Argus Filch is mentioned since day one of Harry's Hogwarts career and yet his job appears to be the "janitor". Witch could be done in less time if an actual witch or wizard had the job. SO what do you guys think Filch's existence in the story meant?


Technically I don't think this post/thread is against the rules... but it bugs me, and I'm tempted to make an example of you anyway, because you've essentially come in and said "Here's a thing, discuss!" without actually starting the fucking discussion.

Next time you want to make a thread like this go ahead and offer your own damn thoughts on it. Things like what I or Revan said. In other words, if you're going to ask a question as a new thread... try to fucking answer it in the same post. Or if you can't answer it at all, explain why you can't answer it.

/rant over... for now. Ched OUT.

 

I always imagined that the role of caretaker/janitor was the an example of the sort of menial job that a Squib might be forced to take. In the wizarding world's metrics, he has no marketable skills, and therefore no way to make a living without defecting to the Muggle world. This also explains his hatred of the students; he lives and works in an environment that constantly reminds him of what he himself isn't and what he can never have. Shame and jealousy are his overriding emotions, which push him to lord what power he has over them.

As such, his function in the story is to provide a stark counterpoint and an example of the stratification of wizarding society, as well as, as Ched said, a 'managable' villain for an eleven-year-old.

 

There is one story, the name escapes me (most of them run together after a while), where he has to be there to somehow ground out the magic from going wild or something. Obviously that's fanon and all, but it made more sense than just somehow sticking the one guy that can't clean things the easy, magical way in there as a janitor.

Ched's point, between rantings, probably is the thread-killer though.

 

I always assumed he acted like a supervisor to the House Elves.

 

His official profession doesn't make any sense from what we see in canon, he doesn't clean, he doesn't repair and he wouldn't even be able to do that as effectively as anyone else.
From the viewpoint of storytelling, I'd say he's a villain everybody can relate with, to make Hogwarts more identifyable without it losing its "mysteriousness" or its "magic" - because everyone, even children, knows the stereotype of the evil, grumpy caretaker that, most of the time, just is out for the student's blood.
Within the story, I think he's less of a caretaker than more of an additional prefect - without the normal bias. I mean, he doesn't do anything except watching out that the rules aren't broken - he has a list of forbidden things and he goes through the corridors at night, carrying his sniffer cat with him.
His main task might be to relieve the teachers of most of their responsibility when it comes to disobedient students that manage to escape the prefect's patrols or whose prefects just don't do their job.

 

Harry Potter is fairly derivative of a lot of "private school stories"where the cantankerous caretaker is a common trope.

 

Filch got his job because of affirmative action legislation.

 

Yes he does. I can't remember whether it's CoS or PoA, but there's at least one scene where he hauls Harry off to his office for tracking mud all over the castle after Quidditch, when he's spent most of the afternoon cleaning already (I think it's CoS, actually - when Harry finds out he's a Squib).

I think this is actually a pretty good shout, tbh. He seems to do most of his work at night, which makes sense as he'd be hard-pressed to clean, especially without magic, during the day, and if he's keeping an eye out for trouble after curfew then the staff can get a good night's sleep.

For a wilder, definitely non-canon theory, it might be worth examining Cursed Child...

Spoiler

In that, we find out that the trolley witch on the Express has been doing the job for a couple of hundred years, and that she turns into some sort of monster if students try to get off the train between London and Hogsmeade. If you can accept the daftness of that idea, what if Filch isn't actually human? Fanon often has Hogwarts displaying/developing a kind of genus loci intelligence, so maybe he could be that intelligence, changing form every thirty years or so to avoid suspicion over generations of the same families coming to Hogwarts. It would explain how Mrs Norris can pop up at the worst possible times.

 

That's an amazing idea. Could you imagine one of those shitty sentient Hogwarts stories where everyone expects it to be a beautiful woman and it just turns out to be Filch?

 

He cleans quite a bit. We even see him mopping up some muddy footprints and complaining about it, iirc.

Yeah, doesn't make sense for a magical school to hire a squib to do the cleaning and repairing when magic can do it thousand times easier. Thus, like everyone has already said, narrative reasons.

 

I have always believed that Dumbledore was good. That being said, I also believe he was manipulative in the sense that he wanted to know everything, especially in his own castle. In my head, the ghosts and portraits are an espionage network. Filch is another spy.

This works because the Death Eaters children will underestimate a squib allowing him to pick up information that benefits Dumbledore.

Agree of disagree.

 

I'd argue that Filch would make just about the worst spy ever because no kid will say anything even slightly suspicious in the presence someone whose most prominent fetishes all seem to have something to do with children getting punished.

 

I think the most correct response is that when JK came up with him for the first book she hadn't thought up House Elves yet.

 

I do believe JK wanted to show the whole kaleidoscope of the wizarding world;
You have Dumbledore the genial warlock with an obscure past, who holds both the granfatherly figure and a more mystical one of Leader, McGonagal the Transfiguration prodigy who, while keeping the 'strict and fair' charade is a deeply emotional woman, Snape the anti-hero, the one who you cannot help but dislike while still admiring, Hagrid the sweet but dangerous giant, who is hated because of his birth, but managed to retain the goodness of his heart and so on and so forth...
Filch would be the resentful janitor who stays in the castle because of both need and a somewhat masochistic hope of becoming a wizard.

I've also read a few theories about him being linked to Miss Figg

 

I think that he was originally a wizard, and JK only invented the concept of squibs in Book 2. (I think that's one of, if not THE biggest flaw of the series - that JK didn't plan ahead, and then didn't look back on what she'd already written).

In universe....I think Dumbledore felt sorry for him.

 

Can't be. Mrs. Figg is featured in the early chapters of book one, and her later function only manifests later in book five, and her role there depends on her suibbyness.

Besides, Filch complains in book one about the manual labor he has to do to clean things, which he wouldn't have had to do if he were a wizard.

 

Mrs. Figg is just mentioned in passing in book 1. Most likely JK just scanned back for characters she could use around Privet Drive.

I'd have to double check, but I can;t find any record of Filch complaining about manual labour in book 1.

 

What i don`t really understand about the character is that he supports the Death Eater. I mean they normally should hate him because he is a squib and try to kill him.

 

I'll bet he was treated very badly by the Death Eater's and Umbridge. The fact is that he hated kids quite a bit and the Death Eaters and Umbridge gave him a chance to take his frustration out on the kids.