Cruel, Mean, and Nasty - Is this the way of the WW?

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 158766

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tesha" <Jan at ...> wrote:
 
>    My questions is--- While we analyze the story, should we try to set
> aside out our experiences and prejudices to fully enjoy the story, or
> is feeling the injustice personally an important part of JKR's 
stories?
> 
 
Hickengruendler:

I have no doubt that she deliberatly shows the Wizarding World as a 
very flawed place. Characters like Umbridge, Crouch, Fudge, Scrimgeour 
and others are the proof for this. We are meant to question their legal 
systems and by extension ours. I am also sure that she once said in an 
interview, that the only reason the WW is a better place for Harry, is 
because he meets nicer people than in the Muggle World. Otherwise the 
Wizarding World is just as flawed. That's what she wanted to portray 
and I think she was mostly successfull in doing so. And IMO we are also 
meant to question some legal systems in our world. I do not want to get 
too much into politics here, but I for example think, Steve missed the 
point, when he in a previous chapter compared Dumbledore to Bush or 
Rumsfeld. The worst of Dumbledore's sins are IMO sins of omission. 
(Even regarding the Dursleys, where his biggest failure was not 
delivering Harry to them, bur failing to step in, when Harry got 
abused). That means, regarding real-life politics, he would not be like 
Bush or some other responsible people, who put people into Guantanamo 
Bay without any trial, he would be like someone, who might have be able 
to fight for a fair trial for them, but doesn't do so, because he has 
resigned to the general situation. (I'm not sure if I see him like 
that, I still blame him much more for the Dursley debacle than for the 
Sirius one, since IMO his power back then gets overestimated here, but 
of course that's just my interpretation of the books, but he could be 
read that way). The people, who are much closer to Bush etc. are of 
course those directly responsible for putting guilty or innocent people 
into prison without any trial, namely Crouch, Fudge and Scrimgeour. And 
although I do not know this for sure of course, I am nearly certain, 
that at the very least Stan Shunpike's fate in HBP was JKR's way to 
state her opinion about Guanatanamo Bay and it's prisoners, and that 
she would not be happy at all, if she knew that her epitome of goodness 
gets compared with Bush and consorts.

Hickengruendler, who is not a fan of the Bush government either, but 
hopes that he has not overstepped any boundaries in mentioning real 
life politics. I definitely will not make them a topic in further 
posts.