Harry and Charlie

[Jerri/Dan Chase]

No: HPFGUIDX 183173

No, I am not talking about the Dragon loving Weasley brother, I am 
talking about Charlie Bucket, hero of Roald Dahl's book Charlie and 
the Chocolate Factory.  I had read with interest the thread a week or 
two back where people were discussing the way that they responded to 
the first few chapters of SS/PS, when the reader knew that Harry was 
"special" and Harry couldn't figure it out yet.  Were the Dursleys and 
zoo and Uncle Vernon trying (successfully, until the midnight between 
July 30 and July 31) to keep the letters from Harry "boring", with the 
reader wanting to get into the parts where something "happens". 
(There were lots of responses on all sides of the question, depending 
on many issues.)

Now, I happened to be listening to an unabridged audiobook 
presentation of C&tCF.  And it occurred to me that Dahl's opening is 
much like JKR's.  The reader knows all along that Charlie is somehow 
going to get a golden ticket and get to go on the tour of the 
Chocolate Factory.  After all, the title of the book is "Charlie and 
the Chocolate Factory"!  But Dahl spends 10 chapters getting Charlie 
in more and more desperate straights, and making him seem more and 
more deserving before, in Chapter 11, on page 50 (U.S. hardback, 1973 
edition) Charlie finally gets a golden ticket.  And this is out of a 
total of 161 pages, and 30 chapters.  Which is a far longer 
"induction" time, until the "adventure" part of the book begins, than 
occurs in SS/PS.

And this made me think of the comments that I have read over the years 
about similarities between JKR and Dahl.  I had long felt that JKR was 
very different.  And I still see lots of differences.  However, I now 
also see similarities.

For one thing, both seem to want a very "needy" hero/heroine.  Charlie 
has loving parents and grandparents, but the family is very poor, on 
the verge of starvation when Willy Wonka enters their lives.  Matilda 
has parents and a brother who could be the Dursleys.  And I could go 
on and on, listing examples of Dahl major characters.

Both tend to enjoy word play.  Examining the sweets in Harry's world 
and Charlie's will show this (and the fact that some of the strange 
sweets are similar doesn't mean that JKR "took" Dahl's candy pencils 
to suck on in class and turned them into sugar quills, but rather that 
both enjoyed the same kinds of word games and giving children the 
chance for imaginary dream fulfillment.)

Both tend to provide the "baddies" with "poetic justice".  Draco hexes 
Harry and becomes the incredible bouncing ferret.  Mike Teavee, who 
cares for nothing but TV shrinks into a mini-boy who can't do much 
else.  Matilda's parents get punished in appropriately funny ways, 
that the Weasley twins would appreciate.  (As they would love Willy 
Wonka!)

And, while both build up interesting worlds, if something is needed by 
the plot they don't worry about plausibility.  In C&tCF, the family is 
so very poor that they are starving to death.  However, though there 
is no money for food, the father gets a newspaper every day!  Now, I 
can think of ways that he could get a paper without buying it, no 
explanation is ever given, although a sentence would be all it would 
take.  And, "Grandpa Joe" who has spent years in bed is able to get up 
to escort Charlie on the Chocolate Factory tour and walk around all of 
a very full and busy day!

Anyway, back to my point.  It occurred to me that one mental 
difficulty that some readers of HP might have is her tendency to 
sometimes have things exaggerated for humor and full of poetic justice 
and items that happen just to make the plot work, while at other times 
careful explanations are given and foreshadowing is provided, and 
rules of law are spelled out.

In a Dahl world one doesn't ask "how can James enter a giant peach and 
talk to Grasshopper, Centipede, and Earthworm", or how can the great 
glass elevator move from side to side as well as up and down, and fly 
through the air, etc.  And I can't see anyone worrying about Mike 
Teavee or Veruca Salt who gets pushed into the garbage chute by 
squirrels, because she is a "bad nut", etc.  And the events at 
Matilda's school make Snape and Fake/Moody seem like nice people, but 
the reader isn't apt to wonder why Child Welfare hasn't been called 
in.  The books are a type of fantasy that the reader knows doesn't 
follow real world rules.

However, in Harry's world, or actually JKR's world, in spite of the 
magic sometimes things seem so "real" and the rules of that world seem 
to be spelled out.  And when the "poetic justice" causes the DA 
members to hex Crabbe, Goyle and Draco on the train and turn them into 
slug like objects, and step on them we can feel outraged, although we 
don't when the squirrels are dumping Veruca into the chute.

Anyway, it seems to me that JKR's magical world is sort of mid-way 
between some magical worlds, like Tolkien's or perhaps that created by 
Mercedes Lackey, where the "rules" seem consistent (at least to me), 
and the Dahl type magical worlds where the reader knows from the start 
that rules are made to be broken.

Just some poorly formulated ideas that have been floating in my head.

Jerri