Hogwarts: Real or Cartoon? (was:Scene with likeable James WAS: Re: Eileen Pince

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 156391

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03"
<horridporrid03 at ...> wrote:
>
> > >>Ken:
> > <snip>
> > I think that I am not alone in seeing a very stark fault line     
> > running through the description of the Potterverse that we see in 
> > these books. I see many of you as not reacting to it but instead   
> > treating everything in the books as "real" and directly relateable 
> > to real life. When I read the scenes at Hogwarts and at the       
> > Dursleys I hear a constant "beep, beep" sound in my head. For those
> > who don't follow that I am reminded of the Saturday morning       
> > cartoons we "boomers" watched as kids, eg "The Roadrunner and Wile 
> > E. Coyote".
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> I've heard this idea before, that Hogwarts (or the Potterverse) is 
> cartoonish, that the hurts visited upon the students are therefore 
> as real and harmful as Elmer Fudd falling off a cliff.  So you're 
> not alone in thinking this.  But, I'm pretty sure I disagree.
> 

Ken:

First, I posted a reply to this last night. Since it has not appeared
here yet I assume that Yahoomort, as someone else calls our host, has
eaten it and I apologise if it appears later on.

For me the Dursleys are completely cardboard characters and as
cartoonish as Wile E. Coyote. So many of the events at Hogwarts, all
the pratfalls in the courses, the hallway battles, the things the
twins to *to themselves* have a very cartoonish, unreal feel to them.

Not everything at Hogwarts is like this, many of the scenes that are
depicted are school days experiences that match my recollections very
well. These things ring true and if a UK author can hit the nail so
squarely on the head for a USA reader they must be nearly universal
experiences.

There is a third class of events portrayed in the book. Mostly these
surround the activities of the DE but the bulk of the MOM scenes are
of this nature too. These are gritty, realistic, often chilling
scenes. I put Umbridge's quill in this class, it is abusive, there is
no humor in it. LV is no cartoon either, he is quite real. Far too
many innocents have been sent to early graves over the millenia by the
LV's of our kind. He walks and talks among us to this day and
sometimes he is a she. LV is portrayed as being Pure Evil, with no
redeeming quality that we can perceive. That, perhaps, is an
exaggeration. Even our worst historical figures are reported to have
had some small charming human qualities about them. Yet many of these
historical figures have done or caused evil deeds orders of magnitude
greater than LV does. He may not have been Pure Evil but it is hard to
give Adolf Hitler much credit for the fact that he treated his dogs
very sweetly. He and several others were as close to Pure Evil as
makes no difference.

Over the last night I think I have come to see the reason for this
variation in treatment. The school days/realistic scenes are there to
anchor the story in a shared experience that draws readers of all ages
in. The cartoonish elements represent the innocent faith that children
have in their world and the adults that protect them. No matter how
outlandishly frightening my troubles seem the adults will help me sort
them out. They also symbolize the many cruel things that children do
and say to each other during the course of growing up. And of course
some of them are just comic relief. The chilling violence represent
the real world problems that adults have to deal with in general and
the all too real violence that we inflict on each other. 

During his career at Hogwarts we see Harry's life fading from the
nearly total Toonville of the Dursely household to the grim reality of
hunting down horcruxes and facing LV. It is a journey that all of us
who have lived long enough have taken. That is why Harry has so many
adult fans. 

Ken