CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 23: Christmas On The Closed Ward

[Lee]

No: HPFGUIDX 107230

> 4) Why does Alice give Neville the gum wrapper?  Is she starting
> to recognize him?  Is there something strange about the gum, or is
> it all she has to give?

Del responded:
> Your guess is as good as any :-)
> One possibility I like is that she gives them to Neville because it's
> Neville who gives the gums to her in the first place. Maybe Neville
> learned from Uncle Algie that his mom was a Drooble Gum addict, so he
> started early on to give them her favourite treats as a way to tell
> her he loved her. And now she's giving them back to him as a way to
> tell him she loves him too. The gums wrappers would be a *symbol* of
> the love they have for each other but that they can't share any other way.
> I have of course not a single shred of canon to support my theory. I
> just *like* the idea.
 
Carol added:
> That's one possibility, but I think she just wants to give Neville
> something and the wrappers are all she has to give. She wouldn't have
> any personal possessions, only her hospital gown and the bed she
> sleeps in. I think her mind and emotions have been reduced to those of
> a pre-verbal child about the age Neville was when she was Crucio'd. I
> can imagine a baby of fifteen months or so giving someone who clearly
> loves him but doesn't see him very often (say, a grandma) a gum
> wrapper. It's very touching that Alice would be in such a plight yet
> still struggling to show her love, and even more touching that Neville
> values her gifts. [...]

ariston finally decides to plunk down two knuts:
I think there may be another very sad aspect to all of this, too, 
which is that Alice can no longer recognize the difference between a 
valuable gift and a non-valuable one.  Of course, the wrappers 
*become* valuable because Alice has given them, but that's not what 
I'm getting at...  To Alice, there may no longer BE any difference 
between giving Neville a gum wrapper and giving him a Mimbulus 
Mimbletonia -- she can no longer see that.  Dumbledore says that 
Neville's parents don't recognize him, so I doubt that 
Alice even knows that she's giving something to someone 
named "Neville" or that she's giving something to *her son*.  She 
has a dim awareness of love toward this person, and she gives 
something to him.  But in fact she may feel a similar dim awareness 
toward many people who treat her kindly.  I once worked in a nursing 
home, and it wouldn't surprise me if Alice gives gum wrappers to the 
nurses and the healers all the time, too.

I guess I'm kind of raining on the parade here, but I actually don't 
think this takes away from Alice's gifts to Neville being deeply 
touching.  In the limited way that she's still capable of, Alice is 
expressing love.  But when I pause to think just *how* limited that 
is -- that Alice has been reduced to THIS -- that there might not be 
any significance to the gum wrappers at all, that perhaps for all 
Alice knows she's giving Neville pocket fluff or something deadly or 
a million galleons -- then I feel the pathos of the situation, and 
the utter horror of what the DEs did to her and Frank, much more 
strongly.  Azkaban was better, really, than those four DEs deserved.

-ariston