Elkins' Draco Malfoy Is Ever So Lame. (But not sympathetic)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 124639


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:

<snip> 

> Betsy:
> Well, Harry thinks Draco is the big evil and that he deserves all 
> the hits he gets.  JKR, by way over doing the pay-back Draco 
> suffers, seems to suggest that he doesn't.

Or, by overdoing it, JKR makes it ever-so-slightly comic, in the fine 
tradition of blending deserved punishment with a somewhat nasty 
twist.  I stand by the deserved Schadenfreude ideal; there's 
something rather nice about seeing self-initiated bratty behavior 
receive comeuppance.

> Harry also saw Draco as a big threat (until the end of OotP), but 
> every single effort Draco makes against him fails spectacularly.  
> And Harry thinks that Draco is a  wizard version of Dudley.  JKR 
> shows us that Draco most certainly is not.

Really?  I think the meeting scene shows us more about what Draco 
really is than that.  Draco is not continually spoiled in the sense 
to which some fans exaggerate it, but he does get the goodies from 
home and the nice fast brooms for everyone on the team--he's not 
wearing crappy dress robes, either.  But I think the Dudley 
comparison *does* have legs in OotP.  OotP opens with Harry's 
commentary on Dudley and his gang bashing on Mark Evans, basically 
because they can but also out of a nasty sense of aggression on 
Dudley's part.  Draco joins the IS and gets his jollies out of 
bossing around the other students to whatever degree he can, and 
is "watching hungrily" when Umbridge is about to cast Crucio on 
Harry.  Dudley is made at least moderately sympathetic, but it 
requires making him a complete fish out of water, trying to deal with 
things from a world he is not a part of, things he can't possibly 
really understand.  I don't see any analogous project with Draco.

> (Draco not being the Slytherin heir *is* a big hint that the Trio 
> do not have a clear view of him.)

He would totally *like* to be, though.  And he puts his full support 
behind said Heir--"Mudbloods, you're next!"

-Nora notes it's how long until we get this somewhat settled?