CHAPDISC: DH20, Xenophilius Lovegood

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182895

Carol earlier: 
> 
> > What popped into my mind was the black chimney from the disused
mill that stands like an ominous warning finger over the town that
Snape lives in 
> 
> houyhnhnm:
> 
> Maybe because you have a literary background?  I suppose it did
strike an ominous note with me, too, but I didn't connect it to the
factory smokestack.

Carol responds:
I'm sure that you're right about my literary background causing me to
notice imagery and to see similarities between houses and chimneys
that other readers might not notice, but houses, unlike factory
chimneys, don't normally "[rise] vertically against the sky" or appear
as "a great black cylinder with a ghostly moon hanging behind it in
the afternoon sky" (DH Am. ed. 397). That ghostly moon in the middle
of the day is spooky, too. Imagine seeing it at night, as Bellatrix
and Narcissa saw the factory chimney, which "rear[s] up, shadowy and
ominous" against the midnight sky and, a few pages later, "seem[s] to
hover like a giant admonitory finger" (HBP Am. ed. 19).

The warning finger (along with the fog!) reminds me of "Fog on tthe
Barrow Downs," the Barrow Wight chapter in FOTR: "In the midst of it
there stood a single stone standing tall under the sun above . . . .
It was shapeless and yet significant, like a landmark or a guarding
finger, or more like a warning." At any rate, when I see tall, dark
objects in fiction, whether they're towers or chimneys or even the
Lovegoods' house, especially coupled with darkness or ghostly moons or
any other ominous imagery, I think of that warning finger in LOTR and
sense danger coming. The "admonitory finger" image is explicit in
"Spinner's End" (whether it's a deliberate allusion to LOTR or
something out of the collective unconscious, I don't know). The image
of the "rooklike" house gave me that same feeling of foreboding. It
clearly didn't affect the characters in the same way, but the Hobbits
didn't sense danger, either. They had lunch under the standing stone
and fell asleep! (Their ponies, however, had more sense and ran away.)

BTW, did anyone notice that Xeno Lovegood has one eye that turns in
toward his nose, which reminded me of the Gaunt children, Morfin and
Merope, with their eyes looking outward? Are Xeno's eyes, one normal
and one presumably half-blind, any indication of his character--his
oddness or his inability to see the world as normal wizards do? 
(Trelawney's far-sightedness is both comic and symbolic. She can't see
the mundane world clearly, but sometimes she really does see with "the
Inner Eye," even if she doesn't interpret what she sees correctly.
Would Xeno in normal circumstances be a comic character like
Trelawney, whereas in these few chapters, he's both pitiable and
treacherous?) I don't like the idea of physical defects, such as eyes
that turn inward or outward, being either comic traits or indications
of a weak or bad character. In any case, it seems to me that the
wizards could use a good Muggle ophthalmologist! 

Carol, whose sense of impending danger was somewhat muted by the fact
that it was the *Lovegoods'* house but alerted again by Xeno's odd
behavior