) foreseen by someone like Hagrid?
In fact, had Hagrid’s spell actually been fully successful, Dudley would never have suffered even emotionally. He’d have been a pig, caring only about being fed and shitting. It was his dad who would have suffered, watching his cherished son contentedly wallowing at his feet.
So. Hagrid only ever meant to hurt Vernon, not Dudley; he didn’t register that the readily-reversible spell he cast was not, in fact, easily reversed by Muggles; and it’s wildly unlikely that he understood, even after the fact, that he had inflicted lifelong terror and sexual humiliation on a little boy.
Regarding his other crimes of violence, his physical assaults upon much smaller, comparatively helpless humans….
Well. What, exactly, did we speculate was the effect of prolonged exposure to Dementors?
Hagrid spent several months in Azkaban. What HE recognized as his incarceration’s effect was the one that the Ministry hoped to achieve: he wasn’t willing ever again to plan to do anything that he understood to be considered a Ministry-recognized crime, lest he be thrown back to the Dementors.
What did Lupin claim to be the effect of long-term exposure? To be reduced to “something like itself… soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.”
So in justice to Hagrid, I must state: of the three times we see him viciously assault helpless victims, the first time he couldn’t comprehend how truly heinous the assault was (not possessing either the experience or the imagination to realize the attack’s full horror for a Muggle victim). The second and third attacks, came after Hagrid had been subjected to long-term Dementor exposure.
So we don’t know if he’d have reacted with such animalistic brutality before.
Indeed, Minerva’s reaction suggests that she believes he would not have. She’ s known him for forty years or more, and she assumes instantly that if he’s fighting, it’s because the others attacked him.
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 04:58 pm (UTC)*sighs*
I guess I just -- of all the reasons to give Dudley a pig's tail, it was his dad saying something about Dumbledore that Hagrid didn't like?
I mean -- dude, I guess I get it a little, but at least...go for an option that *doesn't* involve Disproportionate Retribution.
(Or maybe I'm being a bit soft?)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 05:04 pm (UTC)However, it still doesn't quite account for Hagrid's choice to passive-aggressively use the man's *child* against him, instead of directly punishing Vernon himself. It's the only time in canon, IIRC, that he does such a thing; all of his other attacks are direct, and involve simple physical violence. So why that time does he, 1) choose passive-aggressiveness and 2) go unthinkingly for the *wand,* which supposedly this is a rare opportunity for him to use, and not for his standard style of direct physical engagement? It's not like he takes the time to consider - it's an immediate unthinking response. It stands out because the entire style of the attack isn't quite Hagrid's normal style.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-06 09:46 am (UTC)If I were to guess at his reasoning in focusing on a transfiguration spell, he might have thought that such a display would be the most likely to impress (intimidate) the muggles into letting Harry go with minimal additional fuss. So when Vernon insulted Dumbles, he had already been thinking about transfiguring something for a while, which is why the first thing he grabbed was his wand. Unfortunately, he never had completed his schooling and making pumpkins grow larger, faster, isn't quite the same thing as turning a boy into a pig, and he overreached his abilities.
As for why he would target Dudley instead of Vernon himself, I'm not sure.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-06 06:17 pm (UTC)I love your descriptions.
And with a dangerous pet the real responsibility is with the owner. Another reason I can't stand Dumbledore.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-07 12:47 am (UTC)----In book four, a visiting dignitary insulted Dumbledore
It's interesting how the first two times we see Hagrid react violently, it's in response to somebody insulting Dumbledore. Also interesting is the parallel between Hagrid assaulting Karkaroff for spitting at Dumbledore and Harry crucioing Amycus Carrow for spitting at McGonagall. Apparently, spitting at someone is highly offensive in wizarding culture!
----To put this in context, Hagrid is almost twice as tall as an adult male, and three to five times as broad. So the visual image the reader should be creating is best approximated by imagining Vernon Dursley slamming around and choking a slight four- or five-year-old child
I think Rowling's description of Hagrid as being "almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide" is hyperbole. I don't think he's literally between 11 and 12 feet tall. Hagrid and Madam Maxime are both able to pass as fully human. The tallest human ever recorded was just shy of 9 feet. The tallest human alive today is 8'3". So, if Hagrid were much taller than 8 feet, he'd be breaking the Statute of Secrecy if he entered the Muggle world.
So the comparison, I think, is more like Vernon and a slight 8 or 9-year-old child.
-----And in book five, Dolores Umbridge very sensibly decides to sack Hagrid for his gross incompetence on the quiet and with backup.
I wonder what exactly Umbridge was trying to accomplish with Hagrid. I suspect that firing him from the CoMC teaching position was not her sole purpose. Since Hagrid was also the groundskeeper, he would have been able to remain at Hogwarts if he were only being removed from the CoMC post, but it seems like Umbridge and the Aurors were trying to remove him from Hogwarts altogether. It's not surprising that he was far from pleased about being evicted from his home of over fifty years in the middle of the night.
And where did Umbridge want Hagrid to go, instead? Did she simply want him gone from Hogwarts, like with Trelawney, or did she have a specific destination in mind? The presence of the Aurors gives the impression that she wanted to send him to Azkaban. That's what the kids seemed to believe, anyway. Ron says, "At least they didn't get to take Hagrid off to Azkaban. And perhaps they were right. Maybe Umbridge gave Hagrid an ultimatum--either leave Hogwarts peacefully now or be arrested and go to prison. Or maybe the only reason that Hagrid was not in Azkaban in the first place was because he had been in Dumbledore's custody, instead. And Dumbledore was currently AWOL.
----And he responds by violently attacking her and her entourage.
We know that Hagrid let out a roar inside the cabin; we don't know if he actually attacked anyone before he ran outside. His primary objective here may have been to try to escape before the Aurors could escort him off the property and/or take him to Azkaban; he wasn't necessarily attacking them just because he was angry about being fired.
----Evil, evil Ministry! Saving the life of (and failing to press charges against) someone who’d attacked Ministry officials performing their official duty!
Only, Minerva didn't attack them. Yes, she was shouting at them, but there's no mention of her firing any spells or even having her wand out. Prof. Tofty, the examiner, was certainly surprised that they stunned her. “Galloping gargoyles!” shouted Professor Tofty, who seemed to have forgotten the exam completely. “Not so much as a warning! Outrageous behavior!”
----And Hagrid---how well does he conform in these scenes to Skeeter’s worst prognostications regarding giant blood? Abjectly stupid and given to outbursts of violence, anyone?
Well, there's plenty of evidence that Hagrid is a bit slow, in some ways. But is he any more prone to violence than any other wizard? The wizarding world, after all, is a very violent culture, in general. I mean, even relatively mild Arthur physically attacks someone in the middle of a bookstore! So I'm not sure if three violent outbursts over the course of seven years is really all that exceptional.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-07 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-09 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 05:48 pm (UTC)But when Harry saw a picture of Hagrid at age 11 we're told he was 7-8 feet tall and broad and strong enough to carry his father on his shoulder as an adult would a maybe 5-year-old. (He's broader than he is tall, and it's not fat like an evil character would have.) I did a little more checking in height tables, and human males usually grow about another 20% between age 11 and adulthood (in the US). Which would put Hagrid somewhere between 8 1/2 & 10 feet, not 10-11. If the growth rates are the same. Of course, he can also fit in the doorway and under the ceiling in the Hut on the Rock with only slight stooping, which if it's an 8' ceiling would have him in the 8 1/2 - 9 foot range. Guess it's like how the tunnel to the Shack changes dimensions every time Jo writes it--oh dear maths!
If he's 8 1/2 feet, him throwing people about is like Vernon attacking a 7 1/2 year old; if he's closer to 10', more like an adult assaulting a 5 year old.
Wizards don't take him to be at the extremes of the normal range of human height, though; they think he fell afoul of a miscast Engorgio or a bottle of Skelegrow when he was young.
You're quire right, though, Hagrid's walking through Muggle London must be a violation of the Statute of Secrecy in and of itself--
Regarding Hagrid's destination--well, he was guilty of at least one crime since he was released from Azkaban--illegal experimental breeding. And the Skrewts were dangerous enough to be used in the maze, and he'd been forcing fourteen-year-olds to care for (and be burned and banged about by) them. And what if it had come out that it was he who was responsible, not merely for Aragog, but for that extremely dangerous breeding colony of Acromantulae?
In fact, that crime (which would certainly justify removing Hagrid from the grounds of Hogwarts altogether) MIGHT have been exposed then. If Riddle wanted to encourage the Ministry to get rid of Albus's supporters--or rather, of Hogwarts' resident Order members whom Harry truested,who might have reined Potter in when Tom chose to send him the vision. That would explain the timing. Minerva might have been expected to come charging to Hagrid's rescue (the arrest was at night, but on the night of the Astronmy OWL, so the Deputy Headmistress would be guaranteed not to have retired), or there might have been another plan (never needing to be implemented) to get rid of her next.
Peter could have known from Harry and Ron's discussions, and Tom could have instructed Lucius to drop a bug in someone's ear at exactly the right time.
Regarding Minerva--this is the woman who, when Albus confessed to treason and informed the Aurors that he did not intend to come quietly, offered to fight on his behalf, and was only dissuaded by Dumbledore's own insistance that she not. So when she runs shouting across the lawn to interfere with another colleague's arrest, I can't blame the Aurors for assuming she was preparing to assault them on Hagrid's behalf. Professor Tofty, however, was almost certainly not privy to the information that she had already demonstrated her perfect readiness to attack Ministry officials performing their legal duties, so his reaction represents an uninformed viewpoint.
And, of course, none of the officials cast a spell that would have hurt her --it's only that all four connected simultaneously.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 06:04 pm (UTC)And Hagrid totally should not be allowed unsupervised anywhere near a school (or, indeed, an inhabited area): he is personally responsible for deliberately exposing children to Acromantulae, dragons, and Skrewts, and he established a breeding colony of Acromantulae in the forest adjacent to a school!
My point is, I'd argued in "Death Eaters in the Seventies" that the violent and sadistic Death Eaters seemed mostly to be Azkaban veterans, and that exposure to Dementors is known to change people for the worse. I'd even suggested that Tom might have arranged short Azkaban stints for some of his followers to make them more amenable to performing the kinds of crimes he intended to have them commit.
So Hagrid's Azkaban stint might have changed Hagrid for the worse. And Minerva might not have registered this. Minerva might think he's still the same old softie, that he has no JUDGMENT about what his beloved monsters might do to a human without his natural immunities, but he would never WANT to hurt someone.
But, now he does. He's changed. Now, when he's angered, he uses his strength to try to hurt.
I did find one other physical assualt that I'd overlooked, and it's instrustive: when child Hagrid is protecting Aragog from Tom (who he thinks might be going to kill the spider): "Riddle... riased his wand, but the huge boy leapt on him, seized his wand, and threw him back down, yelling, "NOOOOO!"
Notice that Hagrid disarmed Tom, yelled, and "threw him down", not threw him ten feet across the floor hard enough to knock Tom unconscious, or slammed him up against the stone wall and tried to throttle him. He's trying to stop Tom, not to hurt him.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-11 06:05 am (UTC)Oooh, that's an interesting idea!
----Regarding Minerva--this is the woman who, when Albus confessed to treason and informed the Aurors that he did not intend to come quietly, offered to fight on his behalf, and was only dissuaded by Dumbledore's own insistance that she not.
True, I had forgotten about that.