Deathly Hallows, chapter 16

[anehan]

Godric's Hollow

* The long-awaited trip to Godric's Hollow. Bit of a let-down, to be honest.

* So, Ron is gone. Good riddance, I say. But then again, I don't like Ron. YMMV.

* I've said it before, but I'm going to repeat it: why would Hermione and Ron have thought that Harry knew what he was doing? The boy's not noted for his creative ideas, and besides, he told everything he learned from Dumbledore to them.

* In their new hiding-place, Harry performs the protective enchantments that Hermione usually does. What is she, their house-elf? I bet she always cooks the food, too, and takes care of the dishes. Not to mention the laundry, and packing, and so on and so forth.

* Hermione's turned into a watering pot. Pull yourself together, girl. There's no time to be wasted. Voldemort gets more and more powerful, the Ministry continues to persecute Muggle-borns, and your friends go to school which is under the management of Death-Eaters. And you sit in a tent and cry.

* Harry stares at Ginny's name in the Marauders Map. Creepy, or what?

* Oh my God, Harry gets all martyrish, being staggered "to think of his own presumption in accepting his friends' offers to accompany him on this meandering, pointless journey. Meandering and pointless the journey is (which makes me think that, if Rowling recognized it for what it was, why did she write it in the first place?), but Hermione and Ron have the right to make their own decisions. Everything's not about you, Harry. Voldemort is a threat to everyone.

* So, Snape is the first Slytherin Headmaster at Hogwarts since Phineas Nigellus. Rather telling that he had to be put there by Voldemort, right? And some people say Slytherins are not discriminated against.

* "Grindelwald's mark?" Hah! So there's something Hermione doesn't know.

* Harry asks Hermione for permission to go to Godric's Hollow. He feels "exactly as he had done on the occasion, several years previously, when he had asked Professor McGonagall whether he could go into Hogsmeade, despite the fact that he had not persuaded the Dursleys to sign his permission slip." *headdesk* Come on, Harry, she's not your mother.

* Imagine if this is the effect Hermione has on Ron as well. What a marriage that will be. (In fact, I'm reminded of Molly and Arthur.)

* Harry is surprised that Godric Gryffindor was born in Godric's Hollow. Apparently the anvil-sized hint of the place's name wasn't enough to penetrate the cloud of ignorance Harry is surrounded by.

* Hermione asks whether Harry ever opened A History of Magic, and Harry replies that he might have opened it just the once, when he bought it. You remember, when he still was the knowledge-hungry little boy, eager to learn everything there was to learn about the Wizarding World. You know, that boy who disappeared as soon as he got to Hogwarts.

* A History of Magic seems to be the only history textbook that is used at Hogwarts, yet it doesn't cover anything later than 19th century. No wonder wizards are an ignorant bunch.

* Harry hadn't been thinking about Gryffindor's sword when he said he wanted to go to Godric's Hollow. For him, the attractions are his parents' graves and the person of Bathilda Bagshot. No wonder the search for the Horcruxes doesn't advance, when all Harry does is obsess about his parents and Dumbledore.

* Hmm, obsess about Dumbledore. Is this in any way similar to his obsession with Draco, when he needed so see the place where Draco kept coming secretly? Ow, ow, bad place, brain, bad place. *scrubs brain*

* Oh my god, a statue of the Potters. Worship them, O Wizarding World.

* I wonder, will Harry erect a statue of his mother and father in the lobby at the Ministry when he becomes the Minister for Magic? Tastefully made of gold, of course.

* Harry thinks he could have visited the graveyard in Godric's Hollow with Dumbledore, if only Dumbledore had told him about the connection they shared to the place. The boy really is obsessed with being "special" in Dumbledore's eyes.

* Harry would rather look for his parents' grave than investigate the connection that the old grave has to Grindelwald's mark -- mark that has to be important, considering Dumbledore drew it in the book he left to Hermione.

* Once again, I wonder why Dumbledore didn't just tell Hermione that the mark, and what it symbolizes, is important. Too fond of riddles, that man is. Maybe he thinks they make him sound wise.

* To recap, what happened in this chapter: Hermione cried, and then Hermione and Harry went to Godric's Hollow, where Harry cried. Seriously, this book is very difficult to recap because nothing whatsoever happens besides camping.

Comments

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

(g) You know what? When the issue of house-elves arose for the first time back in CoS, my immediate idea was they were a metaphor for house-wives. Seems I was more right than I thought...

From GoF on I saw them as a rather creepy version of "the Good Negro", in that, despite their stupidity, ugliness and pidgin English, they are still very happy to serve their natural masters.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

I think it was because Winky seemed like such a Mammy type. Like the slaves in Gone with the Wind who prefer staying with Scarlet to living their own lives.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Your interpretation is just as valid.I'd say, as it stands after DH, house-elves are a metaphor for any class of human beings that was deemed to be "naturally" servants to the "better people". What makes it so creepy is that the subtext of the books is exactly what it would have been at the time/ place where this sort of slavery was in full swing. Someone once said on this board that HP would have been a liberal book in the 18th century to give to white children of slave owners to teach them how to treat the black people nicely - but with no hint at the question whether slavery itself might be wrong. In fact, it's even worse: If the author just hadn't touched the subject at all it might have been o.k. to just swallow this magical slave race and not worry about them. They like serving and that's it. But with Hermione and SPEW she brought it up - but never solved it at all, not even in the sense that Hermione was actually proved wrong by showing how house-elves really WERE different from humans and thus slavery WAS the appropriate state for them. Instead, she let Dumbledore, the epitome of goodness state that wizards had been treating elves in an unjustifiable way (which means Hermione DID have a point)but then, in the end, we end up with a society of good and nice slave-owners and all is well.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

That is EXACTLY right. At the end of this book of tears, one of my (many) misgivings was how it ended with Harry wanting Kreacher to wait on him. Yes, it was in a benevolent way, but still....

SPEW, as well as both stinking out Book 4 by being tiresome, and making one of my previous favourites, Hermione, seem like a self-righteous nag, acheived absolutely nothing. Kreacher (like Dobby) reacted to kindness, not freedom, or being given rights. Dobby had to be freed to get away from the Malfoys, but I'm sure he'd have preferred to be inherited by Harry. If JKR had never drawn attention to it, it'd have been easier to accept as part of this world - after all the House Elves themselves seem happy enough (except Dobby originally). Most people wouldn't have given it a second thought.

By making Hermione constantly assert (rightly) that they had the right to determine their own future, and to be paid for the work they did, JKR set the stage for a big something that didn't happen. (I know - not the only occasion). At the end of the book, Harry could easily have thought a couple of lines about the House Elves deserving their freedom after the way they fought, but he knew it'd take time to convince them - hopefully Hermione wouldn't be too cross if he asked Kreacher to get him a sandwich in the meantime. Or something. Just to give the impression that things would change for the best. By ignoring it, she and her secondary self insert (after Ginny) come across as raging hypocrites.

Unless, of course, she explained all this in one of her many follow-up interviews where she gives extra information that she apparently always believed, but somehow forgot to put in the book.

[ownsimscorner.livejournal.com]

Now, however, I am convinced that whatever Rowling took her 'inspiration' from, she never quite understood what it was about.
Exactly. Like so many other themes in the books it`s like she wants to express a certain point of view (political, etc) she believes in but she hasn`t really let go of her own deep seated prejudices (sexism, classism, fat phobia) which she doesn`t even seem to realize she has!

I bet she thinks of herself as a perfect example of a liberal, unprejudiced mind. And then you end up with the mess of contradictory messages like the house elves and their happiness in slavery.

[anehan]

I didn't realize the Black sisters had RL counterparts. Thanks for the info!

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

The high-functioning autistic was probably Dr. Temple Grandin, who teaches or taught in Colorado. She also designs or designed cattle chutes and has designed a "hugging machine" for autistics.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know about the lightning bolt flag. Interesting. A lot of people mention the similarities between the Runic 'S' (Sowelu) and a lightning bolt, too. I think it was the SS in WWII that had the double Sowelu on their collars - looked very much like lightning bolts. With the emphasis on older German and Germanic culture, and of course the "blitzkrieg", one wonders if they had a thing about Thor.

Yes, the unquestioning allegiance is very reminiscent of the Nazi era, and of cults and even churches. I suppose a lot of things have that sort of mind-set. It's shocking and disturbing when it becomes an entire country, or in this case, a world. I really don't think Rowling meant to go there. I think she had some benign thing in mind, but as people write subconsciously as well as consciously, she's got a lot of really disturbing things in the series.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Hoberdy DIck *is* a wonder of a novel which ought to be much better known. It's very episodic, but the sort of things that happen in it are the sort of things that *wouldn't* happen often and are *not* necessarily connected to one another (although some of them do connect).

It was one of the things that I used as my base in my essay on 'The Servant Problem'.

But then, Rowling's bio states that she was a Girl Guide (i.e., Girl Scout) as a child, and if so, Particularly if she started at age 7 or 8, she would have been familiar with the concept of Brownies as helpful little people who come out at night and do work while the family is asleep. The younger division of the Guides/Scouts are called Brownies, and are always made familiar with an abreviated version of Mrs Ewing's 'The Brownies' from the mid-19th century.

Although, being a Brit, it's perfectly reasonable to suspect that she was also familar with Briggs's version, and indeed that her mining Briggs for elements which she inserted into the series was due to it. It can be noticed that she does not seem to turn up her nose at folklore the way that she does at fantasy.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Thanks for these links!
As to the house-elves issue, it would have been a great occasion to show how Muggleraised children did sometimes get things wrong - as they would be bound to do no matter how intelligent they are, because there are just a thousand thins in a strange culture you only pick up by living in it for years.

As to the original of the Black sisters - never heard of that connection before. So let me see:
- Diana/ Narcissa more or less getting into fascist/deatheaterish (if you buy that parallel) circles by marriage: check. This connection being of the more "legal", respectable political kind: check.
Unity/ Bellatrix acting on a personal fascination with the fascist leader: check. Generally being the more fanatical and radical of the two sisters: check. Getting into the inner circle: check.
Jessica/ Andromeda: running away from home: check. Um. Acting on her political views? FIGHTING for them? Not really unless you count marrying a muggle as fighting. But wait! Andromeda had a daughter, maybe Rowling drew the Jessica-parallel with her for plot reasons? Let's see:
Never outgrowing her adolescent traits? check! Fighting against the fascists? Um. Well, Tonks WAS an auror, so she - played taxi! AND once stopped a nose-bleed! AAAND - got pregnant. Like her mother. In fact, drawing an inverse parallel from Andromeda/ Tonks to Jessica, the latter would have married a coal-miner and died trying to protect him from security guards of the mining company.
Damn it, Rowling, can't you even leave your self-professed heroine the dignity of being more than a vagina and nothing but a vagina?!? F***ing for freedom?
Come to think of it - what else did James and Lily do? They didn't work because they supposedly fought full time against Voldemort. I remember a lot of speculation as to what Lily and her good-at-charms-wand had been doing for the war effort. After DH, it seems that all she ever did may have been to fail at contraceptive charms. Pardon the rant - I am well aware there was no pressing need to tell us about what the Potters had been doing and for all we know they may have been amazing - but looking at the whole picture of a resistance movement that accomplishes precisely nothing apart from moving Harry in the most complicated and guaranteed-to-fail way imaginable, a deep undercover couple who neglect to have their wands ready and now the parallel of a "freedom fighter" with two women who accomplished the amazing deed of getting pregnant by someone undesirable in the eyes of their political opponents... well, it's hard to keep the faith.

[kaskait.livejournal.com]

"Now, however, I am convinced that whatever Rowling took her 'inspiration' from, she never quite understood what it was about. Or if she did, she had a crappy way of expressing it!"

Unfortunately Rowling isn't the only author with this problem today. There are a lot of writers out there with little ability for self reflection. They regurgitate what they know and include it into their storylines for deepness but miss the whole point of the inspiration.

What I see in publishing now is what happened to the movie industry. Every director had to turn into a bombastic, culturally ignorant Spielberg in order to get any movies made. Now in publishing everyone needs to be the equivalent of Rowling or even King.

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

If Rowling had put that element in her story (as she should, because she 'borrowed' heavily from Briggs' other works on folklore), we would've been shown that instead of being the slaves that Hermione gets so worked up over, house elves are equal partners or indeed the dominant partners in a symbiotic relationship.
***That would have been a much more interesting twist on the House Elf story line.