[HPforGrownups] Re: Dumbledore's Decision and the Explanation for it we ...

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 41211

To take a different take on this subject, I think what we are encountering is 
the difficult interface between myth and  realism in this book.

Harry's childhood in the broom cupboard is the stuff of fairy tales: it is 
one of those powerful mythic images of the abused, neglected, unknown hero 
who breaks free and begins to find his powers.

JKR's characters, however, can be quite complex and as readers we have come 
expect to be able to analyse them and  find coherent reasons for what they 
do. Dumbledore fits into this category. I would say that he contrasts 
strongly with the Dursleys (part of the "fairytale" background, at present) 
whose portrayal is more caricature-like..

I think JKR was aware of this particular problem. That is why Minerva 
McGonagall  sits there as a cat all day and warns Dumbledore, enabling him to 
give his apparently rather feeble explanation. It is JKR's way of 
acknowledging and stepping over that boundary between fairy tale and her own 
story.

There are definite problems. If Harry is being supervised from a distance, 
then, as has been pointed out, there should have been no surprise that the 
Dursleys put up such a fight against Harry's entry to Hogwarts. (BTW, how 
does the system work, that the letters are multiplying so, always correctly 
addressed and yet Hagrid can say simply something casual along the lines of, 
'I knew you weren't getting your letters, but....' Surely it indicated that 
it was *known* up at the castle that there was a big problem.)

Whilst I believe that Dumbledore would think it was better for Harry to be 
raised out of the limelight, it does seem incredible that he had no knowledge 
of the abuse he was suffering. In the real world, we do not abuse people to 
make them kind and noble. Abuse tends to scar people. There was a thread a 
while back on exactly this subject - how did Harry get out of that cupboard 
so emotionally unscarred? The place where abused children *do* inevitably 
grow up kind and noble and brave is in fairytales.

I don't think that we can find rational explanations for Dumbledore's 
decision and more to the point, his sticking to the decision in the light of 
what ensues, not in the detail which is being asked, at any rate. I believe 
that Harry was raised in a cupboard, mistreated and neglected because his 
story has a mythic element to it. It is telling us about Harry's intrinsic 
worth, rather than anything about Dumbledore.

On the subject of why he still has to stay with the Dursleys, I imagine that 
there must be some Old Magic or similar which grants him protection there. 
Surely if it were simply a case of Dumbledore putting some kind of protection 
in place, he could do that anywhere. It would seem far kinder to place the 
same protection at the Weasleys and let him stay there, wouldn't it? At the 
same time, on a literary level, it keeps the mythic background ever in mind.

Similarly, Dumbledore could have entrusted Arabella to bring him up, 
protecting him from the limelight (in a similar way to the fairies bringing 
up Aurora in the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty). But this wouldn't have 
had anywhere near the dramatic force of the child in the cupboard who find 
he's a wizard. No. JKR knows the power of myth and she uses it.

Eloise



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