Chapter Discussion: Twenty, Goblet of Fire: The First Task

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 192342


> Question:
> 1. Every Champion was warned about the Dragons by their Elders, and Harry took
> care of Cedric. Did you think that cheating make the task less interesting/exciting or not? Why?

Pippin:
I think it makes the tasks more interesting from the reader's point of view. It gives a moral dimension to the contest and to the characters. 

> 
> 2. When I was rereading this chapter I was reminded about how Fleur looked so
> much less confident and prepared than other Champions. Granted I have not reread
> the other Tasks for a while, but I seem to remember that she was always the
> least competent and prepared competitor. Do you think it was because she was a
> young woman or not?

Pippin:
May I suggest that  the collective opinion   that she was the least competent and prepared is influenced by her being a young woman?

 JKR has fun with the unconscious assumption that  outstanding athletes are male. You have to read the World Cup match closely and match up the pronouns to realize that at least two of the champion Irish chasers are female. And yet some readers  complained fiercely online that there were no women players at the World Cup match. 

That's  how insidious unconscious bias is -- you'd have had to care that the genders are fairly represented to pay attention in the first place, but even so, some people found the imagination refused to cooperate and pictured the players as male. 

 I disagree that Fleur was consistently the least competent or prepared. While JKR doesn't tell us either Fleur or Cedric's score for the task, Fleur got her egg in five minutes and without any injuries that we know of (her skirt caught fire, but she put it out.) Cedric took ten minutes and was severely burned. 

Fleur bested male competitors from her own school to be champion in the first place. 

She undoubtedly placed last in the second task, but we don't know why she had so much trouble with the Grindylows -- it could have been some fault of hers, or it could have been external circumstances. Once rescued, she had to be held back by force from returning to the water to rescue her sister. The narrator reports she was fighting "tooth and nail" so she must have lost her wand -- if the grindylows managed to grab it away from her, she would have been helpless against so many -- and they were already riled up by Harry's passage. 


In the third task she was ambushed by Fake!Moody first thing -- so he must have thought she had a chance of making it to the Cup before any of the others, or he wouldn't have bothered. You could make a case that of the three "official" contestants,  Cedric was actually the weakest contender -- he was the one that Fake!Moody left till last, and, alas, the  one that didn't survive. 


> 
> 3. What did you think about Harry's reaction to Ron's apology?

I thought it was noble of him to decide he didn't need to hear it -- but also funny, considering that it's what he was holding out for in the first place.

> 
> 4. I thought this chapter had some of the funniest lines in the book. Which were
> your favorites?
>

Pippin:
I liked Harry announcing in Divination Class that he didn't mind being subject to "sudden, violent deaths" , "just as long as it's not drawn-out. I don't want to suffer."  I also like "the last of the dragon-free hours" 

Thanks, Alla, for doing the questons.

Pippin