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

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 178576

Magpie:
> No, he's just Harry's slave and does what he says. Whether or not 
> he's perceptive of Harry needing rest doesn't make him much 
> different from any other House Elf. (Maybe Kreacher needed a rest--
> he was in the battle too.) Any House Elf would get Harry a sandwich 
> no questions asked. Harry calls on this elf because he's his 
> personal slave.
<snip>

Dana:
I never thought of House-Elves in regards to slavery and thus I never 
perceived Harry wondering if Kreacher would bring him a sandwich as 
Harry embracing the role of a proud slave owner. 
I think it was supposed to be an indication that Harry now considered 
Kreacher as part of his family.

Sure that might seem weird considering he would request something of 
Kreacher to do for him that he could easily have done himself but 
asking any other House-Elf WOULD have been offending to Kreacher and 
because it is perceived as an honor for house-elves to serve their 
master, doing it himself would have been equally offending now that 
Kreacher accepted Harry as his master. Which is not the same thing as 
you suggest because if Kreacher wouldn't have wanted to serve Harry 
and thus still not acknowledge him as his master, then Harry could 
order Kreacher to make him a sandwich but be better off not eating 
it, because it would probably contain something that wouldn't be 
agreeable for a human being to eat. Just like Kreacher followed 
orders to spy on Draco but essentially gave Harry nothing useful in 
regards to what Harry wanted to know. 

Of course one could argue about the fact if this was specifically 
well written to support such an interpretation but I think if you 
look at everything that is written about house-elves then it is less 
hard to see it like that(IMO). 
The house-elves at Hogwarts are appalled not only at Winky for being 
disowned by her family but also about Dobby's embracement of freedom. 
It is not the house-elves way of living. 
When the trio visited the kitchen for the first time all house-elves 
practically fell over one another to serve the kids to whatever they 
wanted. 
Dobby is appalled for Kreacher's disrespect for Harry to such a point 
that he physically punishes Kreacher for it. 
Winky is totally lost for losing her family, so much so that she 
doesn't seem able to recover from it. 
As have been pointed out by others, Hermione's attempt to trick the 
elves into freedom is not appreciated by the elves themselves and 
they refuse to give their services to the Gryffindor tower because of 
it. 

Even though the house-elf can never disobey a direct order from his 
master, the amount of devotion a house-elf has to said master, IS 
entirely dependent on the amount of respect a house-elf has for said 
master. And thus if the master treats the house-elf not with the 
respectfulness the house-elf requires to respect his master, he will 
not be totally devoted to said master, which can lead to various 
forms of disobedience and disloyalty ect. The house-elf essentially 
will make up his own mind about how he will interpret and execute his 
masters orders. If he likes you he will do his best to please you if 
not well... 

The issues surrounding SPEW where, in my opinion, never really about 
elf rights or the condemnation of slavery but all about Hermione's 
ill attempts to impose her own ideas on what house-elf rights should 
be with total disregard to the needs of the elves themselves. 
It didn't matter to her that most house-elves would just feel as 
miserable as Winky if they were set free by their master because she 
was of the opinion that they just wouldn't know themselves what would 
be good for them or not. 
That is human nature, we think people can only be happy if they 
think, act and behave just like we do.  Or to think all human beings 
would have the necessity to live under the same conditions or 
circumstances as our own. 
A good example is for instance the idea that wearing a garment that 
conceals the head by woman from Muslim countries is always a sign of 
oppression while that is not by definition the case. Many conceal 
their head out of respect to their faith and do so by their own 
choice.  

And even if it is imposed by strong religious communities, forcing 
these women to take it off, will not provide them more liberty that 
you would envision them to have.  It will not provide them with a 
happier life because now they would be facing public rejection. 
Change should come from within and can't be imposed from an outside 
source that actually doesn't understand the complexities of this way 
of living. 
If there is a need for change than this will eventually come to be if 
enough people see the virtues of the necessity of change if not then 
things will never change. It is that simple. Not just within 
religious communities but essentially for everything that involves 
cultural or political organised forms of living.   

Hermione simply didn't understand anything about the house-elf way of 
living when she formed SPEW and just wanted to impose a change 
because it made her feel better about doing something she had a 
strong opinion about, regardless if the opinion of the ones she was 
trying to help was actually the same as hers. 
So in other words if you want to help others, do it on their terms 
and not on your own because you are actually not helping anybody if 
you don't address the actual need of those you are trying to help.  
If you try to give a stray cat lettuce to eat, because you are a 
vegetarian, then you are actually not saving the cat from starvation. 
The cat needs meat regardless of your personal opinion on the 
consumption of meat.  

JKR's point was never about slavery but about understanding that 
different people or different groups of people have different needs 
and you can't just assume that all they ever need is precisely the 
same as your own needs in life or even that all of them should accept 
change because one person from such a background chooses to life 
differently. Both Winky and Dobby were free and still they did not 
perceive their freedom in the same way. Even though Dobby embraced 
his freedom doesn't make it by definition something that all house-
elves should now require, besides Dobby still served others by his 
own choice because to him it was still his purpose in life. So the 
incorporation of his freedom worked for him but it didn't work for 
Winky. 

To keep dumping the slavery issue on the house-elf element is in my 
opinion missing the point of what it was metaphorically supposed to 
mean. 
Hermione was WRONG with her SPEW thing even if it was with the best 
of intentions. For a house-elf to be happy he must be allowed to do 
what he has been doing for centuries -> serve wizarding kind and the 
only thing that can be changed is how wizards treat house-elves.  To 
change the bad conditions of the house-elf you do not need to change 
the house-elf but the behavior of wizards in regards to house-elf. To 
actually take away their service to wizards would take away their 
life purpose, no matter how much you oppose to the idea of their 
servitude (which was precisely what Hermione oppossed to) 

JMHO

Dana, who absolutely would have liked to have seen Hermione actually 
coming to this conclusion on page instead of her suddenly knowing 
everything there is to know about how the house-elf mind works but 
apparently we have to imagine this ourselves like many of the other 
things not actually written in the books.