CHAPTER DISCUSSION Chamber of Secrets Ch. 4, At Flourish and Blotts

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 188783




> > 7.  Hagrid says at the end of the chapter that the Malfoys are rotten to the core, the whole family, "bad blood, that's what it is".  This is the first time we hear about blood in the WW.  What does Hagrid mean?  Does he think evil character can be inherited?  Is this a common opinion in the WW?  How does it fit in with other uses of blood in the series?
> 
> Potioncat:
> 
> I think he does believe that the Malfoys' evil nature runs in their blood.  How Hagrid would explain himself given his mother and the type of blood giants have, I cannot say.

Pippin:
What's even more incongruous and ironic is that it's Draco's blood prejudice that provokes Hagrid in the first place. I don't think there's actually  anything  bad about Malfoy blood any more than there's something dirty about Muggle blood. In both cases it's easier to invent and blame an imaginary distinction between Us and Them than to think about why They are different -- if they are at all. 

In this case, Hagrid is proving that he's not that different. He's just as prejudiced in his own way as Draco. But he's not as cruel, not to Draco, anyway.   Hagrid doesn't try to run the Malfoys out of Hogwarts or consider it his business to remind them constantly of how inferior they are. I suppose he might, considering his treatment of the Dursleys, if he wasn't afraid of the consequences. 

I think JKR would like us to see that cruelty is something we're all capable of -- or would be if we weren't afraid of the consequences.  I think that's a clue to the way she uses humor in the series, first inviting us to laugh at what happens to the Dursleys, and then making us feel slightly ashamed of ourselves, and of Hagrid, Fred, George and even Dumbledore. 

Draco isn't afraid of the consequences (yet), and consequently, he's always running up against them. 

But the books show that cruelty does have negative consequences, though they may not become apparent for a long time. And because they may not be apparent, it becomes a matter of faith. One must choose to believe that, in the long run, the personal satisfaction of getting nasty wouldn't be worth it. 

Pippin