Cruel, Mean, and Nasty/Follow the Owls: Hedwig/JKR's comments

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 158845

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" <belviso at ...> wrote:
>
> Ken:
> > I don't quite understand the dumping on Dumbledore and the other 
> white
> > hats in these novels. The black hats and gray hats are so bad that if
> > you demonize the white hats what are you left with? Why bother to 
> read
> > this tripe if that is how you think of the best people in the
> > Potterverse?
> 
> Magpie:
> I think you hinted at the answer to your own question. Things do not 
> become whiter the more black you make the things around them. They can 
> be judged independently, and people are naturally going to react to 
> things as they see them--hence, as Lupinlore said in another post, 
> they're not going to buy a character as completely good just because 
> the author calls him such in an interview, or because other characters 
> are worse, or because everyone in his fictional world calls him that. 
> It's easily possible that one person's idea of a saint would fall far 
> short of another person's idea of a saint.  
> 

Ken:

I don't see DD as completely good and no matter what she said I doubt
that JKR meant that she sees him that way either. I do side with a
Lincon biographer who said that while it is possible to study Lincoln
by concentrating on his failings, to do so is to miss the real
Lincoln. I see the concentration on DD's failings here as doing
exactly that.

Like another here said I cannot give much importance to the way he
treats the Dursleys because they are cardboard cutout cartoon
characters. They are there primarily for comic relief. They are there
to lampoon middle class, suburban Britian and by extension the rest of
us middle class suburbanites. If you insist on seeing the Dursleys as
more than that you have to come to terms with the fact that these are
extremely difficult people. They are exaggerated beyond belief,
really. They are hardly more human than Voldemort. They would be your
worst nightmare if they moved in next door to you.

If you want to judge DD on his interactions with Muggles I think a
better scene to examine is the one in the orphanage with the
headmistress. DD does not come off as perfect there either but that is
at least a normal interaction with a believable, if minor, character.

Ken