CHAPTER DISCUSSION: PS/SS 3, The Letters from No One

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187810


> 
> Questions for Discussion:
> 
> 1. This chapter seems to have a lot of over the top action in it. The Smeltings uniform (maroon tailcoat, orange knickerbockers, a straw boater, and a knobbly stick?!), the Stonewall uniform Petunia attempts to imitate (compared to elephant skins), and the extremes to which Vernon goes to avoid the letters. What was your reaction to these? Are there others in the chapter I missed? How do you feel they contributed to/detracted from the book, and how do you see them fitting into the series now?

Pippin:
The "knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other when the teachers weren't looking " as "good training for later life" now remind me of Hogwarts students and their wands.  But Vernon has a nerve complaining about the way wizards dress. 

JKR is showing us that the Muggle world can be as bizarre as the WW, but she's also playing with the reader's tendency to stereotype. The impression in PS/SS is that Smeltings trains its students to be bullies and Hogwarts does not. Like many other stereotypes in the series, it isn't so much overturned later on as shown to be simplistic.
 
> 2. Vernon is described as grayish white after he reads the first line of Harry's letter. Petunia is described as looking like she might faint, clutching her throat, and making a choking noise. What do you make of these reactions? What do you think is behind them?

Pippin:

Vernon seems frightened of anything he can't control. I think Petunia is a little smarter -- she can see  the implications of Harry gaining control of his powers and they're not good.

> 
> 3. "I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?" Harry and Dudley overhear Vernon saying these words to Petunia in their discussion of the letter. What does this tell us about Vernon and Petunia?

Pippin:
It tells us Vernon wouldn't have had Harry in the house unless he thought the magic could be stamped out of him, and Petunia let him think it was possible. But she'll admit in the next chapter that she knew Harry was just as "abnormal" as Lily was. 

Petunia knew that Harry's eleventh birthday was coming, and yet she wasn't alarmed before the letters started to arrive. For ten years the WW had left her in peace, aside from occasional encounters with oddly dressed people far from Privet Drive.  Harry hadn't discovered that he was magical, and she may have hoped that she'd fooled the wizarding world as well.

Clearly she didn't think that Harry's future was important to wizards, and clearly she was wrong.

JKR's chronologies are the despair of the well-organized mind. But it seems that within hours of leaving Harry at Privet Drive, Dumbledore was enlisting Snape to protect him against Voldemort's return. 

As part of that protection, Snape will pretend to his fellow Death Eaters that he thinks Voldemort is gone for good. The elaborate show of abandoning  Harry in a bundle of blankets on the Dursleys' doorstep must have been part of a similar charade. We see now how successful it was.

No one pays attention to what Hagrid thinks, but the Death Eaters would not have left their master alone and friendless for thirteen years if it looked like *Dumbledore* thought he'd be back.  And as long as it looks like Dumbledore thinks Harry's destiny was fulfilled at Godric's Hollow, Voldemort may  think he can afford to eliminate Harry at his leisure and not as his first priority. 

It is therefore  in both Dumbledore's and Harry's interest that Dumbledore  acts as if he meant to leave Harry to his fate. 

I think Petunia's smart enough to realize that not providing protection to Harry would not make her safer if Voldemort came back. Even  the potential to protect Harry is a  danger. Voldemort would want to  see that this power, which he knows about, can not be used. 


> 
> 4. Why do you think Vernon and Petunia decide to move Harry into a bedroom?

Pippin:
Their relationship to Harry is a bit like the relationship of Sirius to Kreacher, IMO. The Dursleys aren't hateful to children generally, or Dudley's friends wouldn't be coming over every day. But they don't think of Harry as being like other children. I think Petunia is determined to see that Dudley never feels slighted the way she did, and this feeling swallows up any pity or concern she might have felt for Harry's plight.

The Dursleys don't care about Harry's needs or feelings, but they fear  unwelcome attention from others. 

However, as elsewhere in the series, fear proves to be a poor way of controlling people, and usually produces a backlash of some kind. The bedroom is better than the cupboard, but the hut on the rock is undoubtedly worse.


> 5. Why does Petunia hand Vernon a fruitcake when he is nailing the mail slot shut instead of a hammer?

Pippin:
I also thought she was handing him a snack, and he was distracted enough to mistake it for a hammer. But it's possible that she was distracted too.

> 
> 6. Any opinions as to why green ink is used in these letters (which we now know are his Hogwarts letters, of course)? Or purple wax?

Pippin:
It's just the general flamboyance of the wizarding world, IMO, which retained its preference for bright colors while the industrial Muggle world began favoring blacks and greys to hide the soot. Of course by the time of our story, the Muggles are using eckletricity while the wizarding world is full of  lamps, candles, fireplaces and steam trains. But customs once entrenched are hard to shift.

> 
> 7. The chapter  is called "Letters from No One". Who do you think it responsible for sending these letters to Harry? Why the misleading chapter title?
> 

Pippin:
Vernon says they're from no one, that they are addressed to Harry by mistake. Even Harry can see that this is an obvious lie. It won't be the only time in canon that a chapter title is misleading. 

Pippin