Harry Potter and the Death Cult

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So recently I was reading this (actually really excellent) Pokemon fanfic, which appears to have been an attempt to iron out a rather confusing Pokedex entry. Basically, the fanfic revolves around the idea that a certain species of Pokemon has a custom that all young male members of the community must kill their own mothers as a rite of passage. Anyone who can’t do it is disgraced and treated as vermin for the rest of his life- failure to kill your own mother is considered a sign of despicable cowardice. The more I thought about this fic, the more I realized that there’s a similar parallel in Harry Potter- except that instead of the message being, “If you’re truly a real man and worthy of belonging, you’ll kill your own family on instruction,” it’s “If you’re truly brave, a true Gryffindor, you’ll kill yourself on instruction.”
 
In Harry Potter we see characters committing ritual suicide on just about any pretext. We see people kill themselves to protect their family (Lily and James), to escape a bad boss (Regulus), as a strategic ploy (Dumbledore), and even to vanquish their enemies (Harry). Granted, it’s quite possible that these people were better off dead than otherwise, given the circumstances; but still, it does seem to be a pattern.
 
Consider the fate of Lily Potter nee Evans. She dies to protect her son, and in doing so, grants him special love protection. Now, it’s stressed again and again that Lily’s sacrifice was so noble and granted Harry the protection specifically because Voldemort offered her a choice about whether or not to live. And it was noble of her to die for her child- but it also established a pattern that the books’ attitudes towards death reinforce: if you’re in big enough trouble, trouble you can’t escape from any other way, die. Preferably as prettily and dramatically as you can manage.
 
Then there’s Regulus. There was another essay on here in which someone, I think it was Terri Testing, puts it out there that Regulus’s search for Slytherin’s locket was not to have the locket destroyed, but to, effectively, commit ritual suicide rather than serve Voldemort any longer. And for this the heroes emphatically reward him.
 
Now consider Peter Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew is easily one of the most confusing characters Harry Potter ever gave us. He’s pretty much the only Gryffindor who’s never presented in a remotely positive light (at least not once his identity becomes known). The main reason given for this (both by the author and her fans) is that he’s a coward who betrayed Lily and James rather than be killed by Voldemort (granted, we don’t actually know how much of this is true, since the evidence of his cowardice is rather conflicting and since we never get his side of the story- just the main characters’ assumptions). Tellingly, when Sirius confronts him, he specifically goes out of his ways to say that, had Sirius been in his situation, he would have willingly died rather than betray his friends (the fact that Peter easily would have been better off dead than with Voldemort is largely beside the point here, since it’s only DE’s, and never anyone who could be counted among the “good guys” who serve Voldemort out of fear).
 
And then there’s Phineas Nigellus, who makes the statement about Slytherins choosing to save their own necks. This in and of itself is taken as reason to regard Slytherins as contemptible cravens- they won’t kill themselves for any greater good they can come up with (and you could argue that one of the downsides of “ambition” is that you’re motivated to stay around and wait for things to turn in your favor, rather than the Gryffindorish “bravery” of permanently ending your problems through death).
 
To return to the fanfic I read earlier, like most pieces of media dealing with death cults from the inside, the fanfic mostly just illustrates how things are done- it doesn’t take a stance on the morality of the characters’ actions, and the narrator is genuinely conflicted about killing someone he loves so much- but not enough to stop himself from doing it. What makes Harry Potter’s death cult so freaky is that it really does seem as though suicide is treated, not merely as a cornerstone of wizarding culture but *objectively good and righteous.* Throughout the series we meet literally no suicide bombers among the villains (despite the fact that the DE’s are terrorists, and terrorists in the modern world are notorious for suicide bombing). No, the only suicide bomber we meet (so to speak) is Harry Potter- who’s supposed to be the hero we’re meant to admire!
 
So, yeah.

Comments

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Her dying ended up protecting her son, but since she realistically couldn't have foreseen this possibility

And I never understood how that ended up making her Saint Lily.
It was total happenstance.
I personally don't think it all that unlikely, that the conceited, self-righteous little braggart, we got to know in DH actually believed she and her baby might get away, just by her begging nicely enough.
Lily came off to me like a girl, who got her own way through her pretty looks and her charming vivaciousness all her life. She might have started to depend on it and the first time it didn't work out, she died.

But of course you're right: That whole thing did start a creepy trend (Or James did, since he died first) And Harry seems to be downright disturbed with his glorification of everybody dead.
Naming ALL his children after dead people, as one example of many.
Even Severus, who he hated and thought responsible for every bad thing that ever happened gets the dead = awesome treatment.
How sick is that?

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

And I never understood how that ended up making her Saint Lily.
It was total happenstance.

JKR herself shrugged off Lily's death by saying any mother would do that for her child. So much for St. Lily's Great Sacrifice.

I personally don't think it all that unlikely, that the conceited, self-righteous little braggart, we got to know in DH actually believed she and her baby might get away, just by her begging nicely enough.
Lily came off to me like a girl, who got her own way through her pretty looks and her charming vivaciousness all her life. She might have started to depend on it and the first time it didn't work out, she died.

I made this same point recently in one of the footnotes to an article I posted on Snapedom. I also suggested James may not have had his wand because he'd spent his whole life being rescued from the consequences of his own actions, so subconsciously he expected that to happen in this case, too.

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah. No wands. No emergency portkeys. No nothing.
They either had delusions of grandeur, were criminally stupid or wanted to die.
I couldn't believe James in the last book, I would have thought, 'You and what army will hold off Voldemort', even if he had been armed, but what he ended up doing was insane and not heroic to me.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

In these books, insanity usually equals heroism. At least if it's the right person doing it, I guess.

[oryx_leucoryx]

A pro-Rowling reader I more-or-less respected back in the day interpreted the lack of preparedness on the Potters' behalf as showing how much they trusted Peter, thus emphasizing his betrayal. But as Terri argued already, the Potters would ave been attacked sooner or later even if Peter had been loyal. Any Secret Keeper who was accessible to Tom and the DEs (and that includes someone in a 'normal' level of hiding, not enhanced by Fidelius or Hogwarts' protections) would have eventually given the Secret up to Tom's Legilimency or other magical means. So sorry, the Potters' complacence was not virtuous in any way.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, to me it seems like the same kind of heroism/stupidity that WWII era British people would have shown if, knowing that Germany was probably going to bomb them at some point, they had thrown themselves onto their kids to protect them, rather than, y'know, building a bomb shelter in the back yard. Heroic, I guess, but mostly just dumb and unnecessary.

Hope that isn't a really weird example...

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

Bomb shelters during WWII did not always guarantee survival:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-raid_shelter

Not every British family would have been able to afford one either.

Re: James and Lily's last stand, I was surprised and disappointed that JKR didn't write a more convincing faceoff between them and Voldemort, given that they're supposed to be such experienced Order fighters. James seems very unprepared and, frankly, clueless.

It seems a contradiction in the canon too because Voldemort tells Harry that 'your father fought bravely'. This is supposed to be a taunt. It would have been a more effective taunt, surely, if Voldemort had sneered at Harry about how young and inexperienced James was ... ouch!

[oryx_leucoryx]

Re: Bomb shelters: In Romania they had communal bomb shelters for each neighborhood. But my grandmother decided she couldn't spend so much time cooped up away from friends and relatives that lived in the next neighborhood over, so when the siren sounded she took her two kids - my mother in her arms and my uncle (who was 2 years older than my mother) running along - across a bridge and who knows how many streets to the other bomb shelter. And if a plane showed up while they were still on their way she told my uncle to jump into the craters left by previous bombs because no 2 bombs would fall into the exact same place. (To my grandmother's defense, she was forced to quit secondary education so she never learned probability and Bayes' theorem.)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected, though at least the article said that poor families were provided with shelters or communal options.

I guess my point is that it was silly for Lily and James to be unprepared when they had plenty of time to be and knew that he would eventually come for them. I just didn't make that point very well.

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Who thinks, James and Lily weren't complete dunderheads to trust Peter of all people with the secret, might want to look the word 'sycophant' up in a dictionary. Since OotP I don't believe the Potters or Sirius should get credit for being trusting friends either.
Or got Peter the hots for some redhead too and was supposed to have changed?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/No emergency portkeys./

Which kills me because even in a bad HP/Twilight crossover fanfic, the author put that option in. Yes, the fanfic is terrible and James and Lily still act stupidly during the night of Voldemort's attack, but at least the author wrote that Lily had transfigured one of the objects in the room (don't remember which one it was) into a Portkey, which is more than what Canon!Lily ever did.

/I couldn't believe James in the last book, I would have thought, 'You and what army will hold off Voldemort', even if he had been armed, but what he ended up doing was insane and not heroic to me./

I couldn't believe it either. Not only was James a pureblood (who must have been accustomed to having his wand at all times), but he was a *member of the Order.* And he *still* expected to be able to hold off Voldemort without a wand, never mind defeat him? And even Voldemort told Harry all the way back in the first book that James had put up a "courageous fight." How? How would James have been able to do that without a wand? Why would Voldemort call a guy rushing at him without a wand "courageous" instead of "stupid" and "reckless?"

[oryx_leucoryx]

Because to Voldemort they are the same? Terri's explanation is the best (so far?) - he was trying to get Harry off guard by telling him something about his parents that Harry would find admirable. This allowed Quirrell to sneak to up close to Harry and block his only escape. (The improvised plan was to use Harry to get the Stone since Quirrell had failed to do so himself. Thus killing Harry on the spot was not yet an option.)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

but at least the author wrote that Lily had transfigured one of the objects in the room (don't remember which one it was) into a Portkey, which is more than what Canon!Lily ever did.

And in The Prince's Tale we see 9 y.o. Lily has the ability to fly without a broom, or at least float for an extended period of time before landing lightly.

So we know adult Lily should have been able to grab her child and jump out of the window, fly/float to the ground and then apparate to both of them to safety.

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I'd have preferred it if JKR had written the scene that way. Then, just as Lily is about to Apparate away with baby Harry, Voldy appears and halts her (magically - c'mon, he's a Dark Lord, he could magic up some way to stop her).

That would have heightened the drama, tension and pathos, IMO.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Baa...who needs more drama, tension and pathos when there are angry chest monsters. =p Angry chest monster trumps everything doesn't it?

So anytime we complain about something in the plot not being cool, everyone can just say, but there is an angry chest monster in Harry's chest.

All our arguments are then rendered pointless.

However we never got to hear about what Snape's angry chest monster was like. I bet if we did, it would have been way more awesome.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/And I never understood how that ended up making her Saint Lily./

Exactly. So she sacrificed herself for her child. So did the German woman in DH. I don't see anybody singing her praises, though.

/It was total happenstance./

That's why I still don't understand how her sacrifice worked or why it was such a big deal. If Lily had fully known about the results of her sacrifice, if she had deliberately planned to destroy Voldemort that way and thus save her child, yes, then it would have made sense. But all that we see in HP leads to the conclusion that it was a gut reaction on her part. She didn't expect to destroy Voldemort. She was just trying to protect Harry, even though her death would mean that Voldemort would have one less obstacle to prevent him from killing Harry.

The whole reason why Harry survived and Voldemort died, the whole reason why Harry is called the Boy Who Lived and is treated as the Chosen One...and it was all because of an accident? I remember when Voldemort was ranting at Harry in DH about the accidents that had saved him by that point. Maybe he should have included Lily's sacrifice as an accident, too. Because as much as he reproaches himself in GoF about not remembering about the "ancient magic" that Lily's sacrifice triggered, it seems like Lily didn't know about it either.

[detritius.livejournal.com]

Back in the early books, I thought that Lily's sacrifice and the ancient magic it invoked would end up having something to do with the skill with Charms we were told she had. On a reread of POA, I came up with a theory that her saying stuff like "Kill me, not Harry" was somehow binding Voldemort to some kind of magical contract - and thus, when he killed her, it made it impossible for him to kill Harry because of Lily's charm/spell. Then it would make more sense that this had never happened before; Lily may not have been the first mother to die for her child, but she was the first that anyone knew of to combine that sacrifice with powerful ancient magic. The idea that there was any plan or strategy at all was really shot to hell by DH, though. I think showing that flashback and therefore destroying so many possible interpretations of what happened that night was one of the biggest mistakes Rowling made in DH, and that's saying something.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----The idea that there was any plan or strategy at all was really shot to hell by DH, though.

Since we see the scene from Tom's perspective, maybe we can imagine that Lily had some kind of plan or strategy that Tom wasn't aware of.

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Back in the early books, I thought that Lily's sacrifice and the ancient magic it invoked would end up having something to do with the skill with Charms we were told she had.

That is one of the reasons, why I can't stand Lily anymore.(And I wanted to like her. I really, really did *sob*) I expected a clever young witch tricking an evil wizard into letting her baby live.
Instead I got Miss Clueless and Hysterical. And in the end it was Severus who started the whole sacrificial magic hulla-bulla thingy. Hadn't he asked for Lily's life, she would have just died and that would have been it.