Incompetence and the Potterverse

[nancylebov]

I've just been reading a long, intelligent thread about whether there was serious negligance involved in Draco getting slashed by the hippogriff, and it reminded me of something that puts me out of sync with the vast majority of dedicated Rowling fans.

Now, aside from the fact that I'm not dedicated (I've read each of the books once and have forgotten a lot of details), I don't believe that Dumbledore necessarily knows what he's doing. (I don't think Snape is really a good guy, but that's probably another matter.)

For me, a lot of the charm of the books is that the kids are dealing with a school where they're thrown onto their own resources a lot--the adults are not reliably competent, and sometimes dangerously incompetent. This means that the kids have to use their own knowledge, judgement, and courage more than most children (or at least most of the people reading the books) have had to.

At the same time, it's a livable society--we're not talking about war refugees or (when Harry's away from the Dursley's) grossly abusive families. It's something like real life--it's possible to manage, but people are really just making things up as they go.

One piece of evidence: I made a correct guess about why Slytherin was part of Hogwarts--the founder of Slytherin was one of the founders of Hogwarts. Historical accidents can have tremendous longterm effects, and there doesn't have to be anyone's plan or intention behind them. Perhaps the interesting question is how the Slytherin lack of ethics gets moderated and/or overridden enough that Hogwartz was able to survive.

What happens to a lot of complicated theories if Dumbledore is just scrambling as fast as he can to deal with running a school (and has a severely limited pool of potential teachers--he can't just invoke sane, well qualified teachers out of nothing) and dealing with a major magical enemy at the same time?

Comments

[wiredgargoyle.livejournal.com]

the adults are not reliably competent, and sometimes dangerously incompetent. This means that the kids have to use their own knowledge, judgement, and courage more than most children (or at least most of the people reading the books) have had to.

This is my opinion for the most part as well. Rowling seems to be creating an environment where adults cannot be relied upon or trusted much. Voldemort and his cohorts appear to be SO evil and malicious that the common Witch/Wizard is incapable of dealing with what their nasty plans are causing.

However, I've been considering that Dumbledore may be very aware of what is going on in the larger scheme of things. He may have some sort of plan to allow Harry (Whom he believes is a greater Wizard than he thinks) to come into his power through what he sees as the only way to pull those powers out...danger. It may be a possibility that Rowling's plan is to have Harry be able to defeat Voldemort through instinctive magic rather than the magic he can learn from the professors at Hogwart's.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I agree that Dumbledore probably has some overarching plan--this doesn't mean that every detail of his administration is contributing to it, nor that his plan is what is going to happen.

Harry using instinctive magic (like his mother's love that kept him alive?) to defeat Voldemort seems reasonable, though I'd expect that school magic (whether used by him or others) will be needed to get him to the point where the instinctive magic can be used.

Here's one where I have no idea of the outcome--will Harry be able to defeat Voldemort without killing him? Harry *really* doesn't want to kill, and I think that's supposed to be a good point.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I'm not a buff either, so I'm willing to be argued out of my opinion, but I think "incompetent" is too harsh for Hogwarts. Well, I do think that Dumbledore is somewhat too willing to let sympathy overcome his judgement, so he does hire teachers that other headmasters might find too big a risk (Hagrid, Lupin) and keeps one incompetent (I forget her name, the divination teacher). But overall I think he's a very good headmaster. The problem is that headmasters aren't in general trained or supposed to be qualified to run a school and fail muderous plots by a literally unspeakably evil wizard. I see the message of the books more being that no one is really completely up to what's going on. That goes along with more tragedies as the books go on.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That's a fair point about "incompetent". I was over-reacting to the people who seem to think that Dumbledore has a sound purpose for everything he does.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Second thought: some of what Dumbledore does would be considered incompetent in a human headmaster--for example, keeping a teacher who's as careless about student safety as Hagrid is.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

In the cases of both Hagrid and Trelawney (the divination teacher), Dumbledore has kept people on staff to whom he feels an obligation. In Trelawney's case, though, I'm not sure that anyone else would do much better than she does; the evidence within the novels (mostly, admittedly, from Hermione's trash-talking about it) is that divination is the least reliable part of magic and that when true fortellings happen, they do so completely at random. I think it's amusing to see a bunch of wizards tying their brains around superstitions....

As to the question of Dumbledore's competence: In the fifth novel, we finally get to see him in action as a wizard, and it's clear that he is, indeed, the most powerful wizard of his age, or very close to it. He's also deeply wise. But that doesn't mean that he's always on top of things, because his opponents are numerous, skilled, and well-coordinated, and Dumbledore's potential allies often don't believe there's a threat. He mis-handled things badly in the fifth novel by foolishly trying to protect Harry from The Big Picture, and he doesn't follow through with Harry's private lessons with Snape; both of these have terrible results.

On the specific question of Buckbeak, Hagrid's job requires teaching students about dangerous creatures. He well understood how to handle a hippogriff and correctly told the students what to do to keep themselves safe. Malfoy had to disobey his teacher and disregard his lessons to get injured, in a situation in which he had been warned there was a serious danger. While this wouldn't be allowed in a modern American school, what the third-year students are learning at Hogwarts is by its nature more dangerous than what a typical 13-year-old in the real world would be learning. Malfoy should have understood by that point in his education that when a teacher says that something is dangerous, that teacher should be believed.

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

Good points. This sort of reminds me of a lot of the "Why did Doctor Octopus throw the car through the window? He could have killed Peter!" discussion. Gee, folks - maybe Doc Ock is a bit of a fvckvp! This isn't even the only evidence for that theory!

Not every character in fiction is a Laplace calculator.