- Harry spends “as much time as possible” out wandering idly. He might have chores where Dudley does not, but it seems that the Dursleys would rather have him “out of sight and out of mind” than have him “earn his keep.”
- One author, I forget where I read it, suggests that Harry is being quite clever when he comments about his uniform being wet. It may have been a way of probing his Aunt for information without appearing to ask a question, since questions are frowned upon.
- The fact that Harry pushes back on
getting the mail, no matter how briefly, is interesting. It tells us
that he is not afraid of the potential punishment.
- Possibly the Dursleys do not in fact punish him all that much - this is the stance taken by those who hold that Harry is not abused.
- Possibly Harry is aware that they are so lazy that he can (and as we see does) dodge the physical retribution and they simply will not care enough to follow through. In other words their laziness exceeds their abusiveness by a significant margin. Both are present, but Harry - through experience - knows he can push them and they will be too lazy to effectively follow up.
- This same disconnect from the picture we have of Harry’s home life occurs when he demands his letter. Again, I think Harry is conditioned to count on his uncle being too lazy to effectively follow through on things. Thus this time, when Harry is actually in a temper, he forgets to temper his own actions (pardon the pun).
- I am unsure what to make of the statement that Dursley threw the two children into the hall. Is this more hyperbole, or did he in fact use excessive force to propel them? I think it quite possible it is simply artistic language - neither child seems hurt.
- I have seen writers speculate that the Dursleys could have refused Harry’s admission if they had refused to be intimidated, and had instead acted rationally here. One wonders.
- In light of later revelations about obscurials, the Dursleys are lucky they were not successful at suppressing Harry’s magic.
- Again, it is easy to dismiss the fact that Dursley hits Dudley for the delays in leaving the house; Dursley is not in his right mind in this chapter. On the other hand, we have reached a line in the sand where in real life people would start to get upset with him despite the provocation.
- We are informed that “tomorrow” is Harry’s 11th birthday. Given that per chapter two, the first chapter was ten years ago, we can now confidently say that the events depicted occurred after Harry’s first birthday.1
- The description of the birthday presents. The Dursleys give Harry “gifts” just to drive home that he is not worthy of actual presents.
This will be confirmed in book seven when we seen an excerpt of a letter describing that birthday.↩︎