[HPforGrownups] Hagrid the animal abuser/The uses of beasts in fables

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 166191

Phoenixgod:
> I could never quite understand the hate that so many characters have
> for Hagrid. He pretty much does everything that I was taught good
> teachers do in my credential classes.  Hands on work, interesting
> examples, the chance to do something real instead of theoretical, I
> think his class sounds like loads of fun.

Magpie:
I think canon addresses this. The kids obviously don't have a problem with 
dealing with dangerous things. They do in many classes. The problem in 
Hagrid's class is that they don't trust Hagrid because he doesn't have the 
same views on the danger--and, as Luna says, they just think he's a joke as 
a teacher. That's what Betsy, I thought, was pointing out here. Most 
teachers deal with dangerous things. The way Hagrid jumps into the class is 
far less controlled.

Phoenixgod:
And every student in that class was specifically given
> instructions on what to do and what not to do.  Draco disobeyed
> willfully because he was disrespectful to Hagrid and was injured
> because of it. Certainly a more conscious decision than Neville
> messing up in potions and creating something potentially lethal.
> Yet you don't blame Snape for bring such dangerous ingredients to
> class.

Magpie:
Actually Hagrid's instructions weren't very specific on the subject of 
insults. He just started, iirc, by saying "don't insult 'em or it's the last 
thing you'll do" when Draco possibly wasn't listening. Not listening was 
certainly Draco's own decision, but it's also not unusual. A teacher more in 
control, like Sprout, is more specific and repeats it to make sure all the 
kids understand the exact danger. So Draco is at fault, but all the 
kids--including the Trio--see the danger in the class as excessive and 
connected to Hagrid himself as well. They don't feel that way about 
Professor Grubbly-Plank. Draco's provoking the hippogriff isn't necessarily 
any more conscious than Neville blowing up his cauldrons. He, too, is given 
instructions--his on the board, I think--and doesn't follow them. That 
happens in classes. (And if any kid is going to be insulting it's obviously 
Draco--if hippogriffs attacked upon being corrected I would have been 
hovering over Hermione knowing her nature.) The students seem to unanimously 
not feel about Snape the way they do about Hagrid in this particular regard, 
even if they like Neville and despise Draco. (Ron, of course, has already 
had a run in with Hagrid of this sort and sometimes seems to have the least 
patience about it.)

Phoenixgod:
> Every class in Hogwarts is hands on, dangerous, and relies on
> Students doing what their teacher tells them. Hagrid told them what
> to do, Harry did it and was fine, Draco didn't and was hurt.
>
> Ironically, the hippogriff, IIRC, was one of the most successful of
> Hagrids classes. I recall the students being pretty thrilled about
> the beast after Harry was able to ride one.  I could be wrong of
> course, (shrug) its been a long time since I read PoA.

Magpie:
It was a success until it wasn't. But it also went right to the heart of 
their issues with Hagrid. Having Harry riding the thing etc. made 
hippogriffs look fun. The part Harry demonstrated everyone followed (even if 
Neville was running back and forth in a panic, left on his own, which in the 
real world would probably have made him the most likely to get hurt). Even 
Hagrid went pale when the attack happened. But still, that was one class 
years ago. Every student in the books isn't basing their negative ideas on 
Hagrid on that one incident. They feel nervous because they're not really 
sure in the class what the realistic level of danger is. Hagrid's still 
annoyed at questions about danger, isn't really realistic about the way he 
puts it across and loves it himself.

Phoenixgod:
> On a side note, as much as I love the character of Luna I was never
> more disappointed than when she spoke badly about Hagrid. I would
> have guessed if anyone outside the Trio would have liked the big guy
> it would have been her.  It almost seemed OOC for she of the
> perpetually open mind to dislike Hagrid.

Magpie:
Why would her thinking Hagrid was a bad teacher mean she couldn't like him 
as a person or that she had a closed mind? The Trio like Hagrid and consider 
him a very flawed teacher even when they wish they felt otherwise. Luna's 
also described as stating "uncomfortable truths."

Geoff:
This is precisely the point I am making.

You may have missed my first reference but in about the fourth or fifth line 
of my post, I wrote: "Firstly, I look on Hagrid as having enthusiasm, 
expertise but sadly lacking in experience."

And then, at the beginning of the paragraph just after the extract you 
quoted, I again wrote: "However, where he comes unstuck is in the area of 
experience."

Magpie:
Yes, I did know that was your point. I was trying to acknowledge it while 
still disagreeing with the idea that this is important for Hagrid's whole 
career as a teacher because Hagrid's no longer inexperienced and has shown 
that most of these flaws aren't about lack of experience but things more 
central to his character. Just as one might have said, if one was witnessing 
Snape's first class, that his lack of experience made him not understand 
that being sarcastic was not necessary to get control of the class. Fourteen 
years later that doesn't seem to just be about the lack of experience. 
Hagrid and Snape both have patterns for how they keep control of the class 
that reflect the way they deal with people in general.

Geoff:
Here, I would disagreee with you. I believe that Draco was ignoring his 
instructions.

'Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had taken over Buckbeak. He had bowed to Malfoy 
who was now patting his beak, looking disdainful.

"This is very easy," Malfoy drawled, loud enough for Harry to hear him. "I 
knew it must have been if Potter could do it.... I bet you're not dangerous
at all, are you?" he said to the Hippogriff. "Are you, you ugly great 
brute?"'(POA "Talons and Tea Leaves" p.90 UK edition)

To me, that suggests that Draco was deliberately trying to prove that 
Hagrid's warning was exaggerated.

Magpie:
I based my idea on being told, iirc, that Malfoy was talking to someone else 
when Hagrid said the thing about insulting. Many people take it as a fact 
that Malfoy did not hear him because of that. I can take it as ambiguous, 
though, that maybe it was as you describe here. As is mentioned above 
regarding Neville, it's not unusual for kids in a class to not follow 
directions. But I don't think the seemingly very widespread negative 
opinions we hear about regarding Hagrid's class and Hagrid as a teacher come 
down to all kids thinking they're immortal and blaming Hagrid. On the 
contrary, they're more aware of their mortality than he is.

Malfoy learns that he must listen to everything Hagrid says and that it 
would probably be a good idea to consider the danger more extreme than 
Hagrid makes it sound if he didn't get the danger here (and at the risk of 
being accused of defending Draco too much, I do think that Hagrid's delivery 
of that instruction was intentionally--on the part of the author--far too 
casual for a teacher in this situation). Draco does show signs of doing that 
rather comically when he's frantically asking people if he missed anything. 
Whatever malicious ways he tried to get revenge on Hagrid, and however much 
he wants to keep bringing it up against him, the action and consequence 
lesson was clear--he got cocky, missed something, got hurt. He won't admit 
it, but he did learn one good lesson from it because he knows he's got to 
take care of himself in class that way. That seems to be the attitude of all 
the kids in the class. Malfoy, too, was inexperienced the first day.

Hagrid needed to learn to make the danger a priority, and he doesn't really 
do that because, as others have pointed out, he just doesn't understand the 
pov of people who have this problem. He's not very able to adjust, so the 
kids adjust to him.

houyhnhnm:
But in such stories, the animals behave in ways that
real animals clearly do not and that helps define the
difference between fantasy and reality.  That seems
like a different thing to me from showing animals
behaving outwardly as ordinary animals, but
attributing human motivations to them.

Magpie:
I was reading something recently that pointed out that humans are almost 
incapable of really understanding animal behavior in that way. Not that 
there aren't people who do study and learn animals on their own terms, but 
it's very hard for a human to conceive of a mind without language and many 
of the other things we take for granted. It's hard, even in an experiment, 
to know exactly why an animal is doing a thing on its own terms. In HP 
that's clearly not the case, imo. The animals do seem to think like people 
in a way flattering to people.

I forget who, for instance, earlier mentioned Hagrid as understanding 
imprinting as evidenced by how he is with Norbert, but iirc Hagrid refers to 
Norbert as "knowing his mummy," which is plainly anthropomorphizing the 
process. When he does things so that the animal will have the "right life" 
that he wants as an animal, it's usually also based on things that reflect 
human understanding--Aragog wants "a wife" and must be given a funeral, and 
he respects Hagrid as a sort of father figure. Real spiders...would not do 
that. Grawp, too, needs to be "civilized" in a strange way, because 
according to Hagrid's Tale he already comes from a civilization. Only where 
the other giants come across like some sort of primitive warrior culture who 
are nonetheless obviously people, Grawp is almost more like an 
anthropomorphized ape.

-m (who was recently reading a really cool article about spiders that 
compared them to a world of tiny supervillains all with their own amazing 
powers!)