[HPforGrownups] Re: Crooked/hooked noses

[Rita]

No: HPFGUIDX 44623




Carol Bainbridge wrote:
> As long as we're creating wild speculations, would anyone care to 
> try their hand with the meaning of all the hooked and crooked noses? 
...snip...


bboy_mn answered:
I think JKR is just perpetuating the stereotype that all witches and
wizards have long crooked noses. If I recall correctly even Ron had a
long nose.

If you think about fairy tale respresentations of witches, whether
graphic/artistic or written, they usually have long crooked noses. So,
I think JKR used this a common characteristic typically associated
with this kind of people.

And I say:
 I couldn't come up with a possible meaning for the crooked noses, but Steve
provided one which is also related to what I'm going to say about hooked
noses. JKR relies very much on stereotypes for her characterisation and
hooked nose= uglyºd. This doesn't mean that she subscribes to this logic,
she just uses it, mainly to misguide us, to create false expectations. So
far, all the characters who have been given unpleasant appearances have also
been suspected of being 'bad': Snape, Karkaroff, Krum but they all turned
out not to be so. Crouch sr. also is somewhat unpleasant and therefore
suspected of being up to no good, while jolly Bagman's past and present( his
gambling problems) are a real surprise to both characters and readers. And
here we get to something that annoys me a little, even if we are shown that
everyone can make mistakes and commit crimes, still Bagman's crimes are a
trifle compared to Karkaroff's, Snape's ( we don't actually know what he did
as a DE, but being one is already much worse than betting, not paying debts,
and being careless when speaking to a friend of your dad) and Crouch's
ruthlessness. So, it seems that, on one hand, she wants to prove that one
cannot judge a book by its cover, but on the other that if some covers are
much nicer than others it has to mean something!
I'd like to add a little thing about Dumdl's nose: I tend to associate a
broken nose (please tell me if it's only me) with a fight, so to me D's nose
is a kind of 'token' of his past battles (Grindelwald above all), a sign of
being a warrior and a Gryffindor. Obviously, we don't know if it was really
broken twice, but the narrator use this simile to describe it (PS ch. 1), we
could be supposed to take it literally as well as not.

Rita- who is wondering if she missed some important info as everyone seems to be hinting at the publication of book 5 and she knows nothing about it!