Peeves' function in the story

[Blaise]

No: HPFGUIDX 5497

Peg wrote: 

"Hmm.  You know, now that I think about it, I cannot remember seeing 
more than a couple of messages on this list EVER about Peeves, which 
seems strange since we tend to discuss everything exhaustively.  And 
yet, when you think about it, he does appear in an awful lot of 
scenes. 

What function does he serve in the story?  The Greek chorus?"

You baited your hook well to catch a classicist!  

What do you mean by the Greek chorus?  In tragedy, the chorus was 
there to provide some comment on what was happening, or to give some 
information to the audience, or perhaps to express the poet's 
viewpoint (different tragedians used the chorus differently).  They 
rarely played a part in the way the story fell out, except sometimes 
when the Leader of the Chorus would be involved in dialogues.  

Mostly, he seems to be there for background colour.  He hasn't played 
an important part in any of the plots (unless I'm forgetting 
something), and he seems to be another of the obstacles that HHR must 
get around, particularly when they're breaking rules (c.f. in PS when 
they go out under the invisibility cloak and Hermione pretends to be 
teh Bloody Baron to get him to go away, and many other incidents).  

I don't think he's a Greek chorus, though he does sometimes play a 
similar role, as when he makes up little songs to sing about how 
Harry is the heir of Slytherin etc, in CoS, which keep the events in 
everyone's minds.  He certainly is not only an observer of the events 
who makes moral and social comment on what is going on.  And I very 
much doubt that at the end he'll get a little speech saying 'life's 
like that, you know' the way the chorus always does at the end of a 
tragedy!  

So what is he if he's not a Chorus?  I think he provides comic 
relief, bathos at moments of tension and an obstacle for HHR to get 
around.  Do you think he'll ever get a more crucial role than this?

-Blaise.