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lavender_sage) wrote2018-12-18 09:35 am
lavender_sage) wrote2018-12-18 09:35 am
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Percy and the Twins First Appearance
The scene that introduces the Weasleys in The Sorcerer’s Stone is really interesting in a lot of ways. However, for the sake of brevity--and consistency, tbh, because this is a reread with a purpose--I’m just gonna look at Percy and the twins.
Percy’s first line is to Molly: “Can’t stay long, Mother. I’m up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves--” He can’t even finish the sentence before both twins jump on him for mentioning that he’s a prefect and then have an exchange about how often he’s mentioned it all summer. When one of them asks why Percy got new robes, though, Molly steps in to defend him a bit.
“‘Because he’s a prefect,’ said their mother fondly.”
This scene tells us a few things. One is that Percy has already gotten some pretty significant recognition for his accomplishment. The Weasleys only have so much money to get their four children sent off to Hogwarts for the term, and they’ve apparently spent most of it on Percy. We learn later that his father has also bought him an owl to celebrate his being made prefect. If he has been rubbing it in everyone’s faces all summer, on top of that, it’s easy to see why that would be annoying.
At the same time, we barely get to hear him say it once, and he’s not even talking to them. The twins’ complaining is the only evidence we have that he’s been like this, which makes it easy to read it as resentment on their part, particularly when one of them asks why he got new robes. If he had made as big of deal of it as they say, wouldn’t that have been obvious?
It seems to me that either this possible reading didn’t occur to Rowling because she’s already assuming we’ll trust the twins, or she hasn’t decided yet that Percy is an insufferable prat who deserves to be attacked. At some point, there is a transitions from “Fred and George find Percy really annoying” to “Percy is really annoying,” and I’m curious to see when that happens.
Percy’s first line is to Molly: “Can’t stay long, Mother. I’m up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves--” He can’t even finish the sentence before both twins jump on him for mentioning that he’s a prefect and then have an exchange about how often he’s mentioned it all summer. When one of them asks why Percy got new robes, though, Molly steps in to defend him a bit.
“‘Because he’s a prefect,’ said their mother fondly.”
This scene tells us a few things. One is that Percy has already gotten some pretty significant recognition for his accomplishment. The Weasleys only have so much money to get their four children sent off to Hogwarts for the term, and they’ve apparently spent most of it on Percy. We learn later that his father has also bought him an owl to celebrate his being made prefect. If he has been rubbing it in everyone’s faces all summer, on top of that, it’s easy to see why that would be annoying.
At the same time, we barely get to hear him say it once, and he’s not even talking to them. The twins’ complaining is the only evidence we have that he’s been like this, which makes it easy to read it as resentment on their part, particularly when one of them asks why he got new robes. If he had made as big of deal of it as they say, wouldn’t that have been obvious?
It seems to me that either this possible reading didn’t occur to Rowling because she’s already assuming we’ll trust the twins, or she hasn’t decided yet that Percy is an insufferable prat who deserves to be attacked. At some point, there is a transitions from “Fred and George find Percy really annoying” to “Percy is really annoying,” and I’m curious to see when that happens.