The Vanishing Glass and Letters From No One

The Vanishing Glass, Ch.2

The interesting thing about this chapter’s title is the double meaning. Yes, Harry will vanish the glass from the snake’s tank, freeing it and causing panic. This is the first time that Harry speaks Pareltongue and that ability is important later on in the series. But the glass that vanishes metaphorically is the one around young Harry Potter. He has lived in a glass tank, squeezed into a cupboard under the stairs, and he’s finally going to get some freedom.

The snake in question is described as “the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped it’s body twice around Uncle Vernon’s car and crushed it into a trash can.” The snake is listed, per it’s zoo sign, as a Brazilian Boa Constrictor, which google says the females are usually 6.9 to 9.8 feet long, while the males are usually 5.9 to 7.9 feet long. So either this is a fictitiously large snake, or Harry is exaggerating. Regardless, it’s easy to see how this unnamed and ungendered snake could be thought to be a pre-Voldemort Nagini, even if this theory is incorrect. Nagini is some sort of venomous snake, per Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Arthur Weasley is attacked, and Boa Constrictors (as their name suggests) constrict their prey to death instead of envenoming them.

Letters From No One, ch.3

As someone who went to public school for the entirety of their education, it makes me wonder if British public schools have uniforms. Right before the first letter from Hogwarts arrives, Petunia is dying some of Dudley’s old clothes grey to be Harry’s new school uniform. Even more, what on earth could Petunia be using to dye clothes grey and who would it smell “horrible”? Artificial colors probably wouldn’t smell so terrible, and I can’t even think of anything natural that would result in grey coloring. Side note: I did a science fair project one year on the strength and pigmentation of natural vegetable dye; ie: I boiled white string in a pot with vegetables to see what color the string turned and how vibrant the color was. Surprise, surprise, beets produced the most vibrant color and nothing resulted in grey.

But back to the subject of the chapter – the letters to Harry. I wonder if all of the other students have their letters similarly listed as “Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey”. When Harry is given Dudley’s second bedroom the address on his school letters changes to reflect his new room. It’s an interesting footnote in Harry’s case, and just unusual and slightly invasive if done to all of the students. Of course, if it was done only to Harry, that would bring up other questions, such as why Harry, so I’ll leave it to “strange and confusing” instead of having my thoughts run in circles.

So a question I’ve heard a couple of times from Harry Potter fans is “what would have happened if Harry had gone into his cupboard to read the letter and Vernon and Petunia hadn’t noticed?” Except in cases of fanfiction where Harry has a stronger character and sense of independence, I think nothing would have really changed. Harry most likely would have gone to his Aunt and Uncle to ask about going to the school listed in the letter, prompting the adults to panic in a similar fashion as they do in J.K. Rowling’s series of events.

What then, is the point of having Harry get caught with the letter and the resulting escapades? One: this is a children’s book, recommended for grades 5 to 6, so you want some comedy in there. If the behavior of the adults hiding from a bunch of letters isn’t funny, you might need to check your sense of humor. Two: Petunia and Vernon are not portrayed as intelligent individuals, but how stupid and narrow minded do you have to be to first seal up the mail slot and then eventually hide out in a shack on an island to escape a bunch of letters? Three: most importantly, how else would Rubeus Hagrid (and his pink umbrella) be introduced in the book?

Personally, as someone who has read the books before, I almost want to skip ahead to Kings Cross Station and get on with the good stuff – Hogwarts! But I do understand needing to set the background for new readers and I’m sure I enjoyed this part when I first read the series. Still, like Harry himself, I have no interest in the Dursleys and prefer to be away from them. But, if I do have to see them, I do prefer them when Hagrid has his fun with them, as we will see in the next chapter.

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.

The Vanishing Glass and Letters From No One

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