Hermione acting out-of-character

[jekatiska]

No: HPFGUIDX 111271

> Brandy:"I just want to know if I'm the only one who got really, really
> annoyed when Hermione came totally out of character and did something
> as stupid as saying to the centaurs tha she wanted them to get rid of
> Umbridge for her."

Jim Ferer:
 
> Why can't it just be Hermione's mistake?  She's been brilliant the
> whole book long, thinking of the DA, Rita Skeeter's article, Marietta
> Edgecombe's decorations, and even a way to fool Umbridge. (Hermione's
> learning to think on her feet.  She used to be much more deliberate.)
> She's under just a little stress when the centaurs show up.

Jekatiska:

It's not out of character, though. Remember what she said about
Firenze being the new divination teacher: "I don't really like horses"
and "he still has four legs". Hermione doesn't understand centaurs -
or even house-elves for that matter. She's brilliant when it comes to
human behaviour, spells, and book knowledge. But - maybe because of
her muggle background - she doesn't understand other magical
creatures. This is something they don't really teach at Hogwarts, nor
is it something that can be learned from a book. The insight to the
thinking of other creatures than humans can only come from experience
and open-mindedness. I guess it could be a kind of analogy for
understanding other cultures in the muggle world.

Hermione's blunder is actually quite revealing. It shows her
Spew-idealist character in quite a different light. She sees
house-elves as something to be helped, but doesn't understand the way
they think, and goes on helping them completely the wrong way. This is
the kind of mistake Western countries sometimes make in helping
developing countries. They mean well, but at the same time they
discard the local culture as someting inferior to their own, and
impose their own values. This is exactly what Hermione is doing with
Spew, and this is also her attitude towards the centaurs. She fails to
understand their way of thinking because it's in conflict with her
own. So she hears what they say - both the house-elves and the
centaurs - but doesn't understand what they really mean.

I think this is a very clever way of showing that Hermione is after
all, human and as such an immature one. That is not to say that she is
immature in the negative sense of the word, simply that she is still a
child. She is 15, and at 15 most of us have some ideas of the world,
that are not quite fully developed. Some of us, like Hermione and
myself at that age, are convinced that our ideas are right and
everyone else is wrong, and go on shouting out about it. I feel very
uncomfortable about this side of Hermione's personality, because it is
so real and, for me, so close to home.

And by the way, Jim, Grawp is a giant, not a troll.

Jekatiska