OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

cindysphynx wrote:

Hagrid gave Dudley (an innocent child) a pig's tail because he was angry at Vernon.

Jo replied:

Dudley an innocent child? He's a horrid, mean, bullying brat.

Yes, but Hagrid had no real way of knowing that at the time, now, did he? He may have inferred it from the overall unpleasantness of the family, but that's every bit as bad as people judging Hagrid himself on the basis of his giant parentage.

I just went and re-read the scene in question, and it seemed quite clear to me. Hagrid was angry with Vernon, and he chose to take it out on the man's eleven-year-old son.

Not nice. Not nice at all. I do think that he acted impulsively, without any particular degree of malice aforethought, but it was still a rotten thing to do, and it doesn't win him any sympathy points from me. Furthermore, I think that it revealed a rather disturbing lack of respect and consideration for Muggles as a general class.

Which brings me to my own problem with Hagrid. My problem with Hagrid isn't that he's a rotten teacher (although I think that he is), nor that he recklessly endangers his students' safety (although he does), nor that he tipples (which he does, but I don't have a problem with that), nor even that he lacks discretion (hey, nobody's perfect).

No, my problem with Hagrid is that his thoughtlessness all too often leads him perilously close to bigotry.

I don't think that he's a bigot in any deep, philosophical sense, no. Far to the contrary, he is one of the most consistent and vocal antagonists to the entire "pure-blood" aesthetic throughout the books.

But.

He's also a bigot himself, and a very particular type of bigot: the thoughtless man whose fondness for sweeping generalizations and snap judgments leads him to make statements that are not only deeply prejudiced, but also frequently Just Plain Not True.

"Not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin," for example. Or that bit about how you can't trust foreigners. Or his comment about the Malfoys having "bad blood"—which really is rich, you know, given the big-boned skeletons hiding in Hagrid's own family closet. Or, for that matter, his assurance to Harry that he'll surely grow up to be a great wizard, because "with a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be?"

Hagrid is not a believer in the primacy of blood. He really, really isn't. But when he isn't thinking too hard, he just kind of...slips back into that mode of thinking, and starts going on about "bad blood" and Harry's rights of magical inheritance and so forth. Just as he is not a muggle-hater, and yet, and yet, and yet...

"I'd like to see a great Muggle like you stop him."

"...it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."

"Look at what she had for a sister!"

And so forth.

I like to think that we're supposed to notice this unsavory tendency of Hagrid's, that this is Rowling's way of showing the subversive power of institutionalized bigotry. Hagrid's a product of his culture, and his culture is not an egalitarian one. He does believe in egalitarianism, very strongly. But when he isn't watching himself, the ugly underside of his own culture slips through the cracks, and he betrays himself.

—Elkins, who is kind of fond of Hagrid, but sometimes wants to smack him upside the head