[HPforGrownups] Re: Snape, Hagrid and Animals

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 143845

va32h

> A lenghty debate on whether or not Hagrid is a good teacher should at
> least include discussion of whether it serves the story better to have
> Hagrid be a good teacher (or not).


Magpie:

I think one would only have to wonder that if one thought it was a flaw in 
the text that Hagrid was not a good teacher.  My own interest in the thread 
wasn't to say that Hagrid is bad or the writing is bad, but that 
re-imagining Hagrid's scenes where he's competent completely changes the 
story. That, to me, was the point of the thread, that a Hagrid who isn't a 
menace isn't the Hagrid of the story--you lose the joke, lose the character, 
lose the grey areas of right and wrong and lose the developing arc of the 
way Harry relates to him as well.

So I guess I would say we lose something if Hagrid is a great teacher whose 
disasters all come down to someone else, just as it is with all the 
characters in canon--this kind of thing is very common, for characters to be 
pushed more into the black or white area, so anything Snape has done that 
seems bad was really for the greater good if he is good, or whatever a bad 
character does has to down to some bad motivation because they are bad. 
Like conversations where you know that if anyone talks about someone being 
responsible for his/her own actions you know they must be talking about a 
bad guy, because the good guy's actions are always the only thing he could 
do under the circumstances--or it makes him/her human rather than a plaster 
saint (as opposed to making them a bad person in need of karmic 
retribution).:-) For me the more interesting moments in the books are the 
ones that seem to suggest that the author knows that's what's going on and 
is planning to turn it on its head eventually--though it doesn't always seem 
like that's the way it's going.  I'm not talking about saying all the 
impressions the good guys have are wrong, but that they will get a wider 
perspective that makes them see things differently--that's more the way I 
think she's worked in the past.

-m