[HPforGrownups] Dudley-Bulley or popular kid?

[Robert Carnegie]

No: HPFGUIDX 20433

07/06/01 04:40:13, "Saitaina" <saitaina at wizzards.net> wrote:

><You were right on track mentioning Dudley's popularity.  Again, not a great
>role model to show that the mean kid is the popular kid, but I don't know
>what would be perfect.  That's the key to anything.  You can never nit-pick
>too much because you'll never please everyone. >
>
>Where is it mentioned Dudly as 'popular'?  He was a bully and that is the
>long and short of it.  People did not befriend Harry because they "knew
>Dudley" and did want the living daylights beat out of them is the basic gist
>of what was said in that section.  No where was he named as popular but
>extensively named as a bully who several in his school feared.
>
>"Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as Dudly
>was very fat and hated exercise-unless of course it involved punching
>somebody."
>
>"He was usually the one who held people's arms behind their backs while
>Dudley hit them"-regarding Dudley's best friend, Piers Pollykiss.
>
>"Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy
>old clothes and broken glasses and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's
>gang."
>
>Each of these quotes point to the dangerous behavior of a bullying child.

Indeed; but that doesn't mean he's unpopular, or that he bullies everyone.
While all of the Dursleys are more caricatures than characters - that still
bothers me - if we're taking the story seriously, and at face value, then
I don't think it's credible that Dudley's gang, all aged ten or eleven,
terrorises everyone in their year at school (I presume the year group is
their social circle) into ostracising Harry.

The other children don't like Harry anyway, because he's "odd" and badly
dressed - he's different.  They laugh at his hand-me-down clothes.  But if
Dudley's opinion is a factor, as JKR tells us, I think that's because the children
outside Dudley's gang - ones who aren't bullied - _like_ Dudley.  They enjoy
seeing other kids getting humiliated and assaulted.  They admire the bullies'
physical strength and mental domination.  And they envy all the great toys that
Dudley has.  While he doesn't like to share anything with Harry, he may well
take more of those toys to school than he can play with himself: so, by default,
the others kids will get to play with them too.

As for how Dudley turns out: I haven't actually read the further adventures
of _Flashman_, but I understand that this modern series is a fantastical
account of how a school bully gets on in later life :-)

I understand that it's actually fairly easy for responsible adults to correct
individual cases of bullying between younger children, and to make
victimiser and victim act friendly to each other.  This seems weird
to me, but then I don't know very much about children, really.
Dudley's case is trickier to fix because his abusive behaviour isn't
just his - it's something that he and his friends like to do together.

Robert Carnegie
Meretricious!