A message?

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 178906

> Prep0strus:
> 
> I can't even figure out what the message IS - because both 
> 'slavery is wrong' and 'sometimes we should just accept 
> people how they are, even if it seems weird to us' both seem 
> flawed and not fully supported by the text.
>  
> Since I can't even figure out what her message was supposed to be,
> I have to assume she failed at whatever message she was trying to 
> send. This just seems like a really big dropped ball. And I'm left 
> not particularly caring one way or the other.  I don't want anybody
> torturing a house elf or anything, but other than that... be free, 
> be slaves, make sandwiches... I just don't care.  Disappointed in 
> this one, JKR.


Mike:

As Geoff said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. What if JKR 
wasn't trying to send any message? Or more precisely, what if she 
just wanted her version of brownies or hobs to use in her story and 
thought that making them enchanted into this self-abusive slave fit  
for her purposes?

The house elves were cute little props needed to add a dimension to 
the Potter vs Malfoy conflict, to give Hermione something to become 
an activist over, to create a comflict at 12 GP with the twist of 
betrayal for Sirius, and to link Regulus' story to the present. In 
between they revealed secrets, clued us into other characters, and 
made nice little sources of minutia through which JKR fed information 
to the reader and Harry. They were rather effective tools, weren't 
they?

I put little stock in JKR's interviews, less (if that's possible) in 
her earlier interviews. She was more concerned in not revealing the 
coming story while the interviewers seem bent on trying to get her 
to do so. In the case of house elves, ss Carol has pointed out, it 
was the interviewer that drew the parallel of house elves to human 
slavery. JKR just went along with it obviously, to me, to lend 
credence to the Hermione-the-activist story line. 

But that's not what she wrote. Canon house elves as equivalent to 
human slaves only matched up with the word 'slave'. After that 
canon house elf was a complete different animal. A different species 
with a desire for, not a revulsion of, bound servitude. You don't 
have to punish them for mis-behaviour, they do it to themselves. 
Quite simply, they aren't human, they don't share human values, they 
don't have human desires, they have their own moral compass that 
doesn't point to the human north.

Whether people find the inclusion of a species that enjoys being 
slaves palatable is a different proposition than whether there was
an intended message in their inclusion into the story. I understand 
the repugnancy if one thinks they were suppose to represent human 
bondage. In my read, that's not the way I take the house elves. I 
took them as props, slightly modified from a similiar, common, 
historical, fantasy character with no more equivalence to humans 
than trolls or giants. Therefore, the message to me? Gee, aren't they 
cute, now go get me a sandwich. ;)

Mike