"Pathetic" Muggle-borns

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 178545

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "susanmcgee48176" <Schlobin at ...> 
wrote:
>
> Wow, this sure sounds like blame the victim stuff to me (why didn't 
> he fight back? whey didn't they do this? why didn't they do that?)
> 
> You know, in the RW, it's a lot harder than some of you seem to 
> imagine...in my opinion.....It's not so easy to figure out what to do 
> when you're homeless, on the run, without a wand suddenly...

Magpie:
I can see how it does sound like that, what with calling 
Muggleborns "pathetic" but in reading the thread I think it's more just 
about sloppy world-building, which I totally agree with. I tihnk JKR 
felt like she had to write a sprawling story where the WW went under 
like WWII, but she's really not interested or able to write a story on 
that level. She's more about individual people. So you wind up, imo, 
with all these references to wider changes that are recognizable from 
history without convincingly showing how it happened. She doesn't write 
a real resistance movement, she writes some people trying to keep up 
morale until Harry saves them all. Writing a real resistance movement 
or a real study of how the world could be taken over and become this 
way just isn't the story she's writing.

When I was reading I don't remember specifically being brought up short 
by the Muggle-borns, but that was because I just thought they were 
there to sort of stand in for "the world is in misery! save us Harry!". 
But overall I did think she's created an "Idiot World" as it's called 
in bad movies. "When did the Order have time to set up an underground 
movement when they were busy moving the Dursleys and Harry to different 
houses that day?" just kind of reinforces that. There are individuals 
who stand up to people when the plot demands it but on the world-scale 
it was, imo, something where you just had to accept it even if it 
didn't ring true for you at all. Even the guys who have been preparing 
for this and aren't hiding their heads in the sand are strangely 
useless. Not stooping to the level of your enemy does not mean you make 
yourself completely ineffective, even if that means killing or forcing 
people to do things. 

-m