Hagrid goes far, far away

[David]

No: HPFGUIDX 70669

Jenny wrote:

> I keep wondering if JKR is holding something back from us in 
relation 
> to the giants and Hagrid.  I hope she is, because if she isn't, 
Grawp 
> and the rest of the giants were a big waste of page time, IMO.

I don't think so, at least, I think they fit in with other 
developments in the series.

I think the sight of the giants shows us Hagrid in a new light, and 
at the same time, Hagrid's giant side shows up more clearly in OOP 
than hitherto.  His unwillingness to listen to Harry, Hermione, and 
Firenze seems to me to have a direct parallel to his own 
difficulties in persuading Grawp and the giants in general.

So, as I see it, JKR is showing how Hagrid's 'lovable clumsiness' is 
in fact irritating in many circumstances; and she has stressed 
heavily over three books the at best uneven quality of his teaching 
so there's little doubt we are to take it that he's *not* a good 
teacher, and to reflect on Dumbledore as a result.

To me, this parallels the developments we have had in Dumbledore, 
Sirius, Frad and George, and Harry himself, where characteristics 
that have always been latent are now brought into play in a way that 
really makes it hard for the reader to avoid feeling irritated or 
discomfited.  In fact, we can now see the sharp drop in Ron's 
popularity (with readers) in GOF as the first example of this type 
of development - interestingly, he gets a bit of a holiday from 
negative character development in OOP, though he is not unscathed.

Where is this going?  Well, we have had the oft-repeated mantra that 
perfect characters make for boring reading, but IMO there is more to 
it than this, because we seem to have a degree of uncomfortable 
reading.  I think JKR is provoking us into thinking about the nature 
of perfection.

We tend, as readers, (IMO) to assume that characters will in due 
course be shown to have some flaw if they are three dimensional, and 
we look out for that.  I think though that there can still be an 
underlying idea that the flaws are somehow incidental (or 
accidental, in the technical meaning of the term) to the 
characterisation.  Thus e.g. Fred and George are decent chaps, if 
only they'd easy up on those a bit weaker than themselves.  The 
concept is that there is still an ideal of perfection against which 
we tend to measure characters, and hope they fall short, for the 
sake of realism and/or reader schadenfreude.  It is this ideal that 
JKR is attacking, IMO.

She is giving us characters who seem to be good, in some almost 
stereotypical sense, and then showing how the very things which make 
for the goodness of the character in a new circumstance are 
drawbacks or liabilities.

E.g. you could say that Dumbledore should exercise closer oversight 
of Hagrid and other teachers and do more to guide and train them.  
That might well have a positive impact on the quality of teaching at 
Hogwarts, but it would make Dumbledore into a different person, and 
we wouldn't have the benefit of those remarkable 'second chances' 
that he gives people.

I don't mean that I think Dumbledore is making the right or better 
decision, just that, as JKR says, his choices show what he is and 
add up to his uniqueness.  Different choices would be a different 
person, but there are - in canon - no perfect choices.

Thus she is attacking the idea of human perfection, not by 
saying 'all fall short', but by saying 'any standard you can think 
of is flawed'.

David