Hagrid's attack on Dudley (Was: A few random puzzles)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 117666


In Oct 2001 Cindy wrote
> > Here are a few things that came to mind:
> > 
> > 1.  In PS/SS, Vernon insults Dumbledore, and Hagrid tries to turn 
> > Dudley into a pig, giving him a pig tail that has to be surgically 
> > removed.  But why?  If Vernon is the problem, why hex an innocent 
> > boy?
> 
> Potioncat:
> In the medium which not be named, Dudley is stealing Harry's cake, 
> but in canon, he's not doing anything.  Did Hagrid just hex him 
> because he exists?  Are we seeing a long standing trend of bullying 
> by Gryffindors?  No, really, what is going on here?  

Carol responds:
Two things strike me here. Hagrid seems to regard Muggles in general,
regardless of age or sex, in much the same stereotypical way that
wizards regard giants--they're all either worthless or downright bad.
Now I actually can understand the prejudice against giants, who are
essentially big, brutal, lumps of stone who enjoy killing each other.
Grawp may be a partial exception, but nevertheless, he is clearly an
exception. Giants *can't* mingle with people, wizards or otherwise, so
they have to be kept isolated. Let them kill each other off, fine; but
keep them away from defenseless Muggles. (Just how a giantess could
marry a wizard and produce a child is, well, ahem, a topic for old
posts.) But lumping all Muggles together puts the Grangers in the same
category as the Dursleys. Not all Muggles are stupid; not all Muggles
mistreat children--even in the Potterverse. Okay, I'm somewhat biased
in favor of Muggles, being one myself, but Hagrid, IMO, is prejudiced
against them. He's lumping all the Dursleys together as worthless
Muggles who mistreat Harry. He happens to be right, but I think he's
basing his conclusions on insufficient evidence. In any case, he sees
nothing wrong with punishing Dudley for what Vernon has done because
all Muggles, and especially all Dursleys, are the same in his view.

And another thing: he seems to be viewing Dudley as Vernon's most
precious possession (next to Petunia). How do you really hurt
somebody? Hurt the person they love. (It reminds me of the Abraham and
Isaac story where God supposedly tested Abraham's loyalty by
commanding him to sacrifice his most prized possession, his only
legitimate son. No one cared how Isaac felt about the matter! But I
digress.) Hagrid doesn't intend to give Dudley a pig's tail. He
intends to strip him of his (semblance of?) humanity altogether and
turn him into a pig. His only regret is that he doesn't succeed
because Dudley was "so much like a pig already." (Actually, of course,
the fact that the wand inside the umbrella is broken and the wizard
who's pointing it is less than half-trained *might* have something to
do with it.) Even Crouch!Moody, when he turned Draco into a bouncing
ferret, was at least punishing the person who committed the offense.
But Dudley is just a son of a Muggle, and a Dursley to boot, and he
must have bullied Harry at some point, so it's okay to turn him into a
pig (inspired, no doubt, by the Chocolate Frog Cards featuring Circe).

Please note that I am not defending Dudley, who is a spoiled brat and
a bully who no doubt deseerves some sort of punishment. It's this
punishment and these circumstances and the assumptions that I think
Hagrid is making to justify his action that bothers me. (And, yes, I
know that at this point he's a "giant" in a book with a fairytale
atmosphere that we don't see later. But I still think that if Hagrid
was going to turn anyone into an animal, it should have been Vernon,
rather than visiting the sins of the father upon the son.

Anyone want to come to Hagrid's defense or at least correct the flaws
you perceive in my analysis?

Carol, who is not sure why the biblical examples and quotations
suddenly flew into her head, though Circe was put there by Kneasy's post