He brought Harry a bundle of Gillyweed during the Triwizard Tournamnet. Rowling found optimal use for Dobby’s purity throughout the series. He is everything we human greed machines are not: humble, dutiful, limber. When Dumbledore gave Dobby a gig in the Hogwarts kitchen, Dobby negotiated downward, accepting a mere portion of the salary and benefits package offered to him.
But he wasn’t fighting for his pocketbook ― he just wanted an emblem of respect. Freed, Dobby rightly insisted he be paid for his work, a foreign concept for house-elves, penniless creatures expected to preserve unyielding loyalty toward their masters. House-elves are low-ranking members of the proletariat, their owners slave drivers. In liberating the elf, Rowling made him the backbone of a key political divide: how labor is honored within the wizarding world. Like so many great literary figures, that generosity became his tragic flaw.įorever amazed by Harry and company’s most basic kindnesses, Dobby did not exploit his newfound autonomy.
Being released from his harsh past bestowed in Dobby a generosity that he then showed to others. But Dobby’s employment with the oppressive Malfoy clan, which comes to a blissful close when Harry’s scheme to free him works at the end of Chamber of Secrets, turns him into a resilient ideal. Now, with an American president who employs bullying tactics and an internet culture that lets brutes hide behind anonymous avatars, that benevolence resonates even more than it did nearly two decades ago.īecause they don’t fight for their own rights, house-elves reflect a timeless fear: the idea that we are stuck with whatever fate dictates. Dobby embodies an altruism not enough humans aspire to. Rowling’s words, bears “large, bat-like ears and bulging green eyes the size of tennis balls.” In honor of the first “Harry Potter” novel’s 20th anniversary, I am here to extol the virtues of Dobby, that squat critter who, in J.K. When he wasn’t thumping his head against a wall in melodramatic self-discipline, Dobby became an iconoclast, a civil-rights advocate, a freedom fighter and the most loyal pal any witch, wizard or Muggle could envision.
He could have been a throwaway character in the “ Harry Potter” universe, there to simply muck up Harry’s second year at Hogwarts before sinking into the scenery. All that liberation talk was shameful ― a disgrace to the name of inherited servitude. Dobby’s fellow house-elves never respected him.
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