Hagrid the animal abuser/Comparing Secret Keeper plan and UV plan

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 166166

> Sam
>

> Everyone seems to forget that the is Care of Magical Creatures.  
The 
> students are supposed to learn about a variety of creatures, some 
of 
> them quite dangerous.  What would happen to a student that meets a 
> Hippogriff without learning how to approach it.  They would most 
> likely die. Hagrids job is to prepare the students in his charge 
to 
> learn about and care for dangerous and benign creatures alike.

Magpie:
LOL--we pretty much saw what might happen in that particular "what 
if" in his first class!

Katie responds:

> I think you're taking a hard line against Hagrid.
> I agree that he is often less than concientious
> about his "pets", but I don't think he's an abusive,
> off-balanced animal hoarder. Let's consider this
> - if Hagrid were so awful and abusive, would his
> "pets" be so loyal to him? Aragog and Buckbeak love
> Hagrid and are loyal and faithful to him.

 
houyhnhnm:

It is impossible to say whether or not Hagrid is an
animal abuser in a real life sense because there are
no real animals in HP (even the non-magical ones) ,
only anthropomorphic cartoon animals. Real owls are
not smart, for instance.

It's one of my biggest annoyances with HP, but it is
a characteristic of most children's literature. I
thought it was dumb even as a child and I've never
understood what the point is supposed to be. Teaching
very young children to regard animals as having thoughts
and feelings exactly like their own is supposed to
encourage empathy, I suppose, but a great many people
never evolve beyond it and learn to respect the fact
that animals have their own natures which are very
different from those of humans.

Magpie:
Trying not to make this a "me too" but you just described exactly 
what I was going to say was going on with Hagrid. The reason his 
animals love him is because they can--the author has them be people 
when they are around Hagrid. His attitudes actually are what Betsy 
describes in the real world, anthropomorphizing the animals even 
while also admiring things about it that are purely beasty. In the 
real world that does often lead to bad care of animals. Once 
he's "come to his senses" about Norbert, what's supposed to happen 
to Norbert? It's the Trio who arranges him to go to a proper home, 
one like many animal rescues who take care of pets their owners 
weren't prepared to or couldn't care for. There's a huge herd of 
giant spiders in the forest who are dangerous because of another of 
Hagrid's pets. He's not working the right balance between loving 
animals for their own sake, loving pets, and thinking about the 
other people around

But in canon, it's very hard to say whether we should judge it this 
way, because canon is always on Hagrid's side. Buckbeak likes and 
dislikes people on what seem to be human terms (even when he's being 
kept in a bedroom!). Animals love Hagrid because Hagrid loves them--
and on the same terms. In real life that's exactly what doesn't 
happen, and in canon it sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't. To 
the point where talking about it in fandom becomes difficult too, 
because things slip back and forth between being an animal and not 
being an animal. On the flipside, Hagrid's got his presumably human 
but "savage" brother tied up in the forest to train him. Err...is 
that disturbing? Can't say.

Shelley:
In the past, it wasn't considered unusual for wizards to breed and 
keep dragons, yes, dragons, as pets in their back yard. No wonder 
why Hagrid wants a dragon- it's in his blood, his heritage as a 
wizard. Therefore, I don't think it's fair to put Hagrid on
the same level as a Muggle animal abuser today who has no clue of an
animal's natural needs. 

Magpie:
Is this canon? I don't remember anything like this. How could a 
Wizard ever have kept a dragon for a pet when they're wild animals? 
There do seem to be people who breed them etc., but isn't Hagrid's 
attitude towards the dragons "mental" in Ron's words? 

Shelley:
To say that Hagrid is an animal abuser is to run around and
point fingers at every mother today and accuse them of being a child 
abuser. It just doesn't logically follow, and I don't think Rowling 
gives us any canon to say otherwise.

Magpie:
I think Betsy was clear how it did follow and Rowling doesn't quite 
say we can't say otherwise. Betsy's point was that he put them into 
environments where they would be likely to get in trouble and she 
was right. If the Trio hadn't gotten rid of Norbert by giving him to 
a good home, he might very well have had to have been put down once 
he got too big and Hagrid couldn't hide him anymore. I'm not seeing 
any connection betwen a mother and a child. Betsy was making the 
connection to a person with a pet tiger who is a dangerous mixture 
of knowledge about actual tigers and good care, and inappropriate 
situations and care. (I was just reading a story about a girl whose 
house was suddenly broken into by a bear who attacked her mother. It 
turned out it belonged to a man four houses away who kept large 
animals--they didn't even know it. The mother was badly injured but 
lived. The owner had to shoot the bear. I think that's related to 
the type of thing Betsy is saying about having big exotic pets.)  

There do seem to be differences between reality and the WW, but I 
don't think Betsy's comparison was so illogical. Lots of people love 
animals and yet are not responsible owners. (Ironically, doesn't JKR 
say Dudley is abused?) She's not implying that Hagrid intentionally 
mistreats his animals or doesn't know anything about the way they 
live, imo. 

Shelley:
Hagrid is not to be blamed for Malfoy's cocky attitude and stupidity.

Magpie:
Absolutely not. He should only be blamed for his own cocky attitude 
and stupidity, which unfortunately in this case put him on a 
collision course with Malfoy's. And if he can't make allowances for 
cocky attitudes and stupidity in others, he seriously needs to 
reconsider teaching high school, because it must be part of the job 
description.

Jen:
Jen: The comparison would be between the original plans though, the 
Fidelius with Sirius and the UV with Snape. Fudge said Dumbledore 
believed the Fidelius was the 'best chance' to safeguard the 
Potters; the Potters then agreed to the plan and chose Sirius. 
It's not canon that the UV was directly or indirectly agreed to by 
Dumbledore, nor whether Dumbledore believed it was the best possible 
plan to protect Draco. It's possible Snape made this choice entirely 
on his own. I don't see the UV as comparable to Peter taking
over as Secret Keeper because the Potters agreed to the change and 
they were the ones at risk.

Magpie:
I don't think it has to be exactly parallel. I thought the parallel 
was far more general. Draco is the one at risk, and he's not 
agreeing to any of it. Dumbledore is also at risk, and he seems to 
have agreed after the fact to Snape's UV. But it's not about setting 
up exact parallels to the original people, just a more general case, 
for me, of plans to protect people by controlling others going wrong 
because of the underestimated person and turning out as a disaster. 
I'm not making exact parallels with the original plans.


Magpie:
> LV is *not* targetting DD in HBP. He's targetting Draco. He 
doesn't expect Dumbledore > to die. He may indeed one day want Snape 
to kill Dumbledore, as Snape seems to imply >in Spinner's End, but 
his plan for sixth year probably isn't based on information that 
>Dumbledore is weak because it assumes that Dumbledore is strong--
certainly strong >enough to easily take care of a would-be assassin 
like Draco.

Jen: Targeting Draco and punishing Lucius is sweet revenge for LV, 
but it's equivalent to Lucius enjoying a spot of Muggle torture at 
the World Cup, an activity Voldemort derides by saying, 'Your 
exploits at the Quidditch World Cup were fun, I daresay...but
might not your energies have been better directed toward finding and 
aiding your master?'  (GOF, chap. 33, p. 640, Scholastic)

HBP is comparable in some ways to the structure of GOF, with the 
exception that Harry had some additional information about the 
Riddle House scene via his dream and he knows nothing about 
Spinner's End. The deduction throughout GOF was that someone
wanted to hurt or kill Harry, not that Voldemort's plan was to 
regain his body in order to kill Harry himself. I'm expecting 
something similar to be revealed in DH--LV had more on the table
than targeting Draco and Lucius.

Magpie:
But so far, in HBP alone, that's how it's presented is as a spot of 
Muggle Torture (though in this case it's DE torture) for LV. Snape 
and Dumbledore *don't* take Draco's life so lightly, and are trying 
to control things so that LV can't just dispose of Draco easily. 

DH could certainly reveal new information on this score, but as it 
stands now LV gave Draco this assignment expecting him to die to 
punish Lucius. Whatever else LV might have had in mind, bringing 
Draco into it has only ever been explained through his bit of 
torturous revenge, and Dumbledore and Snape seem to be taking that 
very seriously in its own right. That aspect might not change due to 
more information about what Voldemort wanted.

Again, I don't think the plan and the situation has to be an exact 
match for the parallels to be important. Whatever Voldemort was 
trying to do it seems like Snape and Dumbledore came up with a plan 
that took certain risks and relied and other constants, and in the 
end what they thought was safe turned out to be the risk and the 
person putting himself up to risk was not the person who wound up 
dead.

-m