Rubeus Hagrid: Bat Out of Hell

WARNING: There may be some spoilers here (I have abandoned trying to do "spoiler-free" discussion - it could be done but is just too labor intensive ... and the book will be read soon enough ... just be warned to hold off reading till after you have finished the book ... and make no excuses about not reading the book - you need to read the book, if you're not ravenous for the book then my posts will not interest you at all :) and if you are, you will be done and reading them soon enough if you're interested :) Ok, I am just starting shift at night and things are not quiet enough around here yet to sit and write either of the post I talked about (but I have my book with me in which I scribbled notes in the margins and should be able to discuss the stuff but with "anti-spoiler" charms on the posts), but for right now I will just write a short one from the first chapters of the book. I love images. I love the borrowing and adaptation of images in interesting ways (can anybody who has finished book 7 say "the train station from Matrix 3 and the 'construct' program from Matrix 1" or "Davey Jones Locker from Pirates 3?"). And I especially love when an author like Rowling borrows an image that was originally cheesy or clunky or stereo-typical and turns it into something real (I cannot prove she was going for this image source in this scene, but it sure fits ... and even if not I think I could safely say "see, meatloaf ... this is what that image looks like when done well"). That first scene with Hagrid on the flying cycle quite simply "rocked" ... straight of that cheesy cover of Meat-Loaf's "Bat Outta Hell" cover ... only done with some real character, style and grit. The way Hagrid excitedly says earlier "that one's my idea" and Arthur Weasely nervously says something like "I'm not sure if that was a good idea Hagrid, only use it in extreme emergency" ... and then the way Hagrid slams the final button, dragon's breath, with his whole hand ... classic. And, after the slow and (purposefully) sickening opening, that scene was a very intense "drop in" to the roller coaster ride that is book 7. but more importantly ... Hargid's character. I heard recentlly that the guy who wrote Eragon somewhere presumptuously labeled himself the Tolkien of this generation ... What a first rate prat (I having read the prologue to Eragon before dropping the book out of danger of poisionous silly-sap, I have a hard time seeing him doing a Percy ... he simply does not seem to me to be made of the Weasley Weld). The Tolkien of our times is Rowling. Her chracterization and the way she works it in with plot and theme is just quite simply uber-rich ... it just has this amazingly substantial texture. Still riding high on the Dragon's Breath, Merlin PS Oh yeah, forgot on last post ... congrats to Granger - the closest on certain matters of Snape's emotional state and the things it impacts. Others were incorrect on his patronus form in places but VERY insightful in thinking to ask that question. John was right (at least early on, before we all hit the "11th hour panic mode" and started hypothesizing about the Machiavellian Prince motif ... but with that title, "Prince," I think it was right to wonder, that that experience of wondering if he might be a Machiavellian prince is part of the "meaning" of the works) about Snape's deeper/longer relationship with Lily and it playing a major role ... sound slike a lot of us maybe should have stuck with some of our original ideas. I originally guessed, upon hearing that Rowling has distinctly stated that Harry would not return as a teacher but that one student would (after I thus abandoned my theory that Harry would return as DADA teacher - but more later on how I think some of those predictions and those of others can be 'logical' and therefore "part of the text"), that it would be Neville doing Herbology, but then I went off in other directions at the last moment (but like I said, I think there is still something literary to the Role of Cho in the series that connects with DADA, especially in the Quidditch events of books 3-4-5, which I am still reading as chiastic in nature, just different in function in the series as a whole ... and if there is any doubt about the import of Quidditch and seekers ... RAB was a seeker and if that scen of saving Draco in the ROR was not a seeker image and a reprise of scouring the Map for him there in book 6, I don't know what would be ... and then there is the location of the stone in book 7 and then , how can the import of the seeker image be denied with that last catch "with the unerring skill of the Seeker" [DH 744, "Seeker" capitalized in text])