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terri-testing.livejournal.comMadderbrad 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 )
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 )
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