Redeeming Hagrid was Rewriting OotP

[psychic_serpent]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Haggridd" 
<jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:
> If there is any Oedipal breaking away from a father figure, I 
> think we have seen it in OoP, but not with Sirius or Hagrid.  I 
> refer to that other, ultimate parental figure, Albus Percival 
> Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.  In fact, if there is a theme for the 
> book, other than recounting the run-up to VW II, it is Harry 
> challenging Dumbledore's heretofor sacrosanct infallibility.

Well, I both agree and disagree with you.  I didn't mention 
Dumbledore previously, but you're absolutely right that Harry is 
breaking away from him as well.  He's breaking away from ALL of his 
father-figures, and the fit he threw in Dumbledore's office was 
perhaps the culmination of this in OotP.  He's already seen that 
James had feet of clay, he was constantly at odds with Sirius, who 
is now dead, so there can be no reconciliation, and on top of all 
that, he feels that the previously-infallible Dumbledore has let him 
down.  

It is also ironic that it was by ASSOCIATING with Dumbledore--at 
least in name--that Harry was saved from expulsion.  If the defense 
club had been called Potter's Army rather than Dumbledore's Army, 
Harry would have been up a creek.  (Also worth noting: the name of 
the DA was Ginny's idea.)  It's almost as though Harry is a young 
man who's finding his father's NAME useful for opening doors (or 
keeping him from being expelled, as the case may be), but not much 
else at this stage.  He's at that point when his father figures are 
striking him as being monumentally useless and yet also far too 
distant.
 
> psychic Serpent:
>   I expect mother figures--including Hagrid, Petunia, and Mrs.
> Weasley--and mother-love to be of utmost importance in the 
> concluding books of the series.
 
> Yes on the mother-love, no on your assignment of gender roles.

Well, actually I'm doing quite the opposite of assigning gender-
roles.  The very fact that Hagrid is filling a nurturing, motherly 
role in Harry's life shows that someone doing this doesn't have to 
be a particular gender.  There's quite a lot of gender-bending in 
the Potter books, actually.  I wish I had had the chance to go to 
the session at Nimbus in which Harry and Hermione were discussed as 
transgender heroes (each of them embodying traits that are 
traditionally associated with the opposite gender), but scheduling 
difficulties interfered.  I can't wait until the collected works of 
the presenters are available, though, so I can finally read about 
this theory in full!  

--Barb