deathtocapslock | Harry Potter and the Death Cult

sweettalkeress.livejournal.com posting in

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.

Current Mood: contemplative

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dungeonwriter.livejournal.com

I think that was when HP lost me. I hate the trope of a woman being too selfish to live for her children. All I could imagine was being cold, and hungry and tired and pregnant and abandoned and in a time where an abandoned woman with child was a slut and should be shamed. Let's not forget that just across the sea in Ireland, women could be put in a workhouse prison for the crime of fornication. She has no life skills, no family and no medical care.

Yet she dragged her dying self to a place where her baby could be safe. May I be granted that courage in the face of adversity in life.

"Merope chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother's courage"

Up yours, you evil mansplainer. Merope had more courage and strength than you could possibly imagine. I'd love to see Lily deal with being poor, abandoned, shamed and desperately ill, and see how much courage she'd have.

That is just vicious. An actress I very much admired, Michal Friedman died from complications from childbirth. She was a strong amazing woman and I imagine she fought like hell to live. Unfortunately, we are mortal.

I understand losing a mother is traumatic, but people suffering from illnesses often want to live very badly, and blaming them for dying is blaming the victim in the most pure sense possible.

From:

sunnyskywalker

Given her upbringing, just finding out that Muggles even had places to care for orphans where she could go must have taken some doing. She was in a strange city, in a strange culture, and due to her appearance, poverty, and condition might not gotten unfriendly receptions from many people she asked for help, but she persisted until she found somewhere Tom could be safe and cared for.

And I still have no idea why Dumbledore thinks she chose to die. Mrs. Cole surely would have mentioned if Merope died for no apparent reason, so it probably looked like a normal fatal childbirth. Could your average witch on the street stop herself from hemorrhaging while, you know, hemorrhaging and starving and not being good at doing magic under pressure in the first place? That has nothing to do with courage. In the "didn't try to save herself" contest, Lily seems more culpable to me; you'd think having emergency Portkeys to different places all around the house just in case would be a gimme, and she had the time, talent, and energy to set that up, but was there a Portkey in the nursery, or in a pouch around her neck?

I wonder if this is some weird unconscious reaction to her own mother's death. I'm sure if you asked her, she knows that her mother couldn't have helped dying of a fatal condition, but feeling abandoned anyway is a common human reaction. I don't know what Dumbledore's excuse is, though. Unless he's deliberately picking the interpretation he thinks Harry should hear for some reason.

From:

oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Don't forget, poor widdle Alby wost his mummy, too. Kendra selfishly allowed herself to be killed by her nutty daughter, so poor Alby was stuck caring for his younger siblings, instead of going off and having the Brilliant Career he was obviously fated for before that.

Come to think of it, there are a lot of instances in the Potterverse of parents dying for or because of their children. The rate is much higher than in the normal, modern-day population of a developed country. I wonder if JKR feels some weird, subconscious guilt about her mother's death?

From:

sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

Maybe Albus still has issues with losing his own mother and so he transfers them onto other mothers (save for Harry's since he wants to curry favor with him anyway). It would fit in perfectly with his character, since he seems to want to warp everything to his own view of the world.

Harry Potter and the Death Cult

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