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Cindy wrote:
Am I forgiving Moody just because I like him? Uh, this is the part where I'm supposed to come up with all kinds of impressive reasons why Moody can be forgiven a violent response, but Hagrid cannot.
No, no, Cindy! This is the part where you're supposed to smile sheepishly and say: "Well...yeah, okay. I guess I am just forgiving Moody because I like him."
But since you refused to cooperate with my cunning plan... ::sigh::
I also think that Moody had authority over Draco that Hagrid does not have over Karkaroff. A teacher who disciplines a student and acts to protect another student from the offending student is entitled to some leeway.
I tend to agree with Marina on this one: the degree of authority that Crouch/Moody already held over Draco in that scene was a large part of what made it seem so horrific to me.
But I can see your point, and I recognize that my own emotional response to the scene was probably informed in large part by both my own personal neuroses (I confess to a somewhat instinctive mistrust of authority in general) and by my own cultural assumptions. My own parents never used corporal punishment, and I've never attended a school that even permitted the use of corporal punishment, so I'm culturally conditioned to read an adult's use of physical means to reprimand a child as "assault," rather than as "discipline." It's quite likely that had I grown up someplace where corporal punishment was more commonly used (is it still used in British schools?), then I wouldn't have reacted to the scene in the same way at all.
Also, by the time Karkaroff is slammed into the tree and Draco is bounced, we have very different amounts of information about these two antagonists. First, Karkaroff at this point isn't really an antagonist. Karkaroff's only crime up to that point was showing up wearing fur. :-)
Heh. Well, fur-wearing aside, there's also Sirius' claim that he (a) used to be a Death Eater, and (b) ratted out a whole bunch of his old DE buddies to the ministry. IIRC, Sirius tells Harry about all of that in the head-in-the-fireplace scene, which comes long before Hagrid smashes the poor guy up against the tree. So while Karkaroff may not be an antagonist per se, he's certainly someone the reader has cause to mistrust and suspect at the time of the attack.
Also, he's been oleaginous and smarmy and unpleasant since the moment he first arrived. Not, of course, that any of that justifies assault.
And also you're quite right: Draco does have three whole books of unpleasantness stacked against him, while Karkaroff only has a few hundred pages. And firing off a curse at someone's back is a rather more serious offense than spitting at someone's feet. So okay.
To be fair, though, I suppose Moody could have just transfigured Draco without bouncing him in the air. Yeah, OK, that part wasn't justified. But it was very, very funny.
See, I did recognize that it was supposed to be funny. But I just found it horrifying, myself. Something about the way the ferret was described as lashing and squealing, perhaps. Or perhaps I just found myself imagining all-too-vividly what it might feel like to get bounced around like that.
I've taken a lot of flack for refering to the ferret-bouncing as "torture"—and I concede that my use of the word was probably unwarranted—but that really was how it came across to me when I first read that scene: as not only violent, but as extremely brutal and cruel. I winced when I read that scene; I was profoundly relieved when McGonagall came by to intervene; and I felt genuinely uncomfortable whenever one of our protagonists gloated over Draco about it.
Maybe I'm just overly sensitive. Or maybe I just readily identify with muscalids. I dunno.
While we are on the subject of violent responses, there is another scene that really bothered me. I didn't like it all in CoS when Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy fought each other with fists.
See, here's another place where mileages vary. I found that scene absolutely hilarious. I don't know, something about the image of mild-mannered government official Arthur Weasley and haughty blue-blooded aristocrat Lucius Malfoy actually engaging in fisticuffs. And in a public place, no less! It was just so utterly incongruous, and so profoundly undignified, that it struck me as funny.
I feel certain that both men were absolutely mortified over it later.
Especially Lucius Malfoy.
Which is, of course, largely why I found it so funny. I mean, you're Lucius Malfoy, right? And this...this clerk suddenly attacks you in a bookstore. Not even honorably, like a proper wizard, with a wand. No. No, he attacks you with his fists.
What in God's name are you supposed to do about this? In a Right and Proper Universe, of course, your servants would just take the miserable little serf aside and give him a good thrashing, but alas, things don't work that way anymore, and besides, your servants aren't there. So what are you supposed to do? Let yourself get pummelled? Not good. Call the authorities? Lord no, you'd look like the worst sort of weakling if you did that! Descend to his level and hit back? Probably the best of a host of bad options, but still utterly degrading.
There was just no way for Lucius to emerge from that situation with his dignity intact, and I guess maybe I am mean-spirited enough to have got a bit of a chuckle out of that fact.
Aside from the fact that it didn't seem believable that two wizards would use their fists to fight instead of wands, I wasn't plesed that Arthur would lunge at Lucius over a petty insult.
I'm under the impression that drawing wands is serious for adult wizards, the equivalent of drawing weapons. Had they gone for their wands, then their altercation would have been a duel, rather than merely an exchange of blows. And that wouldn't have been funny to me at all. That would have been extremely scary and disturbing.
But I do know what you mean about Arthur. I was rather disappointed in him as well. I assumed that it was old school boy habits taking over: I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Arthur and Lucius were contemporaries at Hogwarts.
I guess that reaction makes me a pacifist, unless of course 14 year old boys are being attacked by fully grown men. :-)
::laughs:: Well, that's different. 14 year old boys deserve what's coming to them.
I think I will have to adopt a new rule for myself that each beloved character is allowed one hideous mistake, and after that, I will cross them off my list. Lupin and Black have used their quota. Snape probably has used his quota.
Probably? The man was a Death Eater, Cindy. I think he ran out his quota a long, long time ago.
Besides, he picks on Trevor. And while picking on Neville might be excusable, picking on his poor long-suffering toad is utterly unforgivable.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on January 27, 2002 4:04 PM
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