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A Random Rant About Percy Weasley
Dec. 14th, 2018 05:48 pmI should be grading essays, but here I am, procrastinating, working myself into a rage reading Harry Potter wiki presenting Fred and George Weasley’s relentless bullying of Percy read as “good-natured” and “fun-loving.”
Every single piece of text it cites has Percy doing/saying something possibly annoying but harmless and Fred and George publicly humiliating it for it. But it’s all Percy’s fault, of course, because he shouldn’t have that personality, right? Why should anyone, least of all Arthur and Molly, censure the twins for making their brother miserable at home and at school for years?
I feel compelled to love Percy if only because he’s such a clear case of a character who has all the narrative cards stacked against him because his tormentors are characters we’re supposed to like. Fred and George are funny; they’re not bullies. Bullies are bad people, which Fred and George are not. So the fact that they make everything Percy says or does, in public or in private, an object of derision–that’s just brothers being brothers, right?
That’s what we’re supposed to think, because we only ever get to see Percy from the perspective of people who don’t understand him or like him. We never get to see Percy’s reaction to being treated this way until he cuts himself off from his family, which we also only see from their perspective.
Fuck that. I am ONLY interested in Percy’s perspective. And I know he’s not innocent. He can be cruel, especially to his mother. But I think it’s also important to acknowledge that Molly is the only person who ever puts any effort into reconciliation–besides Percy himself at the end–which means she’s also the only person who ever comes within shooting range of Percy’s pain and anger with his family as a whole. Molly doesn’t deserve it, but frankly Percy didn’t deserve the cruelty of his brothers or the indifference of the rest of his family to that cruelty.
Every single piece of text it cites has Percy doing/saying something possibly annoying but harmless and Fred and George publicly humiliating it for it. But it’s all Percy’s fault, of course, because he shouldn’t have that personality, right? Why should anyone, least of all Arthur and Molly, censure the twins for making their brother miserable at home and at school for years?
I feel compelled to love Percy if only because he’s such a clear case of a character who has all the narrative cards stacked against him because his tormentors are characters we’re supposed to like. Fred and George are funny; they’re not bullies. Bullies are bad people, which Fred and George are not. So the fact that they make everything Percy says or does, in public or in private, an object of derision–that’s just brothers being brothers, right?
That’s what we’re supposed to think, because we only ever get to see Percy from the perspective of people who don’t understand him or like him. We never get to see Percy’s reaction to being treated this way until he cuts himself off from his family, which we also only see from their perspective.
Fuck that. I am ONLY interested in Percy’s perspective. And I know he’s not innocent. He can be cruel, especially to his mother. But I think it’s also important to acknowledge that Molly is the only person who ever puts any effort into reconciliation–besides Percy himself at the end–which means she’s also the only person who ever comes within shooting range of Percy’s pain and anger with his family as a whole. Molly doesn’t deserve it, but frankly Percy didn’t deserve the cruelty of his brothers or the indifference of the rest of his family to that cruelty.
