Deathly Hallows, Chapter 3: The Dursleys Departing

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

The American editions of this book are graced with a strange picture: Dudley and Harry are smiling at each other and shaking hands. That’s not what got my attention, however. It was the depiction of Dudley as looking like a young Incredible Hulk with normal skin tones. Either that, or he’s contracted some weird disease that made his torso swell up like a balloon.

This chapter starts with Vernon yelling for Harry in a particularly demeaning manner. JKR insults her readers’ intelligence--or memory, or both--by telling us Harry didn’t respond at first because he was still looking at the mirror fragment in which he thought he’d seen Dumbledore’s eye. Since it’s only been half a page since we were told about this, we couldn’t possibly have forgotten it. I’m now wondering how much shorter DH would have been if it wasn’t crammed with redundant filler like this.

The filler continues as we’re reminded Dudley is “Harry’s large, blond, muscular cousin” because we might have forgotten Dudley had taken up bodybuilding since the last book.  I guess if you think your readers are so mentally deficient they can’t recall what happened on the previous page, they sure can’t be counted on to remember anything about the last book.

Vernon tells Harry he, Petunia, and Dudley are not evacuating because he’s decided that Harry’s warning that DEs were coming after them is just a plot to get his dirty little wizard hands on the house. Harry retorts, “Are you actually as stupid as you look?” and adds, “I’ve already got a house...So why would I want this one? All the happy memories?” *sob* That--that sounded so much like Snape, it just brought a tear to my eye. I’m sorry Severus wasn’t there to see it. All these years, he’s thought Harry learned nothing from him when the boy was obviously imbibing Snape’s expertise in sarcasm.

Harry insists the Dursleys are in danger because Voldemort might come after them, either to torture them for information about Harry, or to take them hostage so Harry will have to rescue them. I wish! This book would have been so much more interesting if something like that had happened. Unfortunately, Harry was just as fooled as all of us were into thinking Voldy was a competent villain who could be trusted to do the sensibly ruthless thing.

Harry shows more evidence of Albus’s brainwashing when he insists his relatives are being offered,”...serious protection, the best there is.” Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so well for your parents, Harry.

After six books of trying to convince us Harry was horribly abused by the Dursleys, their relationship is tepidly described as “sixteen years’ solid dislike.” I thought they hated each others’ guts; I thought that was what we were supposed to believe. This book is just wimping out all over.

When Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle arrive to take away the Dursleys, Diggle displays typical magical contempt for nonmagicals by tactlessly addressing them as “Harry Potter’s relatives.” Even worse, he says this “happily,” as if there’s nothing wrong with talking to them that way. Yeah, Dedalus, just because you’re going to be living with these people indefinitely doesn’t mean you need to bother to learn their names. Basic courtesy isn’t necessary when dealing with dumb animals.

Vernon is understandably disconcerted to learn that not only does Dedalus not know how to drive a car; he also admits he’d be “utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs.” Obviously, the Order’s not any more competent in 1997 than it was in 1981.

As they prepare to leave, Petunia asks, “Ready, Diddy?” Apparently she’s so upset she now thinks she’s the mother of rapper P. Diddy. I know Dudley has changed in the last few years, but he doesn’t look like a skinny black guy.

Dudley is distressed to learn Harry isn’t coming with them. Since this escape has been planned for at least a month (according to earlier in the chapter), hasn’t this been established before? I know Darling Dudders is supposed to be dazzlingly dense (no mean feat given his competition in this series), but he would have to have been either comatose or catatonic to not be aware of an argument that’s been going on in his own home for an entire month. Either that, or Rowling’s now so careless even her characters can’t remember things that occurred recently.

Vernon says to Hestia that Harry is leaving with “some of your lot,” which causes Jones to go ballistic. “Off with some of our lot?” she shrieks, outraged to find out Harry’s relatives don’t kiss his ass understand how wonderful and important Harry is, the way all right-thinking magicals (and readers) do.

Why the hell should they, you brain-dead twit? “Your lot” bends so far over backwards to keep “muggles” ignorant about your society that you end up kissing your own asses. Then you have the unmitigated gall to complain about the ignorance you do everything in your power to foster! “Your lot” doesn’t even have the courtesy to learn the names of the people you’re supposed to be guarding, information which is easily accessible, yet you expect them to know everything about a bratty kid who was literally dumped on them without their knowledge or consent, and whom they could never get rid of without suffering the wrath of Dumbledore, the only man so dangerous he even scares Voldemort!

I swear to God, these magicals remind me of pre-revolution French aristocrats: They expect the great unwashed peasantry to know all about them, including everything about their heroes and how to bow and scrape to them in just the right way, but they don’t think they even need to be able to tell the difference between the members of the rabble, let alone condescend to learn their names.

Where’s a good Reign of Terror when you need one? If this is the way magicals have always treated nonmagicals, I don’t blame the nonmagicals for going medieval on their asses and trying to wipe them all out. You can only take so much condescension and lack of consideration before you need payback.

This reminds me of the old song, “Indiana Wants Me,” about a man on the run from the law for murder. Part of it goes,

“If a man ever needed dying, he did.

No one had the right to say what he said about you.”

Let the burnings at the stake begin!

The chapter ends with Dudley making a verbal peace offering to Harry, and Harry accepting it. It was a pleasure to see both of them acting decent for once.

Comments

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

if you think your readers are so mentally deficient they can’t recall what happened on the previous page,

Or maybe it's the only way JKR can remember what happened on the previous page.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Burn! :D That's a lot meaner than anything I say about Rowling in this sporking.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Truth hurts? And didn't Jo brag she never re-read? So she'd have to sprinkle those little reminders in.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was so looking forward to your response to this series.

It's not that the Dursleys aren't bad people and rotten parents--they are. It's just that the "wonderful wizards and witches" are so much worse--more bigoted, more condescending, more abusive--that the Dursleys end up looking fairly benign by comparison, like the difference between a swindler and a child molester.

[mage-989.livejournal.com]

It's weird; JKR created the Dursleys as one-dimensional, cliché targets for her reader's hatred, but the more I read about Harry and his lot, the more I find the Dursleys sympathetic.

Amen!

I'm sure will discuss it more when we get to The Prince's Tale chapter, but seeing young Lily frightening her sister with magic, having Severus drop a tree branch on her (even if it was an accident) having her sister go off to a world she can never join and then having that same world get Lily killed and Petunia left to raise her child because Scumbledore ordered her to in a letter (seriously she was told her only sister died in a flipping letter left on her doorstep with her nephew, was she even allowed to go to Lily's funeral?)

Then years later her son gets a pig tail from a giant, a four foot long tongue, and terrorized by dementors, all thanks to those wizard folk. Well gee I can't imagine why Petunia hates magic! It's not like she has any legitimate reasons to! / sarcasm

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

That really was a lovely paragraph. Especially the ending--no one seems to notice that little fact.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Harry insists the Dursleys are in danger because Voldemort might come after them, either to torture them for information about Harry, or to take them hostage so Harry will have to rescue them. I wish! This book would have been so much more interesting if something like that had happened./

I know that Voldemort kidnapping Harry's loved ones probably would have been predictable, but I'm still surprised that it didn't happen. Didn't Harry break up with Ginny by the end of HBP because he was afraid that the Death Eaters would kidnap her to get to him? So, why didn't they? Even if they didn't know that he and Ginny were dating (and I don't see how they couldn't, since Harry and Ginny's relationship was supposedly the talk of Hogwarts), her parents are members of the Order and her father is a well-known "blood traitor." So, why didn't Voldemort kidnap her or any of the Weasleys?

/Harry shows more evidence of Albus’s brainwashing when he insists his relatives are being offered,”...serious protection, the best there is.” Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so well for your parents, Harry./

Well, to be fair, Harry didn't suggest a Secret Keeper for them.

/After six books of trying to convince us Harry was horribly abused by the Dursleys, their relationship is tepidly described as “sixteen years’ solid dislike.” I thought they hated each others’ guts; I thought that was what we were supposed to believe./

I don't really know. Was it abuse or dislike? Is the Dursleys' treatment of Harry supposed to be real abuse or was it meant to be exaggerated? HP fans still debate about this and the accusation of downplaying abuse is often tossed around. So, which was it?

/Diggle displays typical magical contempt for nonmagicals by tactlessly addressing them as “Harry Potter’s relatives.” Even worse, he says this “happily,” as if there’s nothing wrong with talking to them that way./

See, I imagined him saying this in a very naive and childish way. You know, the way that preschoolers will often address their friends' parents as "Anna's Mom" or "Hi, Timmy's Dad!" But if Diggle is meant to look whimsical and childlike...why he was chosen to guard the Dursleys?

/“Your lot” bends so far over backwards to keep “muggles” ignorant about your society that you end up kissing your own asses. Then you have the unmitigated gall to complain about the ignorance you do everything in your power to foster!/

Harsh, but true. The wizards can't have it both ways. They can't be paranoid about the Muggles knowing about them and do everything they can to keep their society secret, and yet sneer at Muggles for not knowing anything about them.

/The chapter ends with Dudley making a verbal peace offering to Harry, and Harry accepting it. It was a pleasure to see both of them acting decent for once./

True, which is why it's a shame that the Dursleys weren't mentioned in the epilogue. What happened to them after the war was over? Did Dudley and Harry finally reconcile?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

And I'm going to reiterate what I said about the last chapter. I liked the detente between Harry and Dudley, but it's notable that Dudley approaches Harry, not the other way around. To me, this makes Dudley look better than Harry. Yes, he's a spoiled bully, but he's capable of gratitude and of changing his mind. Harry really doesn't seem capable of either.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Good point. I hadn't thought about Dudley doing the noble thing, but you're right. Of course, the reason Harry doesn't change his mind is because he's so perfect he doesn't have to change. And as the Chosen One, he deserves every good thing that comes to him, so gratitude would be inappropriate.

[sunnyskywalker]

It's actually pretty impressive how much Dudley has grown, character-wise, in the last few books. First you have him going from spoiled "baby whale" at the beginning of GoF, being denied things for the first time in his life - and by a year later he's not only lost weight, but developed muscle and skill through actual discipline at a sport. Then he gets attacked by things he can't see but which are obviously scary, which his hated cousin drives off - and which Dudley can't just write off as Harry defending himself from the things because Harry also makes sure Dudley gets safely home (after everything he did to Harry over the years, too!) and then gets in some kind of legal trouble for saving them both. Then he hears Dumbledore call his upbringing "appalling damage." Dudley seems to have thought long and hard about all this.

And then despite having perfectly good reasons to believe that Harry is firmly allied with dangerous, nasty people who wouldn't care if Dudley died - and might even get a laugh out of it - he also has the maturity to not only recognize how many awful things Harry hasn't done to him (which he could have) and that Harry has on occasion even stuck his neck out for Dudley, but to reach out to Harry. One screwed-up kid to another, trying to mend fences after years of fighting to act out the grownups psychodrama, trying to break out of that pattern and start their own. It's such a shame that we never get to see Harry and Dudley follow up on that. And that Harry doesn't seem to really grow after this point...

Though I wonder. Can we credit his and Draco's eventual stiffly-polite nodding relationship to Dudley, in a way? Because Dudley helped him realize that screwed-up kids can recognize when they've been wrong and try to change?

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I know that Voldemort kidnapping Harry's loved ones probably would have been predictable, but I'm still surprised that it didn't happen. So, why didn't Voldemort kidnap her or any of the Weasleys?

I suspect it's because Rowling didn't want to do the expected in her story. But given how dull the plot turned out to be, some kidnappings would have livened things up a bit. There's nothing wrong with doing the expected if it's done well. Oh. Well, uh...I guess what I should say is that she couldn't have screwed that up any worse that what she did write.

But if Diggle is meant to look whimsical and childlike...why he was chosen to guard the Dursleys?

If you're right, what's somebody so immature and dimwitted doing in a secret paramilitary organization? Quite apart from his gross incompetence, you'd have to worry constantly that he was going to blab something he shouldn't or screw up an operation.

True, which is why it's a shame that the Dursleys weren't mentioned in the epilogue. What happened to them after the war was over? Did Dudley and Harry finally reconcile?

They don't matter because they're just muggles.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Diggle is just a miniature Hagrid, without the animals. His attitude is precisely what got him into the Order, Albus likes collecting sycophants.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

My theory on why Tom didn't kidnap anyone to put pressure on Harry, was that he didn't want to face Harry again until he had the wand thing worked out. And then when he finally did, he had a whole school held hostage for Harry's surrender.

If that hadn't worked, he might have tried individual victims next.