7 Deadly Sins: Gluttony

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 1878

I'll bet you all think I'm going to talk about Dudley, aren't you?

Well, true, but I have a few other points to make besides the obvious.

Someone else on the list this week mentioned their discomfort with the
fact that JK Rowling seemed to be setting up Dudley as someone to
despise because he is overweight (Snape's stereotypical Semite features
were mentioned, too, i.e., hooked nose, etc.)

This has crossed my mind, too, and has made me uneasy, too.  That's why
I was particularly careful in my last 7 deadly sin message (on envy) to
describe Dudley not as overweight, but as a glutton.  One
description--overweight--is, I hope, a neutral description (although our
culture tries to load it up with all sorts of moralistic baggage).  But
Dudley is more than overweight; he is a glutton, and as such, is
depicted as a contemptible character.

His gluttony leads him to sloth (hey, coming up!  Sin No. 7!) and
selfishness, almost a kind of solipsism.  Dudley basically believes that
the world revolves around him and his appetites, to the extent that
nothing MATTERS to him unless it has to do with getting his needs met.
Remember when Vernon took the family and fled at the beginning of the
first book when the letter(s) from Hogwarts started arriving?  It didn't
occur to Dudley to wonder much about this strange adventure the family
was embarking upon--he couldn't think past the fact that he was hungry
and had missed five of his favorite TV shows.

Note how Dudley's gluttony has totally skewed the relationships in his
family.  Dudley's parents totally indulge him, and in doing so, they
abdicate their parental roles.  Vernon's attitude is fondly indulgent
("Little tyke!") which leads him down the slippery slope of overlooking
his son's other faults, i.e., his sadistic bullying.  Petunia caters
slavishly to Dudley's every whim.  Indulging Dudley's gluttony
eventually leads to Vernon and Petunia loss of their grip on reality.
They can't SEE the extra pounds, just as they can't see that their son
isn't applying himself in school, and his terrible social relationships.

And Harry?  Well, to him, Dudley is a warning.  In my post about envy I
mentioned that Harry might have started out envying Dudley, but Dudley
has made such a monster of himself that the idea of indulging one's
appetites eventually comes to seem quite unappealing to Harry.  (Which
is good, as it may close off one avenue of temptation that Voldemort
might have tried to use to seduce him: "Want to indulge your appetites
Harry?  Want money?  Power?  All the coke you can stuff up your nose?"
"No thanks.  I saw what that sort of thing did for my cousin.  Yuck.")

Once I started thinking about gluttony this way, I found that Dudley has
several spiritual "twins," if you will, characters with a ravenous
capacity, who suffer all the attendant troubles (selfishness, skewed
relationships, inability to recognize that they're not the center of the
world).

The first, of course, is Voldemort.

The second I didn't see right away, but once I did, I realized he fits
the profile, too.  The other great glutton in the series is Gilderoy
Lockhart.

What Voldemort wants to devour is power.  This, obviously, has given him
a rather inflated view of his self worth, has skewed his relationships,
and made him distressingly selfish.

The type of gluttony he indulges him makes him, of course, particularly
dangerous, for where do you get power from?  You get it from other
people, specifically, by bullying and browbeating your underlings
(Imperius), by causing pain (Crucio), and by killing (Avada Kedavra).

What Lockhart craves is adulation.  Again, note how his sense of reality
is warped (he twists everything fit his world view that he is
universally admired, and that everyone wants to become close to him and
imitate him.)  The proper balance in relationships is disrupted:
Gilderoy is so hypnotized by his faux-celebrity that he cannot properly
teach.  He does not do as a proper teacher should and focus his
attention on the student; instead, he continually tries to yank
attention to himself.  Again, the results are disastrous: starting from
the point where Lockhart releases the pixies until the point where he
tries to turn Ron's wand on Harry and Ron, Lockhart blows it again and
again.

Now, if the series is about Harry's moral education, what does it have
to say about how to deal with a glutton?

Harry actually does quite well.  He learned what to do and what NOT to
do by observing the Dursleys.  And it's this: Don't feed a glutton.
Just don't.  If you do, they want more.  And so Harry does all he can to
keep from feeding Lockhart's ego.  He avoids him, he protests that he
didn't intend to get a photograph of Lockhart, ask for his autograph,
etc.  (Too bad Lockhart is unable to hear what Harry is trying to tell
him.)

More importantly, he does all he can to keep Voldemort from feeding on
power.  Harry resists the Imperius curse; he dodges the Crucio curse.
He comes back to Hogwarts, determined to help Dumbledore and the rest,
to stop the rise of the Dark Lord and his Deatheaters.

What is Rowling doing with this theme of gluttony?  The counter for
gluttony (which is/leads to selfishness), is selflessness.  Harry has
one egregiously self-indulgent episode of gluttony in the series.  He
broke the rules and left Hogwarts in order to sneak into Honeydukes to
buy sweets.  Remember how it ended?  Lupin saved him from Snape--and
then scolded him for it, asking him whether he thinks that Lily's
self-sacrifice for him should be jeopardized for such a selfish reason.

It was the selfless love of his mother, giving her life for him, that
has set Harry upon his present path, and that, perhaps, is the best
inoculation against gluttony that he could have, once Lupin pointed it
out to him. Harry seems to have learned that lesson well.  Unlike
Voldemort, who acts selfishly, Harry acts with a selfless concern for
others (i.e., helping Cedric with the first task, trying to rescue other
hostages with the second task, sharing the cup with Cedric on the third
task--and then bringing his body back).

This is spinning out of control, so I'll stop here.  Comments?  Other
characters you'd like to discuss re: gluttony?

Peg