I was always kind of pissed off that Hogwarts would make Harry go back to the Dursley’s every summer. Surely there were some lonesome wizard couple who would have liked fostering the most favorite wizardling in all the land.
But from the standpoint of a children’s book, Harry’s situation is realistic. There is no such thing as a “perfect” life. Yeah, Harry got to go to the best school in the world and he had great powers and the bestest friends. But he had a horrible family, and no matter how hard he tried to be good, they always sucked. I imagine a lot of kids can relate more to having a sucky homelife than being the “special” kid.
The contradictory nature of the Dursley’s also is kinda realistic. It doesn’t make any sense that they would continue to take care of Harry long after they were obligated to, given how much they hate him. But we all know people who are pretty shitty parents, and yet they think they are doing alright just because they’ve managed to keep their kids alive. Most of the people sitting in prison right now for child abuse probably think they are good parents.
If I remember right, the protection his mother left in him was dependent on being with family for part of the year.
It also concealed his location while not at Hogwart’s.
Oh, I didn’t mention in my post upthread that I would have thought the Dursley’s would have been happy to get Harry out of their lives during the school year. Especially since they didn’t have to pay for it.
But we only see Harry in the moments before some sort of relevant plot point is about to happen. Are those the only instances of Harry’s powers going awry? Just in those convenient moments? Mighty coincidental, don’t you think?
No, logic says that stuff like that happened all the time. Constantly. The Dursleys lived in a regime of terror, scared that every step they took would mean their early demise. If you lived with the kid from that Twilight Zone episode, you would be a bit cold towards him too, wouldn’t you?
And yes, it’s tongue in cheek. Obviously the characters were devised as cartoonish villains just being impediments to create some drama even if their actions made no sense. At least in the movies. Yet, if you want to analyse them like they were real people… well, then my explanation makes more sense.
Not at all - the books cover the parts of Harry’s pre-Hogwarts life that were interesting, so of course they cover the few events that involved Harry’s powers going awry.
In the Twilight Zone episode, they treated the boy with exquisite care, taking every effort to make him happy (treating him more like Dudley was treated, not Harry).
Exactly. Now, had the people in that town kept the kid on a short leash, like the Dursleys did with Harry, and there you go: world-saving hero instead of the next Hitler.
From that point of view their finest moment is when they fled their homes at great risk and effort in an attempt to keep Harry from the training center that would make his powers even more dangerous.
I haven’t read the books, but could there have been some sort of foster-care cash coming the Dursleys’ way? That would explain the mistreatment and general cheaping-out when it came to him- they’d profit if they bought him as little as they could.
It goes beyond that: if I remember the movies correctly, the Voldemort guy couldn’t get to Harry as long as they were around because of an enchantment or something. And Voldemort for some reason needed to kill Harry so he could take over both worlds. Therefore they were trying to protect both Harry and every human at the same time by not allowing him to leave for Murder School.
While everybody else were selfish jerks, including Harry.
yes. he had to be able to call the dursley house home until he came of age, so he had to return every summer, at a minimum. lily’s blood protection extended to her only living relative, petunia, and so harry could not be harmed while he resided there. this is how dumbledore ensured harry’s safety during the 10 years that he lived there full time, before he came to hogwarts.
I always liked the symmetry of the scene with the Mirror of Erised (which showed you what you desired the most) in the first book. Harry looked into the mirror and saw himself with his living and loving parents, while Ron looked into the mirror and saw himself as famous and a Quidditch star. The symmetry is that each wanted what the other had; Harry wanted the loving family that Ron had, and Ron wanted Harry’s fame, particularly as a school sports star. Eventually, each got what he wanted. In the later books, Ron was a good Quidditch player and at the very end of the last book, we saw Harry with his own family.
Not to mention that well before the end of the series, Harry got EXACTLY the loving family that Ron already had, as the Weasleys all but adopted him (which they couldn’t do completely due to the family protection of living with the Dursleys). Molly explicitly says more than once that she considers him one of her sons, even before he and Ginnie become a couple.
The Dursleys provided a literary example of “the status quo”. They refused to appear in any manner that wasn’t dead center. They gave contrast to Harry who was epitome of different.
I think the OP puts the cart before the horse in a sense. The Dursley’s hatred and distrust of magic and the wizarding world was primary, and their treatment of Harry was a consequence of that. He was a reminder of and a tie to everything they feared and hated. Having him actually become part of that world, far from being a relief, was their greatest fear and represented their failure to control their own lives and Harry’s.
Imagine a virulently homophobic family with a gay son whom they beat and abuse in order to “cure” him. Do you think they would be excited to send him to a gay-friendly boarding school just for GLBT kids, even if it was free and got him away for a while?
IIRC, in book 1 when Hagrid is explaining to Harry that he’s a wizard, Hagrid asks Harry have strange things happened around Harry when he (Harry) is angry or frightened. Harry recalls events like this and his aunt/uncle scolding or punishing him for them. So yeah, the Dursleys are frightened of him.
Well, I don’t. Like the last episode of St. Elsewhere, I’m picturing a very muggle Neville (the autistic child of poor reindeer shepherds in a Lapland hut). In front of the fire, playing with his Sprawling Gothic Castle Snow Globe.
But, on a less absurd note, I love the opening of the Harry Potter series. I’ve met people who’ve said “Never read 'em, never saw the movies.” And I tell them, just start the first book. If you’re not rooting for the kid whose bedroom is under the stairs, then put the book(s) down. But I couldn’t.
I think Harry’s home “life” taps into a primal desire. How many kids would love to find out that they’re not just the neglected, misunderstood kid… but they secretly have powers, and get to run off to be Something More Important?
I remember Garrison Keillor, in a news from Lake Wobegon, sharing that he spent his childhood waiting for his real parents to show up (in his case they would be like Nick and Nora Charles) and take him away to New York City. Me, I’d take Hogwarts.
It seems that the Dursleys kind of got away from Rowling: in my eyes she never intended them to be more than Monty Pythonesque comic relief, but then they keep showing up more and more in later books. I think she even commented on it once, saying that she kept writing more about them because readers kept asking about them.
I think they were just afraid of anything out of the mainstream. Some of you are talking about their fears of Harry going off to learn to use his powers. I don’t think they put that much thought into it. They are all just bland, boring, unimaginative people, and they don’t like the frightening mystery that surrounds Harry.
I wonder what happens to Dudley. He will always be kind of dim and selfish, but maybe he grows up a little and stops being a bully. Maybe he learns to recognize, eventually, that his parents didn’t help him any by spoiling him the way they did. Maybe he tries to distance himself from them and they won’t let go: they’re constantly calling him and asking him to come over to visit, etc. Or maybe he feels more comfortable with them than with anybody else – they excuse his rudeness and selfishness, his undoubtedly boorish behavior – so he never really leaves. Maybe he never leaves at all! Maybe the three of them just stay at Number Four forever (I still don’t understand why them seem to have moved out at the start of DH1).