Percy, Ron, Puffskein (WAS: Evil Fudge, Complex Snape...)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 36137

I wrote:

>Percy's good opinion is something that Ron values highly
>enough for it to be presented as a major part of his *triumph* at the
>end of the novel

Amy wrote:

> I don't follow this. The fact that it's emphasized by JKR means Ron 
> values it?

No, but the particular *way* in which JKR emphasizes it implies (to 
my mind, at any rate), that we're supposed to understand Ron to value 
it.

This is admittedly a matter of nuance and therefore open to 
interpretation.  But given the emphasis placed throughout the text on 
Ron's concerns about not being as good as his older brothers, not 
being able to live up to their reputation, not having a niche within 
his family dynamic, and so forth; and given that Percy was 
established both in his very first appearance and in the Christmas 
chapter as being prone to value his extra-familial relationships
(specifically, with his Prefect friends) over his familial
relationships; and given that Percy's depiction in the first book is 
not nearly as negative or as ineffectual as it will become later on 
(he is shown, for example, to be a very *good* leader in PS/SS, in 
stark contrast to his ineptitude in CoS); and given that the scene is 
constructed in such a way as to emphasize that each of the four 
protagonists is not only earning accolades, but has also triumphed in 
some manner highly relevant to their character-specific concerns 
and conflicts...

Um, yeah.  Given all of that, I think that we're meant to read 
Percy's boasting to his Prefect friends of his familial relationship 
to Ron as a personal and important triumph for Ron himself.  I don't 
think that it works very well if we don't accept that -- at this 
point in his life, at any rate -- Percy's good  opinion really *is* 
something that Ron truly values.


> So Percy's delight about winning his bet with Penny is important to 
> Harry and that's why it's mentioned at the Ravenclaw match? 

Nah.  Percy's delight at winning his bet with Penny is just Percy 
being a strutting boor.  ;->

But I don't think that the two situations are really comparable.  
They bear superficial similarities, certainly, but they don't occupy 
at all the same position within the narrative structures of the two 
novels.


Amy also said:

> However, I am never going to forgive Fred for killing Ron's 
> puffskein, or JKR for thinking that that is funny (FB). I'm praying 
> there turns out to be another explanation. Killing someone's pet is 
> a particularly advanced form of abuse.

Oh!  <Elkins exclaims, momentarily losing all of her Edge, as well as 
a great deal of her Twin antagonism>  But surely that must have been 
an accident!

I refuse to believe that the same woman who wrote PoA could fail to 
comprehend the gravity of killing someone's pet.  And since I don't 
believe for a minute that Fred is *that* evil, I remain convinced 
that it must have happened due to a terrible, horrible, gruesome 
error of judgement, and not as a premeditated act of pet murder.

And I quite agree with you, Amy.  It really *isn't* funny.


-- Elkins, who simply cannot *bear* the thought of murdered pets.