Why are Dobby and Grawp so annoying? (Was: Freedom for House-Elves)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162234

Alla wrote:
> 
> Hmmmm. I had been thinking about the reasons why I dislike house 
> elves ( not even dislike, but terribly annoyed with all of them). 
> Oh, and by the way I really really don't dislike Giants - I 
> absolutely respect them ( don't care for them much), but totally 
> respect as alien race, which is  different, but we cannot be the 
> same, right?
> 
> So, I read Carol's post and while I found her description of Dobby 
> hilarious, I am not sure that I agree that he is portrayed as 
> caricature. I read Steve's post, it did not answer my question 
> either.
<snip>
 
> Dobby and Grawp are annoying to me, but never ever I regarded them 
> as evil, while Snape I surely do.
> 
><snip>
> 
> Alla, still trying to figure out why she finds Dobby annoying, 
> because his speech patterns do not bother her that much.
>
Carol responds:

And here I thought that Steve had figured out the reason for your
reaction better than I had! Hmmm.

Leaving Snape out of it, since he's not a caricature and his speech
patterns aren't annoying and his loyalties are ambiguous, unlike 
Dobby's or Grawp's (you think he's evil; I don't), let's look again at
Dobby and Grawp. I think it's clear why Grawp is annoying; his
vocabulary and repertoire of actions are extremely limited. His head
is like a boulder with eyes. He's clearly not human, merely
anthropomorphic. The best that can be said of him is that he's not as
mindlessly violent and cruel as the other giants and that he's
trainable, like a dog or a toddler. He doesn't mean to do any harm; he
just doesn't know his own strength. He'd be harmless, or no more
dangerous than a toddler who spills his food on the floor and uproots
houseplants for entertainment, if he weren't so outrageously big.
Okay, no reason to hate him, but no reason to empathize with him,
either. At best, most of us can take him or leave him. He slows the
story down. We'd rather read about human characters whom we can relate
to and empathize with or be angry with because we disapprove of their
choices. Grawp has essentially no choice but to act as he does, except
to heed or ignore "Hagger" ("bad boy, Grawpy!"). I'd as soon read
about toddler!Dudley and toddler!Harry choosing to fling or not to
fling their cereal at the wall.

The same can't be said for Dobby, who makes his own decisions even as
a slave to the Malfoys, knowing the consequences in advance or even
inflicting them on himself. His speech patterns, which you don't find
annoying and I do, are more varied than Grawp's but nonetheless
repetitive and instantly recognizable as different from normal (i.e.,
human) speech. Most obviously, Dobby (like Gollum in LOTR) refers to
himself in the third person. He never says "I," "me," or "myself."
It's almost as if he's denying his own selfhood. He also uses
incorrect grammar ("we is," etc.), presumably denoting lack of formal
education, but how is it that he (and house-elves in general) can be
around Wizards who speak proper English and not pick up their speech
patterns? (Kreacher certainly picks up the Black family's
pro-pureblood terminology--"Mudblood," "blood traitor," etc., meaning
that part of his idiosyncratic speech pattern comes from his "family."
So why can't Dobby put "we" and "are" together as the Malfoys do?)
And, of course, there's the persistent reference to Harry as "Harry
Potter" or "Harry Potter, sir." Dobby can't bring himself to use only
Harry's first name, which would place him on the level of a friend or
equal or an adult relative or affectionate adult superior, or Harry's
last name, which would place Harry at a distance (as Draco Malfoy and
Professors Snape and McGonagall do), so he uses the full name Harry
Potter, the name by which celebrity!Harry, the Boy Who Lived and now
the chosen One, is known to the WW at large. (Lucius Malfoy, of
course, is "Master," both in the second and third person, until Dobby
is freed, after which Dobby doesn't mention him.) The speech patterns,
IMO, indicate servility toward wizards in general and idolatry of Harry.

But you say that it isn't the speech patterns that annoy you, either
with their repetition or their servility, and that you don't find them
caricatured. I do see them as caricatured in that they're exaggerated
and unrealistic, more like the behavior of a cartoon character than a
literary character (and derivative of Gollum, whether JKR intended
them to be or not--maybe that's what annoys me most?). His appearance
is equally cartoonish--out-sized eyes, pencillike nose, skinny arms
and legs sticking out from a dirty pillowcase. Yes, he's pathetic in
more senses than one, but he's so obviously not human that our empathy
is limited from the outset, and his behavior reinforces that
perception of cartoonish exaggeration--wailing, blowing his nose on
his pillowcase (yecch!), beating himself on the head with the nearest
object or otherwise punishing himself (bad role model for kids with
low self-esteem approaching Dobby's). And his idea of helping Harry is
to get him in trouble with the Dursleys and the MoM (the pudding
incident), to prevent him from taking the Hogwarts Express and
potentially injure both him and Ron in the process (solidifying the
barrier they're supposed to walk through), and setting a rogue Bludger
on him ("Not kill you, sir! Never kill you!" Could have fooled me, Dobby.)

Of course, he stops trying to "help" Harry in dangerous ways after
CoS, and the servility becomes a little less cringing, but the
cartoonishness (all those hats and socks) and the tearful idolatry of
Harry remain.

I don't know about you, but I find him annoying rather than empathetic
for all of these reasons. He's not realistic; his plight is too
exaggerated to evoke my sympathy. His speech and behavior patterns get
on my nerves. I really wish he would just go away, and that JKR would
stick with human characters whose experiences, appearance, and
behavior I can at least relate to. It's odd--I don't mind the nonhuman
characters in LOTR nearly as much, even though I recognize Legolas and
Gimli as typical representatives of their respective "races" who learn
to care about each other rather than individuals like the various
hobbits. Maybe it's because they're neither so exaggerated nor so
undignified. And Gollum, the former hobbit (near enough) has good
reason for his habit of talking to himself and even for his bad
grammar, never having lived among educated people even before his long
exile under the mountain.

Does that help at all? I'm not expecting you to agree with my
characterization, just explaining why I find Dobby annoying and
wondering how my reaction to him compares with yours and that of
anyone else who wants to join this thread.

Carol, wishing that the Hogwarts kids could just do their own laundry,
with or without a spell, or have it done by a paid human housekeeping
staff