Harry's remark about Kreacher WAS: Re: JKR messed up........ no.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 178560


> Magpie:
 
> If you're suggesting that Harry called on Kreacher due to yet another 
> convoluted way of saying exactly the opposite of what seems to be 
> being said--that Harry is here asking Kreacher for a sandwich because 
> he hopes that if Kreacher objects to making him a sandwich at that 
> moment he will say so and so Harry will not really be acting like a 
> slavemaster, I don't buy it. 

Pippin:
No, I'm suggesting that Harry knows that Kreacher will be as hurt
and miserable as Winky if Harry were to insist on making his own 
sandwiches, and that if making a sandwich at that moment would
create difficulties for Kreacher, Kreacher would let him know and
Harry would care about it. If Kreacher were a wage slave,
how would it be  different? 

As for whether Harry *would* care...

If the dementors blew a different personality into Dudley, then
Snape blew a different personality into Harry. Harry, on the floor 
in Dumbledore's office, had a spiritual death and re-awakening.
He had hit bottom, nothing he could learn in the pensieve was as bad
as the reality he was facing (canon paraphrase.) And what he learned 
in the pensieve was where seeking glory and vengeance, as Snape
did,  would lead him. 

We don't see him soul-searching just as we
don't see Dudley doing it, because while Harry has grown up,
the narrator still has the outlook of a bright, interested preteen.
As Bettelheim says, the child does not grow sad and then cry,
he just cries. He does not get angry and hit, he just hits. Harry,
from a child's perspective, would not feel remorse and change his
ways, he would just change. And that's what we see, IMO.

The abusive personality that Harry was developing was an outgrowth,
as it was for Snape, of his quest for vengeance. Fortunately, unlike
Snape, Harry managed to abandon the quest before he became 
habituated to the pleasures of cruelty. 

As for the implication that by not abolishing slavery, JKR is somehow
saying that it's good...

 I seem to remember from history class that back when slavery 
was a live issue in America, there were abolitionists who were in 
favor of gradually abolishing  slavery, and radical 
abolitionists who wanted slavery ended at once. While the moral
purity of the latter position can't be doubted, there was
very little those people could do for actual slaves, because they
(the radicals) were regarded as cranks and few people would listen
to them. 

Although we remember the Civil War now as having
been fought to free the slaves, that was not the perception of
people at the time, and they probably wouldn't have gone to war
over it. JKR's world reflects that reality, not history as we would
like it to have been, IMO. 

Pippin
who is not an expert on the civil war and will gladly accept correction
( discussions of matters raised in this post not related to HP
should go on OT-Chatter, please)