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

[lizzyben04]

No: HPFGUIDX 178637

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> Dana wrote:
> <snip>
> > 
> > Brownies are literally elves of the house and they serve the 
> inhabitants of that house as long as they find these inhabitants 
> agreeable enough to serve, if not well the inhabitants will do better
> to move. <snip>
> 
> > What I was trying to say with pointing out the mythological 
> background the house-elves are based on is that I do not think that 
> JKR probably ever thought about the comparison people would make to 
> slavery because house-elf servitude is part of almost all elf-like 
> creatures in mythology and this part is not what she made up herself,
> she just personified the concept. <snip>


lizzyben:

Well, except JKR herself calls them slaves & makes a comparison to
slavery in real life. She also agrees when someone says that it's a
metaphor for racism & slavery. And she says that slavery is an issue
that we all feel strong about - presumably, that we all feel strongly
that it is a bad thing. I would have been fine w/it if she'd said, no,
no, they're just brownies, or house spirits. Or if a HP character had
explained things that way. Instead they just say the stuff most
slave-owners said in real life - they like being enslaved, they'd be
miserable if they were free, etc. etc. 

<snip>
> Carol, who sees nothing in canon to support the idea that House-Elves
> want to be free and everything to indicate their pleasure in serving a
> kind master (as even the "free" Dobby does--he simply chooses whom he
> wants to serve)
>

lizzyben: 

And if house elves are truly meant to represent slavery, that's a
pretty weird message. It agrees with the propaganda and myth of
superiority that slaveowners held 200 years ago. And so it fits
much better with the... I'll call it "Godfather" interpretation. Harry
has been indoctrinated into the mores & values of his slave-holding
society, no longer sees the immorality inherent in it, and has assumed
his natural entitlement to a position at the top of this hierarchy. He
used to see it as a "loathsome pecking order", when he noticed how
fake & fawning the golden statues were, but now he just sees that
order as natural and right. That's the real arc here, as far as I can
tell.