GoF 4

[pauraque_bk]

Highlights from Chapter 3:

-So long, and thanks for all the mice (or, WTF post owls!)

-People we like are "round-faced", people we don't like are "the size of a young killer whale" (or, Sympathetic fat people in HP)


GoF 4: Back to The Burrow

Capitalization hers.

You know what? I think this might be my least favorite chapter in canon. Thankfully, it's also short.

[Harry] had rarely seen Mr or Mrs Weasley wearing anything that the Dursleys would call 'normal'. Their children might don Muggle clothing during the holidays, but Mr and Mrs Weasley usually wore long robes in varying states of shabbiness. (39)

So, I guess we can assume that there's a cultural shift in progress here. In Arthur and Molly's generation, you didn't wear Muggle clothes, ever. In the kids' generation, you do. Am I right that in the generation preceding Arthur and Molly, you didn't even have the first clue what a Muggle might wear? Are they older wizards, the ones we see dressed in nightgowns and so on? I wonder if this has anything to do with Dumbledore becoming Headmaster -- Muggleborns feeling more welcome, wizard children feeling more inclined to emulate them?

Dudley, on the other hand, looked somehow diminished. This was not because the diet was at last taking effect, but due to fright. Dudley had emerged from his last encounter with a fully-grown wizard with a curly pig's tail poking out of the seat of his trousers [...] It wasn't altogether surprising, therefore, that Dudley kept running his hand nervously over his backside, and walking sideways from room to room, so as not to present the same target to the enemy. (40)

There's a lot of this Dudley-being-terrified business in this chapter (which you really can't blame him for), but the key word is diminished. The bully isn't so big anymore, doesn't loom large in Harry's life. As usual, his bad actions are tied to his physical appearance -- the narrative lays the pig connection on pretty thick here, "porky hands" and so on. It's supposed to be funny, I don't know if you guys find it so. Doesn't work for me.

Etc etc, the Dursleys are anxious, they eat dinner, finally the Weasleys try to come in through the fireplace. This is just not smart of Arthur. He knows Muggles don't use the Floo network -- if they did, he wouldn't have had to pull strings to have the Dursleys' fireplace connected -- and he didn't tell anyone, even Harry, that he was going to attempt it. It also seems a bit dim to blast his way into the room instead of... well, anything else. He can fix the room via magic, but he can't take some paneling off without an explosion?

We're supposed to get a laugh out of the Dursleys' reactions, but it falls flat to me. This kind of humor doesn't work unless both parties are behaving reasonably (by their own standards), not idiotically.

'Well ... bye then,' Harry said to the Dursleys.

They didn't say anything at all. Harry moved towards the fire, but just as he reached the edge of the hearth, Mr Weasley put out a hand and held him back. He was looking at the Dursleys in amazement.

'Harry said goodbye to you,' he said. 'Didn't you hear him?'

'It doesn't matter,' Harry muttered to Mr Weasley. 'Honestly, I don't care.'

'You aren't going to see your nephew 'til next summer,' he said to Uncle Vernon in mild indignation. 'Surely you're going to say goodbye?' (46-47)

This is the only thing I kind of like in this chapter. Arthur's defense of Harry reads as sincere (and it would be reasonable too, if the Dursleys' living room hadn't just been blown up). He really can't imagine why they would treat him discourteously. I can't quite put into words why this affects me, but it does.

Harry wheeled around. Dudley was no longer standing behind his parents. He was kneeling beside the coffee table, and he was gagging and spluttering on a foot-long, purple, slimy thing that was protruding from his mouth. One bewildered second later, Harry realised that the foot-long thing was Dudley's tongue -- and that a brightly coloured toffee-wrapper lay on the floor beside him. (47)

There's this perpetual debate in fandom about the Weasley twins -- merry pranksters or sadists? And I tend to come down pretty hard on them, and it's because of things like this. I guess we're supposed to think Dudley deserved it for his mistreatment of Harry, but the fact is that Dudley isn't in a position to mistreat Harry anymore. He doesn't need to be taken down a peg: he's already there. Not to mention, as Arthur rightly points out in the next chapter, it's hardly acceptable or legal to do something like this to a Muggle.

I'll also point out that he's gagging and spluttering. In past discussions, some (myself included) have put a lot of weight on the fact that in OotP 28, James's soap-bubble hex makes Snape gag and choke, noting that cutting off someone's breathing is a pretty violent act.

Well, I feel like a bit of a wet blanket now. Anyone actually enjoy this chapter? I promise not to get in a snit if you did. :D


Previous GoF posts are saved in memories here.

Comments

I'm a wibbling 1/2 and 1/2 sort...

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

First, the twins. I like them in a I-don't-actually-have-to-deal-with-them way. If I actually knew them when I was a child, I'd have had to fight with them and either made them eat mud (literally) or they would have made me eat mud (more probable if I was stupid enough to attack them head-on -- and I really was more cunning than that as a child). They amuse me - mostly - and I have to admit that most of their antics make me laugh. Although, they make me laugh less and less as time goes by. The twins start off as mostly harmless pranksters in the series - and I laughed a lot. But as events in the series get darker, so do the twins - and my indulgence of them vanishes.

I NEVER liked the way that they got away with "teasing" Percy - but children do what their adults allow them to do. They frequently tortured Percy in front of Arthur and Molly and Arthur and Molly allowed it! Worse still, Arthur laughs when they "tease" Percy in front of him. And Molly makes things a zillion times worse with her general over-protective-ness of Percy and her frequent comparisons between Percy and the twins. In fact, the scenes with Percy and his family have always chilled me. Percy is the only member of his family to notice that something is wrong with Ginny is CoS, he shows genuine concern for Ron in the lake scene later in this book (oops! Erm...Am I allowed to reference that?), and he always strive to be exactly what his parents (specifically his mother) loudly tout to be their ideal son. In a very real sense, Percy is that kid who tries too hard to be liked, and is smushed by the other kids for being a brown-noser. As parents who supposedly love their children equally, Arthur and Molly should have rained Wrath upon them the first time they "teased" one of their siblings. But Arthur laughs at these antics - and no matter what Molly does after that, he's sent the message that "It's okay...Mummy's just a fuddy-duddy."

That family dynamic makes me want to SCREAM!

But I'll save the rest of that rant for the lake chapter....maybe. Now to focus on this rather heavy-handed, disastrous chapter.

Re: I'm a wibbling 1/2 and 1/2 sort...

[pauraque]

he shows genuine concern for Ron in the lake scene later in this book (oops! Erm...Am I allowed to reference that?)

Yes, you are. This is a re-read, not for people who haven't finished the book yet. :)