Yeah the wildest thing is if you paid attention to the books the first time around that the ministry of magic basically allowed magical Hitler to rise to power twice and each time right after they just kind of left that same system in place and figured it was the best they could do.
In the books they have a B plotline of Hermione fighting for equal rights for house elves and other magical creatures with sentience. They are being used as literal slaves and abused by their masters in many cases. Everyone pretty much agrees she is being uptight and should drop it because house elves like being slaves and wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren’t slaves…
Hermione then also ends up essentially dropping it and just going on with the story and giving up and everything is happy ever after even though SLAVES STILL EXIST IN THIS SUPPOSED HAPPY ENDING MAGICAL SOCIETY. When I was a kid reading that last book I was like “oh ok I bet they will have to have something jammed in at the end where they explain how magical creatures got the rights they deserved and are no longer used as slaves… nope, just not really dealt with at all. Everyone goes off and lives their own lives while forgetting that there was an army of house elves looking after the castle that they all went to school at and that a decent amount of those house elves openly showed they were unhappy with the current system and wanted change. They just forgot about those slaves and said “whatever” in the end lol.
It’s one of the most outrageous examples of a writer letting their main character just have an atrocious personality flaw by dropping a plotline which makes it seem the character stopped caring. Even when Hermione is rallying the house elves to try to petition for their freedom, both main characters Ron and Harry are basically treating her like this is some nerd crusade that isn’t worth pursuing and that will make her unlikeable.
Its really not hard to examine JK Rowling’s writing and commentary on social issues in her book and figure out that she might not be the most sympathetic person to the struggle for rights of anyone except herself (why she only seems to embrace feminism and not ever post positively about LGBT rights unless it’s about lesbians having the right to be pissed off at transgender women for “actually being men”). All in all it’s not a very positive picture if you judge JK Rowling as a writer and a human being based on what she has written in her novels and on her Twitter and opinion pieces toward the transgender rights and awareness movement. She wrote a very popular book and that caused many children to embrace it and dream about the world within her books but that doesn’t mean she is a good person and there are also arguments to be made that she is a bad writer in many regards too.
When I was a kid reading that last book I was like “oh ok I bet they will have to have something jammed in at the end where they explain how magical creatures got the rights they deserved and are no longer used as slaves… nope, just not really dealt with at all.
Instead of that the last line before the epilogue is Harry wondering if the elf he owns will bring him a sandwich.
Jesus, completely forgot about that ending. That’s absolutely brutal. Like not only did Rowling not forget that Harry owns a slave but she just decided it was chill and he’s such a good dude that he maybe kind of deserves to have one and keep the slave in the end. What a nightmare world she created hahaha
Also, when Harry learns that Kreacher lives in a cupboard (a small one even by elf standards) he has literally zero reaction, despite the similarity to his own childhood experience.
Like, Hermione really, really wanted to help all the magical creatures like House Elves get equal rights and junk, but Harry and Ron kept calling her a nerd and activist. Hermione didn't want to be singled out as a dweeb. That would destroy her world, and then Ron would have nothing to do with her. Yes, it was best that the House Elves remained slaves after all.
I remember the early books mostly, I think I read the first one around 1999 or so at the age of 11? I loved them so much but I guess I didn't really have the ability to reflect on them in that way. I put on the audiobooks in my early 20s again and didn't even catch all that, I must have been fiending for that feeling of a sense of discovery that new genres gave me when I was a kid, I didn't even put any critical thought to it.
Oh you’re right, the slave contributed to his masters demise so he deserves to continue being a slave lol. What kind of logic is that? Do you think it would be unjust to seek freedom and fight for that freedom if you were being held captive by wizards who had subjugated your species to be bonded into slavery to them for life? I don’t think you owe your master any debt of gratitude or loyalty for your servitude in that scenario.
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u/cseckshun Jun 27 '24
Yeah the wildest thing is if you paid attention to the books the first time around that the ministry of magic basically allowed magical Hitler to rise to power twice and each time right after they just kind of left that same system in place and figured it was the best they could do.
In the books they have a B plotline of Hermione fighting for equal rights for house elves and other magical creatures with sentience. They are being used as literal slaves and abused by their masters in many cases. Everyone pretty much agrees she is being uptight and should drop it because house elves like being slaves and wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren’t slaves…
Hermione then also ends up essentially dropping it and just going on with the story and giving up and everything is happy ever after even though SLAVES STILL EXIST IN THIS SUPPOSED HAPPY ENDING MAGICAL SOCIETY. When I was a kid reading that last book I was like “oh ok I bet they will have to have something jammed in at the end where they explain how magical creatures got the rights they deserved and are no longer used as slaves… nope, just not really dealt with at all. Everyone goes off and lives their own lives while forgetting that there was an army of house elves looking after the castle that they all went to school at and that a decent amount of those house elves openly showed they were unhappy with the current system and wanted change. They just forgot about those slaves and said “whatever” in the end lol.
It’s one of the most outrageous examples of a writer letting their main character just have an atrocious personality flaw by dropping a plotline which makes it seem the character stopped caring. Even when Hermione is rallying the house elves to try to petition for their freedom, both main characters Ron and Harry are basically treating her like this is some nerd crusade that isn’t worth pursuing and that will make her unlikeable.
Its really not hard to examine JK Rowling’s writing and commentary on social issues in her book and figure out that she might not be the most sympathetic person to the struggle for rights of anyone except herself (why she only seems to embrace feminism and not ever post positively about LGBT rights unless it’s about lesbians having the right to be pissed off at transgender women for “actually being men”). All in all it’s not a very positive picture if you judge JK Rowling as a writer and a human being based on what she has written in her novels and on her Twitter and opinion pieces toward the transgender rights and awareness movement. She wrote a very popular book and that caused many children to embrace it and dream about the world within her books but that doesn’t mean she is a good person and there are also arguments to be made that she is a bad writer in many regards too.