Hermione must be stopped, ...-Hermione's Crimes/Trusting Snape

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 149417

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Karen <kchuplis at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> On Friday, March 10, 2006, at 10:39 PM, Magpie wrote:
> 
> > Magpie:
> > I'm glad to clear up that I was not expressing disapproval of Hermione 
> > every
> > time I felt her actions were manipulative, then.:-)  I thought it just
> > seemed very straightforward that it was the most obvious thing to call 
> > it--I
> > can't think of any other word.  Just as I'd say Harry is being 
> > manipulative
> > when he gets the memory out of Slughorn, and Draco's manipulative when 
> > he
> > gets Harry out to the midnight duel.  I like both those scenes in canon
> > (one's for a good cause, one's for personal gain).  Sometimes it's 
> > downright
> > satisfying and fun to watch a character being manipulative.  In my 
> > mind the
> > difference is sometimes that when you call a person manipulative in 
> > real
> > life what you often mean is that their manipulation is crude so that 
> > you see
> > them doing it.  A good manipulator is just smooth and often gets 
> > called a
> > cool person.
> >
> >
> 
> kchuplis:
> 
> Wow. It's just amazing how different people view a word. I would never 
> equate Draco's example and Harry getting the Slughorn memory in anyway. 
> I mean, I guess I see the connection but definitely manipulative does 
> not imply a favorable thing to me, nor "coolness". The term 
> manipulation just has never had good connotations to me.
> 
> So I looked up manipulate:
> 
> 2 a : to manage or utilize skillfully b : to control or play upon by 
> artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
> 3 : to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose
> b
> I guess it does allow for "artful"  but overall, I still get the sense 
> that people usually (and certainly anytime I've ever seen it) use the 
> term to portray unfair and insidious means.  Synonyms seem to back this 
> up for the most part too:
> 
> Related Words engineer, finagle, jockey, maneuver; beguile, bluff, 
> cozen, deceive, delude, dupe, fool, gull, hoax, hoodwink, kid, snow, 
> take in, trick; intrigue, machinate, plot, scheme; arrange, contrive, 
> devise, finesse, mastermind; cheat, chisel, defraud, fleece, gyp, 
> hustle, swindle

Geoff:
I would tend to agree with kchuplis over this one. My usual dictionary defines 
"manipulative" as:
(1) tending to manipulate other people cleverly or unscrupulously. (2) relating to 
manipulate.

It is interesting that the figurative meaning is given precedence over its concrete sense. To 
me, manipulation makes me think of, say, an engineer operating equipment and thus 
being in control which equates to the Puppetmaster! prefix some folk have used on the 
group to describe characters.

I do see a parallel here between Harry and Draco. Although Harry is trying to obtain 
information for a "good cause", he is still aiming to get what he needs from Slughorn 
rather against the latter's wishes.

Manipulative always makes me think of someone such as Iago in "Othello" who controls 
events to bring about his aim, namely the destruction of our eponymous hero. I would 
never use the word to describe positive action.