CHAPTER DISCUSSION: PS/SS 2, The Vanishing Glass

[zfshiruba]

No: HPFGUIDX 187764

Potioncat:
> 1.	"Don't ask questions--that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys." It seems Harry and DD learned similar rules. Harry doesn't ask questions; Dumbledore doesn't tell more than he has to. Do you think JKR is merely withholding information from the reader as a plot device, or is communication breakdown also a true theme within the HP series?

I think that communication breakdown is a major theme of the series in and of itself, but I also think that it's covered in a larger theme of mistrust. I think the mistrust theme is shown through these communication breakdowns, through Harry's ingrained (via Dursleys) inability to go to adults with his problems, to his fights with Ron and Hermione, etc. I also think that the mistrust and communication breakdown is symptomatic of Harry's Black and White/Us and Them/Good and Evil mentality.

I also really like the way you phrased this question. "Harry and DD learned," because I think that Dumbledore's excessive tendency toward keeping his own counsel is, like Harry's own secretiveness, a behavior learned in childhood. His long time exposure to Ariana may have made him extremely wary of expressing strong emotions, and repressing those would have created a "bottle it up" personality, not just with his emotions, but also his thoughts, which manifests as secretiveness.

> 2.	The only thing Harry likes about his appearance is the thin scar shaped like a bolt of lightning on his forehead. Why do you think he likes it? How do you feel about that piece of information? Do you think the soul bit communicated with Baby Harry at one time, or does the soul bit have its own emotions that Harry sometimes feels?

The Dursleys tried very hard to crush independent thought in Harry and created a very negative sort of individuality for him. Harry is very different from the other kids at school in many ways, but the scar is the only different thing about him (that he knows of) that wasn't a result of the Dursleys' dislike. I imagine that's why he likes the scar as a child; he's going to be different anyways, it might as well be for something he likes. Of course, I also think he likes the scar as a child because of the delicious irony, considering how much he grows to hate it.
 
> 4.	Why does Petunia treat Harry so badly--jealousy or resentment or something else? Does Harry's accidental magic remind Petunia of her childhood with Lily and Sev? Now that you know about the childhood of this trio, how do you feel about the way the Dursleys and Snape treat Harry?

I think that besides the jealousy, Petunia dislikes Harry from the start because of her grief and because I think Dumbledore threatened her in that letter. Petunia strikes me as exactly the kind of person who would respond to threats with petty, semi passive-aggressive revenge.

Alla:
Hm, how do I feel about the ways Dursleys and Snape treat Harry? Did you even
have to ask? I think that they are mean and rotten "people" for treating
innocent like this. Do I think that their childhood somehow justifies or excuses
what they did to Harry? No, of course I do not. Does it make it more
understandable? No, I do not think so.

Zfshiruba: Understandable as in Excusable or Forgivable? Definitely not. Understandable as in explains some of the psychological motivations that allow the characters to justify themselves and reminds readers that no one is born evil and that everyone thinks of themselves as the protagonist of their own stories. Yeah, I do think that.

> 
> 8.	The chapter ends with this paragraph, "At school Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang." What do these sentences tell us about gangs and odd kids? How does being "odd Harry Potter" affect the way Harry will treat the odd people he'll meet in the coming years? What do you think it was like to go from being odd Harry Potter to the Boy Who Lived?

To an extent it seems like he's still odd Harry Potter, it's just a different kind of odd. Harry, I'm sure would much rather be neither.