Servitude

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Madderbrad asked why I was so exercised about the depictions of Harry and the Death Eaters, and it got me to thinking about my increasing sympathy for, not just Slytherins, but Death Eaters in general.

Wait.

I’m feeling sympathy for Death Eaters??

Such sympathy is certainly quite unwarranted in the author’s eyes. So what did JKR write that makes me feel that way? Why have I started to be afflicted by a burning sense that JKR treated her villains unfairly?

WTF is going on in my own mind, that I apparently have started seeing some of the Death Eaters as traumatized victims?

I think it’s that, the more closely I look at them, the clearer becomes their true relationship to Voldemort.

“I am glad to hear that you consider them friends,” said Dumbledore. “I was under the impression that they are more in the order of servants.”

“You are mistaken,” said Voldemort. (HBP, Chapter 20)

Yes. Dumbledore was mistaken, or rather, imprecise. The English language has a much more exact term than “servant” to describe the relationship that subsists between the Death Eaters and Tom Riddle. It is a relationship in which one party. Tom, has the power of absolute life and death over the others. In which Tom demands absolute obedience, and both claims the right and demonstrates the will to torture or kill his underlings in response to any slightest defiance, disobedience, or failure. To torture or kill, moreover, any of his followers’ dependents. To visit collective punishment upon the group, punishing anyone handy for the failures of others.

Tom’s followers even call Voldemort their “Master.”

The Death Eaters aren’t Tom’s servants.

They are his slaves.


*



It’s Tom’s pleasure sometimes to call them “friends” and to pretend that they follow him out of loyalty, but even mad Bella, who WANTS to believe herself valued by Voldemort for her supreme faithfulness, knows that Tom would kill her in a heartbeat for any failure (witness her terror over the stolen sword).

So of COURSE when I see a group of slaves, driven by someone who makes Simon Legree look like Oskar Schindler, I feel some degree of sympathy for them, whatever my opinions of their probable politics.

And of course I also take it as a given that for every Winky-like Bellatrix who adores her cruel master with a mad devotion however he abuses her, there must be 20 more like Kreacher and Dobby, furtively looking for ways to betray their master or to sabotage and subvert the orders they can not or dare not directly disobey.

I realize that I’ve been conceptualizing the DE’s as slaves for some time now, and that I naturally therefore for that time have been reading canon for signs of slaves’ expected relationship to a feared and hated master.

However, this way of seeing the DE’s just sort of snuck up on me without me noticing. Certainly back when I wrote and posted “Death Eaters in the Seventies,” I read Lucius and some of his followers’ failure to use adequate force against the children to secure the prophecy as signs of their being too “soft” to bring themselves to torture children. But I didn’t then even consider the possibility that the failure could instead perhaps be ascribed to covert (but deliberate) disloyalty.

*

Reading the Death Eaters as slaves, I don’t generally expect them to engage in flashy gestures of defiance. Outright rebellion does occur among slaves, but for every Harriet Tubman or Spartacus, there are many more who, however they hate their masters, obey them—for the most part. Overtly, at least. Most slaves, in history and literature, content themselves mostly with doing what little they can to protect themselves and their best-beloveds from the worst abuses.

Now, some, like Bella and Barty and Kreacher, actually identify with their master (some of their masters) and his interests. Some, if they hate the master enough, look for ways to sabotage him. Or even kill him—that bouncy 1840’s song, “Jimmy Crack Corn,” about the master’s “accidental” death, comes irresistibly to mind. But slaves only, ever (or mostly, unless pushed way too far) do what they think they can get away with, and always bear in mind that too-effective sabotage can bring collective punishment down upon on the whole group. And they live with the knowledge that destroying the master’s household could mean destroying his slaves with him. Even those pushed far past caring for their own safety or comfort might fear to make their family or compatriots suffer for too-obvious disloyalty or incompetence.

I don’t expect slaves to revolt courageously against their chains, though those few who do are most inspiring. (She says, cringing, hoping never to be in a position to emulate those courageous few.)

I do expect them, when the Master is as brutally sadistic as Tom Riddle, to adopt one of several stances: identification (especially among the sadists among the slaves, who can try to rise in relative power on the pain of others); appeasement, using obedience and subservience to try to ameliorate one’s own lot and perhaps that of one’s closest loved ones; covert sabotage (work slow-downs, incompetence, “misunderstanding” one’s orders or carrying them out too literally—which all carry a strong risk of punishment, but not usually the most lethal punishments); outright attempts to destroy the master or to counter his aims (which can only be undertaken by someone who is not only indifferent to hir own fate, but is willing to risk the destruction of any potential hostages among hir fellow slaves. Or who has no one left to risk.)

And looking for these patterns, I see them quite clearly delineated.

Identification: Bellatrix, Dolohov, the Carrows, all eager to visit pain on others in fulfillment of their master’s will. Taking gratification where they can get it, but always cringingly aware that any failure might suddenly put them on the receiving end.

Appeasement: Peter Pettigrew (for himself only); Lucius and Narcissa (for their family). If I’m a good enough servant, perhaps Tom won’t punish me/us. Too much. Tonight. If no one else sets him off too much….

Covert sabotage: all the canon incompetence of DE’s can be read as this, now. Twelve DE’s armed with AK and the Cruciatus can’t kill any of six kids, or persuade any one of them to surrender a prophecy globe? Thirty DE’s in concert can’t kill anything more than an owl? When they’ve got the drop on fourteen defenders, half of them half-trained teens?

Just how hard were they trying? Really?

Draco, just coincidentally happening to forget how the DA communicated. And where they met. And how to get into that Room…. And what Hermione and Ron looked like, when they were dragged before him for positive identification!

Outright attempts to destroy the Master: Canon gives us two, apparently. Regulus (whose best-beloveds were all safe, he earnestly prayed, behind the very best wards a large fortune and the Black paranoia could procure) and Snape, whose best-beloved was, at first, Tom’s primary target no matter what Snape did, and afterwards was safely dead.

*

And see, once I started seeing the Death Eaters as slaves…. well, I didn’t expect them to suddenly start acting as not-slaves. They’ve been living for years with the knowledge that the slightest defiance or disobedience could bring torture or death to themselves, to their loved ones, and to their comrades.

So when I view DE’s as slaves I view it as unreasonable to expect overt defiance or disobedience from them. Instead, I celebrate every failure to fulfill his will as a sign of muted rebellion. And I feel sorry for them in such a terrible predicament, even though they did bring it partly on themselves.

Partly….. That is, I understand, of course, that presumably the Death Eaters all initially joined up voluntarily. In principle. But as Jodel pointed out, almost everyone who signed up with Tom was at the time a misguided KID:

And you will notice that over the course of the 2 generations that he cast his shadow, he has reeled in almost every single one of his followers before they were out of their teens. The creature preys on children. And he is not their friend. And he does not mean them well.

http://www.redhen-publications.com/Loyaulte.html

And we’ve argued before about what the children joining thought they were going to DO—what Riddle’s publicly-professed aims and publicly-admitted means were back in the seventies when he was recruiting these teens. The ONLY thing we’re told in canon about Riddle’s publicly professed agenda was that, like Albus and Gellert, he wanted to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule over their inferiors (except that Tom apparently added Muggle-borns to Albus and Gellert’s Muggles). But please note that, when Tom took over at the Ministry, he did NOT end Seclusion and start ruling openly over us regular folk. So he played his followers for fools in that. At least.

We don’t know what Tom told his prospective recruits in the Seventies. But what we can be absolutely sure of, is that whatever the children joining him thought they were going to accomplish, what they really got was something other.

I suppose it’s deliciously ironic that people who might have been attracted by propaganda about lording it over their supposed magical inferiors ended up enslaved as Tom’s magical inferiors.

Magic is might, indeed.

What did you expect, Lucius, Bellatrix, Avery? Severus? You did mount this dragon, of your own free will.

But I think there can be no doubt that few, if any, of the children binding themselves to Riddle had any conception at all of what relationship they were really committing themselves to.

And committing their children to.

Unto the nth generation, if Tommy had had his way.

I mean, think about it. Do you really think that Lucius Malfoy joined up because he expected to be made a prisoner in his own home, his manor and his galleons appropriated, his heir and his wife threatened, his very wand stolen, if his side WON?

And do you really think that Lucius had any real choice to raise Draco to resist (or know that he should want to resist) being recruited by Lord Voldemort? If Tom had returned to find Draco NOT preconditioned to accept him, what would Draco, Lucius, and Narcissa’s life expectancies have been?

And, I can’t, myself, see punishing people for a lifetime out of a sense of irony, however delicious, for a mistake made in their teens.

Still less destroying their kids and grandkids.

Not when I think that canon shows that most of them may have repented.

Canon has Tom making it quite clear, after all, that he considers almost all of his former followers deliberate traitors to him. GoF, “The Death Eaters:” “I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact—such prompt appearances!—and I ask myself… why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?”

No one spoke.

Yeah, the accusation really is unanswerable, isn’t it?

*

Of course, there is one type of person who would find some of the conditions of Tom’s servitude rewarding: the sadist. You may recall Tom, at his resurrection, promising the Ministry’s creature-exterminator, Macnair, “better prey.” And obviously Bella and Amycus both enjoy being on the “right” end of a Cruciatus.

It’s standard fanfic that ALL the DE’s must be like this, and certainly it would help them to fulfill some of the Dark Lord’s worst orders.

(I had argued, in “Poisoning Toads in the Dungeon: Threat as Theatre,” that Snape deliberately tried to give his students the impression that he had a taste for physical cruelty, so as to make his eventual “return” to Voldemort seem supported by hope for gratification as well as self-interest. You know, the whole “I would totally be poisoning children’s pets for fun, but my mean headmaster won’t let me get away with too much. Pout. When YOU take over, YOU’’ll indulge my evil tastes, my Lord, won’t you?” schtick.)

But we know for sure that some of those sent to (or threatened with) Azkaban for supporting Voldemort were never accused of committing violent crimes: Rookwood and Bagman were accused of passing on information; Mulciber, of using the Imperius. (Yes, I do agree that the Imperius is mental violence and violation, even worse than mind-raping one’s own parents, and that it deserves to be an Unforgivable. Mulciber earned Azkaban, fair and square, I’m not arguing that. But I’d point out that any parent of a toddler could occasionally muster an impressively strong desire to just MAKE THE KID OBEY FOR ONCE, and that it’s a far stretch from that to mustering the will to cause excruciating agony, permanent physical damage, and death.)

Then there’s Lucius. We saw that Lucius Malfoy, in the fight at the MoM, could order people to kill kids if they felt it “necessary,” but he himself could do no more than wrestle with Harry and make empty threats. (Or, at least, Harry’s famous gut instinct considered them empty. None of Lucius’s threats inclined Harry in the least to obey; but when Bella, NOT on Lucius’s orders, Cruciated Neville and threatened to repeat it, Harry did decide to give her the Prophecy. Only then at the very instant he started to obey her, Jo had the cavalry show up…)

And we saw that Lucius’s version of “torturing Muggles” consisted, not of the Cruciatus, nor of rape or mutilation, but of Levicorpus: the same spell that much of the Hogwarts student body considered good clean fun when used publicly by James on Severus. Indeed, that was, if Lupin may be believed, used by (and on) everybody who was anybody: “There were a few months in my fifth year when you couldn’t move for being hoisted in the air by your ankle.” (HBP, 16)

So, no, not all of Voldemort’s followers were natural or induced sadists. And even Harry noticed that those who were not, did not enjoy what they were ordered to do by Riddle and obeyed only under severe compulsion. Indeed, we’re rather given to understand, in that scene in DH where Draco was ordered to Cruciate Rowle, that Voldemort was deliberately going for a twofer: that he was torturing Thorfinn physically and Draco psychologically.

*

Finally, consider Regulus, almost brave enough in the end to be a Gryffindor like his brother.

Rowling gave us Regulus Black’s final epitaph in Kreacher’s battle cry (DH, 36): “Fight for my Master, defender of house-elves! Fight the Dark Lord, in the name of brave Regulus!”

Except, of course, Regulus hadn’t defended Kreacher. He’d handed his slave obediently over to his own master, and then got in a snit when he found out his dependent had been misused.

Here’s Jodel again on Regulus (after pointing out that Regulus could as easily have ordered Kreacher to bring him home—or at least try to do so!—after the locket substitution as have ordered Kreacher explicitly to leave Regulus to die):

And then how is a deliberate suicide supposed to square with his “screw you” note in which he boasts that he had destroyed the real Horcrux? As it now turns out, he evidently never even intended to make an attempt at its actual destruction. He left Kreachur holding the bag and simply intended to be dead. Unnecessarily!

We are left having to conclude that Regulus must have deliberately killed himself just to get free of Riddle’s service.

Without having ever had any real intention of personally striking a conclusive blow against Riddle which would do him some actual damage, regardless of what he spouted off about the matter.

It was an empty boast. The boy died a liar and a braggart. So much for “brave Regulus”. It was clearly easier for him to face death than to face Tom. Or even to make an attempt to destroy the Horcrux once he stole it.

http://www.redhen-publications.com/Horcrux.html


Think back, now, to the standard way that most slaveholding societies acquired new slaves: warfare Prisoners of war. A brave warrior would die in battle rather than let himself be taken. A brave warrior’s woman would kill herself first. So only cowards would let themselves live on to be enslaved.

See?

So if you live on to be enslaved, that’s the proof that you deserve to be a slave. (Just ask Aristototle.) If you were truly courageous, a true Gryffindor, you’d die first.

Voldemort’s attack on Regulus’s slave made Regulus realize his own condition of servitude. And what Regulus did then was NOT to turn spy or start smuggling Muggle-borns to safety or to publicize that Voldemort was indulging in actual EVIL (not just Dark Arts) or to reveal Tom’s Muggle ancestry or otherwise do anything that might do real damage to Tom or to his cause.

No, Regulus caused his elf to hijack the Horcrux—with orders which the elf couldn’t fulfill to destroy the thing.

*

It is attested to in canon, after all, that the locket was in fact as safe at Grimmauld Place as in that cave.

Safer, even—no one looking for one of Tom’s Horcruxes would ever have reason to look in Grimmauld Place. In fact, the locket was thrown out as meaningless junk under Horcrux-hunting Dumbledore’s very nose!

No, Regulus made a Gryffindorish gesture of empty defiance—that could be known only after he was safely dead, yet!—and died.

To repeat Jodel’s great insight,

We are left having to conclude that Regulus must have deliberately killed himself just to get free of Riddle’s service.

And that’s Jo’s POINT. That’s what MADE Regulus “brave”

See, there’s always an alternative to slavery. If you’re brave enough.

“Give me liberty or give me death!”

Or, in the words of the spiritual “O Freedom,” “And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave….”

Kill yourself. For no noticeable result, to no noticeable detriment to your enemies. Though it may have no other effect, it establishes past any doubt that you are someone who “WILL NOT BE ENSLAVED!”

So Regulus was, in the end, lauded. Not for what he accomplished, because he accomplished nothing, but for an utterly pointless gesture of defiance that resulted in his death. And therefore established his refusal to be a slave.

*

That the Death Eaters can be convincingly read as slaves makes them, as a group, more sympathetic to me—however little I agree with the political aspirations that presumably led to their original enslavement.

But Rowling, I think, had the opposite emotional reaction to mine. That she plausibly wrote the Death Eaters as slaves to a terrible master made them more, not less, contemptible in her eyes.

This is why Reggie, of all the canon Death Eaters, is lauded as “brave” by Jo. He chose death before dishonor.

And this is why Slytherins in general are so contemptible to JKR. Because “… given the choice, we [Slytherins] will always choose to save our own necks.” (Phineas, OotP, Chapter 23)

They (we) choose to save our own necks? We won’t die before submitting?

Possibly before regrouping to try to defeat the enemy by subterfuge?

*

We should, instead, be liars and braggarts, openly if emptily defying the enemy?

We should.

*

So we (`Slytherins) are natural slaves. We deserve what we get.

What they got.

Comments

Re: Child Abuse among the DEs

[oryx_leucoryx]

OTOH don't forget Milgram's work - across cultures, most people are willing to harm another out of obedience in response to markers of authority. It's rather depressing.

Re: Child Abuse among the DEs

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, there is also that. But why does it have to be one or the other? My take is that the two dynamics worked together in the particular case of Nazi Germany.