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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

May 16. Day 137. Along came a spider

Remember that scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where all of the students faced a boggart, that hideous shape shifter that takes the form of your worst fear? For Ron Weasley it was a giant spider. That's Riddikulus*
Spiders get such a bad rap. Right from the time we are tiny we hear tales of poor little Miss Muppet and the nasty spider who frightens her away. No wonder so many people have arachnophobia.
I don't have a problem with spiders and find something compellingly beautiful about a spider's web like this one photographed in the gully near my home this morning. (No, this is not just a dodgy excuse to explain my less than perfectionist approach to housework).
Despite not understanding Ron's boggart, I've been fascinated with the idea raised often in fiction of forces exposing you to your worst fear.
In Orwell's 1984 it was Room 101 where there was Winston Smith and the rats. We never did find out what his girlfriend Julia was met with in Room 101. I seem to remember a high school essay where we had to argue what it might be.
I ponder this occasionally but it's a no brainer really. I'm with Ron's mother Molly Weasley. Poor Molly was trapped in a room in Number 12 Grimmauld Place with a boggart that kept taking the form of members of her family either dead or dying.
Surely no spider or rat can compete with that for spine chilling horror.


* (Harry Potter reference, not bad spelling)

3 comments:

  1. Love the words and the picture is pretty damn good too....

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  2. no these things give me the heeby geebies, if there was one between me and one of my kids and they were in mortal danger then they would have been mortally wounded as I will not go in a room with one. irrational I know but then all fears are

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  3. OMG what a web!! It looks like it could also be water ripples - or is that just me?

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