Sympathy to the characters WAS: Respecting the Dursleys

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 159697

> Betsy Hp:
> I think part of the issue is that JKR takes an odd direction when 
> she tries to build either sympathy or revulsion.  So odd, IMO, that 
> it leaves me not entirely sure of how she's wanting things to come 
> across.
> 
> Because by the time OotP came around I was actually kind of proud of 
> Dudley for hitting back at Harry.  And I'm not sure I was supposed 
> to feel that way.  (Of course, I can feel however I please, but I 
> kind of like to have an idea of where the author is trying to take 
> me.)
> 

Pippin:
Maybe she's trying to take you in the direction of having an open
mind? Of not relying on cliches and stereotypes to form your
expectations about how people are going to behave and
where your sympathies ought to lie?  If you no 
longer think Dudley is just the wicked stepbrother and you
wonder if  Hermione can be trusted just because she's a 
"good guy" and you think that she needs to get a handle on that 
self-righteous streak, then maybe you're right where JKR 
wants you to be.

Betsy HP:
> JKR did a good job at the very beginning of the series, I thought, 
> of sending Dudley up as your stereotypical bully; someone it's fun 
> to sneer at.  But then she started pulling out bits and pieces of 
> her own foundation.  

Pippin:
This is what JKR loves to do: tell us enough about a character to 
evoke a stereotype,  then take it to pieces and show us how 
wrong we were. It's not that she's trying to con us, IMO, she's 
trying to show us the danger of letting stereotypes do our
thinking for us.

Of course the technique doesn't always work. Sometimes
the stereotype is so powerful that it corrupts one's memory
of the text. For example, I was sure that Dudley had flashed 
a wicked grin at Harry when Aunt Marge slipped him a twenty
pound note, but no. The twenty is there but we're not
told how Dudley reacted to it. 

AFAIK, we don't see him lighting up while he tortures people 
or thinks about it. We are told that all the Dursleys laughed 
when Harry was treed by Aunt Marge's dog, but then *she* 
is a sadist, who wants to know whether Harry is beaten 
regularly at school and so forth. It's not clear to me that 
that Dudley is the same type, while it's very clear that Draco is.

OTOH, Ron and Molly do have a mean streak, and IMO, that's
not haphazard either. Ron's occasional nastiness comes 
between him and Hermione in PS/SS and causes trouble in 
every single book. But unlike Draco, Ron doesn't get reinforced 
for it. Ron may gloat over the ferret bounce, but Hermione is 
disapproving, and though Ron may pretend not to care, we 
know her opinion matters to him. 


Of course the Weasleys are, over all, a nice family, but we get 
to see that it's partly Gryffindor values that make them so.
It's not haphazard that there's usually someone to rein Molly
or Ron in when they start to go too far. There is a very strong
Gryffindor taboo about picking on people weaker than yourself,
and it's constantly being enforced by the Gryffindors themselves.
It's shocking in the Pensieve scene when we see it ignored, but
it points up that this taboo is a choice, not a law of nature, and
it could at any moment be set aside, if people don't care enough
to enforce it.


Pippin