Mrs. C - Other houses - Why Harry? - SB fate - Readership age - A Plea

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 22536

Jenny of ready mind wrote:

>I think the Crouch family in general sucks.  Crouch Sr. was a power
>hungry zealot, Jr was an insane DE, and mom was a weak sniveling wimp
>(gosh, that sounded harsh). 

LOL!  In defense of Mom Crouch (poor woman, she must have a 
name--let's call her Calphurnia, though I'm sure some Ravenclaw will 
come up with a more apt literary reference), she stood up to her 
husband enough to get him to carry out an extremely risky scheme, and 
condemned herself to die unknown and hated in Azkaban and be buried in 
a prisoner's grave.  I think the woman showed incredible guts.  She's 
a total wreck in her only on-page moment, but since she's seeing her 
husband, who seems to have come completely unglued, commit their only 
son to a life sentence of torment, I can't blame her.

Sam wrote:

>I don't really like it that JKR is putting a lot
>of the 'heroes' into the one house, just because that house is
>the 'best'. It's as if, to be good and heroic, you must be a
>Gryffindor. Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs clearly aren't fit to save the
>world. And Slytherins... well, they're just evil, aren't they?

>*gasps* Something I *don't* like about the HP series?! I'm going to
>end my rant here and wash my mouth out with soap!

Pass the Mrs. Skowers--I have the same objection.  I hope Cedric 
signals a turn for the better, since he was certainly good and heroic. 
 I am making a mental note now to specify "Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff" 
when I ask for a House Quidditch t-shirt for Christmas.

Dai wrote:

> In PoA, why did the dementors try to give harry the kiss? I don't
> understand this at all. They were supposed to be hunting Black, and
> they had him; they could have performed the Kiss on him there and
> then, but instead, they went for Harry. Why?

I just don't get who is where when in this scene.  H and H run towards 
Sirius--how close do they get before being surrounded by Dementors 
themselves?  And are there still Dementors circled around Sirius or 
did they all go for Harry and Hermione?

I can't explain their actually abandoning Sirius, if they do, but it 
seems to me that they aren't going for Harry any more than they are 
going for Hermione.  We just don't see what happens after she keels 
over because Harry's a tad distracted.  Presumably they are about to 
Kiss her also.

In terms of guilt--I don't think the Dementors care in the slightest 
about eating Sirius Black's soul just because he's a murderer, 
escapee, what have you.  They'd eat their mothers if they had mothers. 
 They are hungry, and Harry is particularly yummy at that moment; with 
his ecstatic dreams of leaving the Dursleys and living with Sirius, he 
must smell to Dementors the way a just-out-of-the-oven chocolate cake 
smells to me.

Caius:

>It seems to me that the dream of Harry to live with his godfather is 
one 
>of those "too good to be true" fantasies which derives its poignancy 
from 
>its increasing unlikelihood.

Penny:

>Yes, but at the end of the series, Harry will be an adult who won't 
need a 
>"home" with a parent figure necessarily. 

I agree with you both, if I can just take out Penny's "but" and 
replace it with "because."  One reason, thematically speaking, that 
Sirius might die is that through the series, Harry is learning that he 
doesn't have to escape the Dursleys in order to grow up (he's already 
forged his own identity that they can't tarnish any more than they can 
understand it), nor does he have to have a surrogate father (he's 
already found his father within himself).  I don't want to see Sirius 
die, and I do think it would be terribly cruel for Harry, but I can 
see it happening as a part of the painful lesson that he really can 
stand on his own.

Penny wrote:

>I'll have to disagree with Amy Z (no tomatoes Amy -- just 
disagreement) -- I 
>don't think they are YA books either.  I think they are adult novels 
that 
>happen to include a protagonist who will age year by year through 
>adolescence.

Darn, I was all ready to make salsa.  I just want to clarify that I 
wouldn't characterize HP as young adult because of the protagonist's 
age, but because of the complexity and subtlety of the books, which in 
my completely idiosyncratic and indefensible opinion is not quite what 
I expect from adult literature.  I respectfully disagree with CMC's 
suggestion that they're on a par with Faulkner (Hemingway, yes--I 
never did like him--but not Faulkner).  However, de gustibus non 
titillandum.  And when all is said and done these categories mean 
nothing to me.  I went looking for Holes today (it was out) and sat in 
front of the Newbery shelf, looking at all the fantastic children's 
books I've never read.  Each one of them has something wonderful to 
teach me--I hope one day I'll read them all.  And 95% of the books 
that are marketed to adults are mindless and have not one tenth of the 
complexity of HP.  And finally, I have never been nearly as obsessed 
with any book as I am with HP, and the last time I checked I was 
technically an adult.

A plea to all from the easily confused:  When you post, do something 
that clearly delineates the quoted material from the new; something 
like a > on _every line_ of the quoted text, or quotes or <<<'s around 
the whole quote, really, really helps.  It also helps a lot if you 
snip all but the relevant parts of whomever you're quoting so that my 
aging eyes (they're only 33, but they've logged a lot of miles of 
text) can easily find your point and don't have to seek it out in a 
forest of quoted material.  

Amy Z

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 The full list of these fouls, however, has never
 been made available to the wizarding public.  It
 is the Department's view that witches and wizards
 who see the list 'might get ideas'.
                      -Quidditch Through the Ages
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