Potter Reloaded
Aug. 16th, 2010 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizzardgirlI have decided to re-read all seven HP novels, cover-to-cover, one after the other. For those interested, I will post my thoughts, observations and new insights as I go along; also, you're of course invited to join me in the read-along or just the discussion. There'll be spoilers for the whole series throughout, I simply can't *not* think about what happens later on. I started with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone today and am currently at Chapter Four, The Keeper of the Keys. (NB: If you have too much time at your hands or are a professional procrastinator, like me, check out this amazing bit of trivia. I spent way too much time with that one last week, it's what inspired me to do this project.)
- Reality check: Have the Dursleys adopted Harry, or are they registered as foster parents, or something like that? Has anyone from Muggle authorities ever checked on them or Harry or is Harry even an entity in the Muggle bureaucracy? I can't imagine a social worker being shown Harry's cupboard and blithely telling the Dursleys to keep up the good work - and has a teacher never commented on the marked difference in the way the two cousins were treated and investigated? Has no adult ever cared Harry was bullied by Dudley and his friends? Or did Dumbledore take care of all that and it settled itself? But did Dumbledore never check to see Harry was well? He says later, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Chapter Three, Will and Won't), that he thinks Harry was mistreated there, but did the thought never occur to him earlier? In ten years, did he not check once how Harry was, other than alive? Also, if Mrs Figg was there to guard him, didn't she report he was miserable? She says she knew Harry wasn't happy in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Chapter Two, A Peck of Owls) and actively helped Aunt Petunia in keeping him unhappy. Did Dumbledore know of all this and regretted it, but decided Harry simply could not be protected if not with the Dursleys, and that this position must be secured at all costs?
If that is the case, it shows once again what we also see in the future, that Dumbledore thinks sometimes the best way to protect Harry is to be deliberately hard on him, even risk his life, without ever telling him. Now, of course, you can't exactly explain all this to a one-year-old, but could not Dumbledore think of some other way to keep Harry safe for sixteen years?
Of course, neither the whole protective-blood thing nor the miserable-orphaned-hero trope would have worked that way, and it would have been a different book. I guess we're simply not meant to question this here, when we're still in the set-up of the story rather than the actual story. Still. One can't help wondering.
- Every time, every single time when Harry finds the first letter on the doormat and goes into the kitchen with it, I want to yell, 'No, Harry! Open the letter first! Read it first!' ;-)
- Again, why did Dumbledore send Hagrid to pick up Harry, and didn't go himself? He knew the Dursleys meant trouble, he knew that Hagrid wasn't the epitome of tact and still he sent him. Even this early in the story we're given to understand that Dumbledore is a kind of authority in the wizard world - why would he send his gamekeeper to inform Harry about his new school? Now, I liked Hagrid from the start, but wouldn't you rather expect Dumbledore'd go himself, or send someone with more diplomacy, like McGonagall?
Dumbledore did not even drop the boy off in person, only placed a letter with the baby - wasn't that quite risky too, incidentally? He couldn't even be properly sure that Voldemort was truly gone - it had been less than 24 hours - why did Dumbledore place the baby on the doorstep? He could have delivered him in person or at least insured that the Dursleys would find him at once, instead of just leaving him there, trusting he'd be safe.
Again, I think that JKR might have written that differently had it happened in a later book. Here, it's part of the set-up of the story, it's still very much a children's story, and children don't usually question these things.
that's it for now, expect to hear more soon ;-)
- Reality check: Have the Dursleys adopted Harry, or are they registered as foster parents, or something like that? Has anyone from Muggle authorities ever checked on them or Harry or is Harry even an entity in the Muggle bureaucracy? I can't imagine a social worker being shown Harry's cupboard and blithely telling the Dursleys to keep up the good work - and has a teacher never commented on the marked difference in the way the two cousins were treated and investigated? Has no adult ever cared Harry was bullied by Dudley and his friends? Or did Dumbledore take care of all that and it settled itself? But did Dumbledore never check to see Harry was well? He says later, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Chapter Three, Will and Won't), that he thinks Harry was mistreated there, but did the thought never occur to him earlier? In ten years, did he not check once how Harry was, other than alive? Also, if Mrs Figg was there to guard him, didn't she report he was miserable? She says she knew Harry wasn't happy in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Chapter Two, A Peck of Owls) and actively helped Aunt Petunia in keeping him unhappy. Did Dumbledore know of all this and regretted it, but decided Harry simply could not be protected if not with the Dursleys, and that this position must be secured at all costs?
If that is the case, it shows once again what we also see in the future, that Dumbledore thinks sometimes the best way to protect Harry is to be deliberately hard on him, even risk his life, without ever telling him. Now, of course, you can't exactly explain all this to a one-year-old, but could not Dumbledore think of some other way to keep Harry safe for sixteen years?
Of course, neither the whole protective-blood thing nor the miserable-orphaned-hero trope would have worked that way, and it would have been a different book. I guess we're simply not meant to question this here, when we're still in the set-up of the story rather than the actual story. Still. One can't help wondering.
- Every time, every single time when Harry finds the first letter on the doormat and goes into the kitchen with it, I want to yell, 'No, Harry! Open the letter first! Read it first!' ;-)
- Again, why did Dumbledore send Hagrid to pick up Harry, and didn't go himself? He knew the Dursleys meant trouble, he knew that Hagrid wasn't the epitome of tact and still he sent him. Even this early in the story we're given to understand that Dumbledore is a kind of authority in the wizard world - why would he send his gamekeeper to inform Harry about his new school? Now, I liked Hagrid from the start, but wouldn't you rather expect Dumbledore'd go himself, or send someone with more diplomacy, like McGonagall?
Dumbledore did not even drop the boy off in person, only placed a letter with the baby - wasn't that quite risky too, incidentally? He couldn't even be properly sure that Voldemort was truly gone - it had been less than 24 hours - why did Dumbledore place the baby on the doorstep? He could have delivered him in person or at least insured that the Dursleys would find him at once, instead of just leaving him there, trusting he'd be safe.
Again, I think that JKR might have written that differently had it happened in a later book. Here, it's part of the set-up of the story, it's still very much a children's story, and children don't usually question these things.
that's it for now, expect to hear more soon ;-)
