Deathly Hallows, Chapter 10: Kreacher's Tale

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Author’s note: This installment contains spoilers for the second season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called “Lie to Me.”

It also becomes obvious at the end that sporking this book was beginning to wear on me emotionally.

I loved the summary Dan Hemmens came up with for this chapter: “In which we are told firmly that Sirius black was NOT GAY.” (Emphasis his.)

The next morning, Harry wakes up before Ron and Hermione. As he lies there, the first of his doubts about Dumbledore surface. He actually wonders if Albus was on the same moral level as Dudley, i.e., able to shrug off the abuse of others, as long as he wasn’t suffering himself. Hey, why not, Harry? Most of the people in my family are experts at that. I know that must be a lot more common than anyone wants to acknowledge.

Harry wonders about the Godric’s Hollow connection and starts to feel resentment at all the unanswered questions Albus left behind: What’s the purpose of those objects he left them in the will? Why didn’t Dumbledore explain himself more clearly, or for that matter at all? Did he really care about Harry, or was Harry just one more tool in the master manipulator’s hands, to be used and thrown away?

I can answer those questions, Harry. Respectively, the answers are: You’ll find out eventually, but the solution is not nearly as interesting as either you or we might hope. Because he didn’t give a rat’s ass whether anybody else understood or approved of his plans and actions, and he thought he was so Super!Awesome!Wonderful!Magnificent! that he didn’t have to explain himself to lesser beings such as yourself. No, he didn’t care, and yes, you were and are just a tool.

Harry can’t stand lying there thinking “bitter thoughts.” Poor Harry. He’s stuck in a very sick book series that will never allow him or anyone else to be a fully developed, emotionally mature human being. If he hadn’t already turned his back on the normal, I mean “muggle” world, he could watch the sublime TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and understand what he’s going through.

In early November 1997, the masterpiece episode “Lie to Me” ran (written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon). In it, Buffy’s old friend Ford suddenly arrives in town. She’s just happy to see him, but fortunately for her, her friends are not so sanguine. It turns out Ford is dying of a brain tumor, and he’s made a deal with the local vampire gang to hand Buffy over to them on the condition they give him eternal life by turning him into a vampire. Buffy escapes, and at the end of the episode, she and her Watcher (advisor and mentor), Giles, are in the cemetery waiting for Ford to rise from his grave. The following is quoted from a fan made transcript I found on the Internet.

Dissolve to the cemetery. Buffy has tears in her eyes as she lays a bouquet of red roses on Ford's grave. She stands up again and walks back to Giles.

Buffy: I don't know what I'm supposed to say.

Giles: You needn't say anything.

Buffy: It'd be simpler if I could just hate him. I think he wanted me to. I think it made it easier for him to be the villain of the piece. Really he was just scared.

Giles: Yes, I suppose he was.

Buffy: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get.

Giles: I believe that's called growing up.

Buffy: I'd like to stop then, okay?

Giles: I know the feeling.

Buffy: Does it ever get easy?

Ford suddenly rises from his grave, a vampire just like he wanted, and attacks Buffy. She plunges a stake into his heart with no more effort than swatting a fly. He steps back and looks at the stake protruding from his chest. He looks back up and bursts into ashes.

Giles: You mean life?

Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?

Giles: What do you want me to say?

Buffy: Lie to me.

Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Buffy: Liar.

That’s the difference between Buffy and Harry. Harry starts having questions and experiencing doubts about “the wizard he had idolized,” and he thinks he’s being bitter. No, he’s being honest. He’s thinking for himself. He’s doing what adults are supposed to do: examine the evidence, deal with reality, and form an opinion of their own.

By contrast, the message of the HP series lies in Giles’s last lines: Everything is simple, with clear cut distinctions between good and evil. There’s no need to examine the evidence or think for yourself because the answers never change, and everything you need to know will be told to you by the appropriate authority figure. If you are kept ignorant, it’s for your own good. Asking questions or thinking for yourself are things only bad, disobedient people do. I’ll get into this subject in much more detail in chapter 18.

Back to the story:

Harry gets up and goes upstairs to see whether he can find anything useful to his Horcrux hunt in the bedrooms. As he looks at the messy rooms, he realizes somebody has already been searching the house, but who and for what? As he looks over Sirius’s former bedroom, he notices Sirius had been a typical teenager, i.e., the room had been decorated with the intention of really pissing off his parents.

Harry sees a picture of MWPP from their Hogwarts days, and the description of it shows Harry is still idealizing his father’s gang, the “much-admired rebels.” Admired by whom? Leaving Snape out of it entirely, I can recall no reference at all in the previous books to anyone’s admiring this bunch of bullies and sycophants. Harry again shows one of those [to him] uncomfortable and [to us] delightful and reassuring flashes of maturity and independence by wondering whether his assessment of the picture is accurate, or whether he is deceiving himself.

He also comes across a motorcycle maintenance manual, as if any self-respecting wizard would “go slumming” by doing repair work by hand, like one of those lowly muggles!

The most interesting thing he finds is--gasp!--a letter from Lily to Sirius! I found it fascinating, too, but not for the reasons Harry did, or we are supposed to as readers, i.e, because it foreshadows The Truth about Dumbledore!!! This is what set me thinking: (1) I noticed Lily has the same irritating habit of writing run-on sentences that J K Rowling does. Take a look at this nightmare: “One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I’m enclosing a picture so you can see.” Yes, that is a direct quote. (2) Lily has the same mean sense of humor her husband does: She thinks it’s funny Harry broke a vase Petunia gave them and nearly killed their cat while riding his broom. (3) Apropos of this, we never hear of any present Lily gave Petunia. Clearly, despite her “anti-freak” attitudes, Petunia tried to maintain her relationship with Lily by giving her presents. St. Lily is the one who treats Petunia’s sisterly affection like a joke, attacking her with magic and laughing when her gifts are destroyed. (Cue “Easy to Be Hard”) (4) Lily “cried all evening” when she found out the McKinnons were killed by DEs. Self-indulgent wimp! Everybody knows real women never cry for more than twenty minutes over anything! Probably “tears dripped from the end of her [dainty] nose” as she blubbered. Maybe she should have married fellow crybaby Snivellus Snape. Then they and their whiny kids could all have sat around blubbering together. (5) Bathilda Bagshot is a frequent visitor to the Potters. Remember her? She’s the one who knows all about the Dumbledores. She’s obviously shared some “inconvenient [for Albus] truths” because Lily doesn’t think he’d be happy if he knew what they’d heard. How much does anyone want to bet the Potters, blabbermouth Gryffindors that they were, told Albus all about Bathilda’s bean-spilling when he visited? They probably treated it like a big joke, just like they did most serious subjects. How unfortunate that they just happened to end up dead shortly after becoming “the family that knew too much.” Such untimely ends also serve as object lessons for others who might be inclined to talk, such as Bathilda herself. Once she became apparently senile, Albus had plausible deniability, so what she said no longer mattered.

Come to think of it...that “senility” was remarkably, ah, convenient, wasn’t it? It’s obvious Scumbledore decided Bathilda also “knew too much” and wanted to silence her. However, because she was an elderly noncombatant, not to mention well-known and -respected, killing her was more problematic than getting rid of the Potters, who were on active duty, if in hiding. But Bagshot’s age provided Albus with a ready-made out, allowing him to claim his mind-rape of her was just age-related mental deterioration. Given his immense power and skill as a wizard, he could even have made the mental damage appear gradual and natural, thus ensuring for himself the appearance of innocence.

After reading Lily’s letter, Harry goes numb, then feels “joy and grief...in equal measure.” He picks up on the reference to the borrowed invisibility cloak and realizes, “There was something funny there...” (Ellipses in original) Gee, ya think? Particularly when he recalls Scumbledore telling him, “I don’t need a cloak to become invisible.” Harry tries to come up with an explanation for this that doesn’t make his idol look bad. Yeah, keep trying, you poor, deluded kid.

Harry looks for the rest of the letter but instead finds only most of the photo referenced in it. Hermione finds him, and he tells her about his wish to visit Godric’s Hollow to talk to Bathilda, as well as what Muriel told him at the wedding. He’s had doubts planted in his mind by Rita Skeeter and Auntie Muriel, and he hopes Bagshot can give him the truth. Hermione acts like the good little suck up to authority figures that she is and tries to beat back Harry’s doubts, insisting Rita and Muriel are just malicious gossips, and laying a guilt trip on Harry by whining, “Doge was right, how can you let these people tarnish your memories of Dumbledore?” In other words, Harry knew Dumbledore, and that’s all he needs to know. That reminds me of the sappy song, “Don’t Know Much” (written by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, and Tom Snow):

I don’t know much,

But I know I love you.

That may be all I need to know.

I don’t know much,

But I know I love you.

That may be all there is to know.

Maybe that slop should be renamed, “The Good German Theme Song.” The attitude that “my feelings are all that matter, the facts can go hang, especially if they make me feel bad” is textbook codependent, enabler thinking. It’s the passive evil that allows active evil to wreak havoc on the world.

To his great credit, Harry does not allow himself to be dissuaded by Hermione. “He looked away, trying not to betray the resentment he felt. There it was again: Choose what to believe. He wanted the truth. Why was everybody so determined that he should not get it?”

I can answer that, Harry. They’re afraid, for you and for themselves. They’re mainly afraid the truth is so horrible that if you find it out, you’ll pull the plug on Dumbledore’s puppet master manipulations of your life. Then you’d do one of two things they’d consider disastrous: (1) Say, “Screw this ‘chosen one’ crap, I’m outta here,” and abandon your “destiny,” thus forcing them to deal with Voldemort themselves. (2) Continue with your “destiny,” but make up your own plan that of course won’t work as well as Albus’s, and fail to vanquish Voldemort. Hah, hah, little do they know that Albus didn’t know what he was doing, either, so following his plan won’t work any better than what Harry would have come up with himself.

They’re also afraid of the truth themselves. They’re terrified they’ve been worshipping a false idol all these years, and if Harry confronts the truth about Dumbledore, they’ll have to, also. Most people are such moral and emotional cowards, they’ll do anything to avoid facing the ugly truth about one of their idols. Only the very mature and courageous can handle the reality of a loved and admired person as a deeply flawed human being.

Hermione cleverly distracts Harry by suggesting they go get breakfast. She’s been around teenage boys enough to know they’re always hungry, so this ruse will usually work.

As they pass by Regulus’s bedroom, Harry notices the sign on the door and shows Hermione. She calls Ron upstairs, and they all enter the bedroom. It’s a shrine to Slytherin, including articles about Voldemort clustered on the wall. “A little puff of dust rose from the bedcovers as [Hermione] sat down to read the clippings.” Fortunately, this dust did not resolve itself into a Dust Bunny from Hell, or their search for the locket would have ended then and there. Harry sees a Hogwarts Quidditch team photo with Regulus in the front row. Of course, being a slimy Slytherin, he is a smaller, skinnier, and less attractive version of his brother, Super!Awesome!Cool!Gryffindor! Sirius. Their search of the bedroom for the locket is in vain.

Then they remember that when they were cleaning all the “junk” out of the house two years ago, they threw out a locket. Harry remembers that Kreacher kept some of the discards, so he invades the elf’s privacy by going through his personal property. The locket isn’t there, but Kreacher tells them that’s because Mundungus Fletcher stole it and fenced it. They learn the whole sorry story of the locket: Voldemort borrowed Kreacher from Regulus and took the elf to the cave by the sea. He then ordered Kreacher to drink the potion in the basin so Voldy could hide the locket there. (Which raises the question: Why didn’t Voldy just bring the locket and the potion to the cave together, then put the locket in the basin before putting the potion in it? Wouldn’t that have been a lot less trouble?) Voldy left Kreacher to die, not realizing an elf could Apparate out when a wizard or witch couldn’t. Ron gets a brief moment in the sun as he points out this magical difference.

Hermione pretends to be enlightened as she expresses contempt for the Dull Lord, saying, “...Voldemort would have considered the ways of house elves far beneath his notice...It would never have occurred to him that they might have magic that he didn’t.” Oh, like the way Hermione considered the ways of her highly educated professional parents beneath her notice when she decided for them that they needed to leave the country? Of course, they didn’t have magic, so I guess that makes it all right. *eye roll*

It’s been said that the reason Regulus left the DEs is because he didn’t approve of Voldy’s treatment of Kreacher, but that’s not what the text says. It says he was “very worried” when he found out what had happened to the elf and told Kreacher to stay hidden in the house. Then one night shortly after, he came to Kreacher “disturbed in his mind” and asked the elf to take him to the cave. Yes, Regulus apparently didn’t like what had happened to Kreacher, but there’s no indication a connection exists between that disapproval and his mental disturbance afterward. It’s also possible, even likely, he had experienced something in his duties as a DE that had put him off the organization. For example, he may have thought torturing and killing mudbloods and muggles sounded like great fun--until he actually had to do it. Then the blood and screaming may have gotten to him and convinced him this wasn’t a group whose aims he could support. Or he could have put an experience with the DEs together with the abuse of Kreacher and decided to leave. There is no clear indication about what happened to turn him against Voldemort.

Kreacher tells the Trio he took Regulus to the cave, where his master drank the potion, then gave the locket to Kreacher and ordered him to destroy it. The elf was permanently traumatized when he “disobeyed” his master by being unable to carry out this order.

Hermione tries to comfort him with a hug, but Kreacher says he can’t allow a mudblood to touch him. Harry reminds Kreacher he’d been ordered not to use that word, so the elf starts banging his head on the floor in self-punishment. Hypocrite Hermione shrieks, “Stop him--stop him! Oh, don’t you see how sick it is, the way they’ve got to obey?” OH, YOU MEAN LIKE YOUR PARENTS HAD TO OBEY WHEN YOU STOLE THEIR IDENTITIES AND SHIPPED THEM TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD? SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP, YOU EVIL, LYING, SANCTIMONIOUS SACK OF SHIT!

So help me GOD, I am sick of the raging hypocrisy and dishonesty in this book, and this whole damned SERIES!

Hermione lectures Harry some more about poor, suffering Kreacher: Sirius was mean to him, so it was perfectly reasonable for the elf to betray Sirius and do the bidding of Narcissa and Bellatrix because they were nice to him. Oh, you mean like St. Albus Dumbledore was mean to Severus Snape, so Snape joined the Death Eaters because they were nice to him? Of course, that’s totally different, isn’t it? GRRRRRRR.

Harry asks Kreacher to find Mundungus, and then gives him the fake locket Regulus left in the basin. The creates another Kreacher collapse as he is overcome with the honor of having his very own (phony) Black family treasure.

Jeez! I just about had a collapse sporking this chapter! The next one better be easier, or I may be too traumatized to continue. >:-(

Comments

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

"Hermione lectures Harry some more about poor, suffering Kreacher: Sirius was mean to him, so it was perfectly reasonable for the elf to betray Sirius and do the bidding of Narcissa and Bellatrix because they were nice to him. Oh, you mean like St. Albus Dumbledore was mean to Severus Snape, so Snape joined the Death Eaters because they were nice to him? Of course, that’s totally different, isn’t it? GRRRRRRR."

When I first read this particular line of Hermione's I thought it was well-done because it presented the idea that the Slytherins may have actually done some good for someone (that is, Kreacher) even if they were otherwise racist. I didn't see it as an inconsistency with Dumbledore's treatment of Snape because I thought it was meant to suggest genuine moral complexity. Of course, since nothing else in this story is remotely complex....

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

It also becomes obvious at the end that sporking this book was beginning to wear on me emotionally.
It would wear on anyone. Some of the old deadlyhollow sporkers made it to the ends of single chapters only by taxing their sanity to the limit.

YOU MEAN LIKE YOUR PARENTS HAD TO OBEY WHEN YOU STOLE THEIR IDENTITIES AND SHIPPED THEM TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD? SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP, YOU EVIL, LYING, SANCTIMONIOUS SACK OF SHIT!

So help me GOD, I am sick of the raging hypocrisy and dishonesty in this book, and this whole damned SERIES!
I love you. You're holding up better than I once did, though. *offers Cadbury eggs*

I actually find Hermione's preaching here absolutely sickening because it implies that Kreacher is incapable of moral reasoning beyond "people who are nice to him". He comes off here, and always comes off, as being devoted to the Blacks because he genuinely admires them, not because he's a simpleton who equates "nice" with "good". That's Harry! A woman who beheaded her House-Elves for kicks was OBVIOUSLY not 100% nice.

(It also seems clear to me, just from Kreacher's behavior and what he says later, that Kreacher actually only gets much nicer towards Harry and the rest because they're fulfilling Regulus's last wishes. He certainly doesn't command the House-Elves of Hogwarts to fight in the name of Master Harry. Once Voldemort's gone? I wouldn't be surprised if he tricks Harry into giving him clothes and takes off for Malfoy Manor... So the assumption that "niceness" here has anything to do with Kreacher's conversion is B.S. How unsurprising.)

Sorry. This has been one of my major beefs with DH at the start. My apologies for going off on a tangent in a comment to your post. :\

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Admired by whom? Leaving Snape out of it entirely, I can recall no reference at all in the previous books to anyone’s admiring this bunch of bullies and sycophants./

Well, McGonagall, Hagrid, and Fudge have all spoken well of James respectively throughout the series, but, as other people have pointed out, James and Lily are dead and their child is the Boy Who Lived, so people have good reason to not want to speak ill of them.

/despite her “anti-freak” attitudes, Petunia tried to maintain her relationship with Lily by giving her presents. St. Lily is the one who treats Petunia’s sisterly affection like a joke/

I guess that the reason why we’re not supposed to see this as self-absorbed or mean on Lily’s part is that we’re meant to laugh along with her. We all know how nasty Petunia is, so any joke on her is automatically just desserts. But you’re right, if Petunia really was that nasty and anti-magical, a better way to show the rift between her and Lily would be to show Petunia severing all contact with Lily after she married James. There wouldn’t be any presents from Petunia, because Petunia would have stopped speaking to Lily.

/Oh, like the way Hermione considered the ways of her highly educated professional parents beneath her notice when she decided for them that they needed to leave the country?/

Not to mention that this mistake of Voldemort’s is brought up again by Dumbledore during the King’s Cross chapter. We’re apparently supposed to look down on Voldemort for overlooking house elves, even though everyone in the wizarding world does. Umm, Hermione? Did you forget that he grew up in the Muggle world and that his first exposure to house elves was probably seeing them and thinking, “What the heck are these things?” and then having wizards explain to him that they were basically servants to be knocked around at will and seeing that claim supported by the elves’ nonstop, cringing subservience? Gee, I wonder why Voldemort, the psychopathic megalomaniac who doesn’t like Muggles or Muggle-borns (or anyone really), doesn’t care about house elves. Maybe it’s because nobody else does.

/Hermione lectures Harry some more about poor, suffering Kreacher: Sirius was mean to him, so it was perfectly reasonable for the elf to betray Sirius and do the bidding of Narcissa and Bellatrix because they were nice to him. Oh, you mean like St. Albus Dumbledore was mean to Severus Snape, so Snape joined the Death Eaters because they were nice to him? Of course, that’s totally different, isn’t it?/

I agree with guardians_song that Kreacher’s behavior doesn’t support Hermione’s claim that he only reacts to people based on how they treat him. In fact, Hermione looks downright naive since this is the house elf who keeps calling her “Mudblood” after all (and, funnily enough, nowhere in the series has she argued that Draco, another character who’s constantly called her Mudblood, is just acting as he is because he doesn’t know any better). Ironically, Hermione’s attempts to reach out to Kreacher only serve to demean him. Because what does she end up saying here? “Oh, no, Harry, don’t hold Kreacher accountable for his words and actions. It’s not like he came up with them himself or anything. No, no, it’s all of his master’s fault because Kreacher only reflects what his masters think and do. Not what he, independently, thinks. He’s incapable of forming his own opinion and sticking by it, which is why he’ll change his tune in a hurry once you’re nice to him. Just ignore all of his rants of ‘Mudblood,’ he doesn’t really mean it.” In a way, it’s rather condescending. Perhaps the reason why the Snape comparison isn’t meant to be evoked (besides the obvious reasons) is because Snape is human and, as such, it’s rightly expected that his decisions and beliefs are his own. Kreacher isn’t, so his decisions and beliefs are roughly given the same amount of consideration as those of a small child. So, really, Hermione doesn't come any closer to understanding Kreacher than Voldemort did.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Regarding what Regulus was thinking:

- When Kreacher returned and reported what happened in the cave he was worried and wanted Kreacher to stay hidden. OK, he knew Voldemort expected Kreacher to be dead, hence the hiding. If the worry was about what he saw as a DE then it was something new. Regulus was not worried when he ordered Kreacher to obey Voldemort. He was honored to volunteer Kreacher. I think this happened during a school break, possibly the summer of 1979. Until then, from the time the DE activity started escalating Regulus was at school and didn't get a chance to see it first hand.
Alternatively, Regulus was worried that Voldemort was capable of hurting the families of his supporters, as he just demonstrated with Kreacher.
Or - perhaps Regulus was worried that Voldemort went into so much trouble to protect a locket - what was so special about it? What was the significance of hiding it?

- The mental disturbance was because Regulus decided to commit suicide by inferi. And we know he found out that the locket was a Horcrux (but not how to destroy one, alas). Why did he want to die? Either because he realized death was his only escape from being forced to obey Voldemort, or because it was the only way he saw to destroy his Dark Mark (Terri proposed the Mark might have allowed Voldemort to bypass the Black family's protections).

Which raises the question: Why didn’t Voldy just bring the locket and the potion to the cave together, then put the locket in the basin before putting the potion in it? Wouldn’t that have been a lot less trouble?

Jodel proposed that the potion normally flowed (slowly) from a magical fountain into the basin. We know that Harry and Dumbledore left the basin empty, yet Tom found it full when he eventually came to check on it. And it filled up on its own after Regulus and Kreacher emptied it. Voldemort only needed to add potion this time because he wanted the basin to fill up quickly after being emptied.

[dreamingjewel.livejournal.com]

Harry also makes his choices on how he is treated. The Dursleys are abusive so he dislikes them. Dumbledore pretends to be nice and caring so Harry likes him.
Harry at first is too young to figure out there's a price for this kindness. I think we sometimes forget in these discussions that we are talking about children and the morality, or lack thereof reflect the adults who surround them.
Yes, young people can rise above crappy families, but they usually need someone to help guide them on a better path. Who did Snape or Harry have,really?
The way the Dursleys treated Harry, if the Malfoys had a little ingenuity and shown kindness they could have walked off with Harry.
The pull yourself up by your bootstraps bullshit Rowling tries to put across doesn't wash. All children need a safe environment to thrive.
Neither Snape nor Harry had safe environments, and both were seduced by grown men with their own agenda.Two sides of the same coin. I don't completely excuse Hermione of her excesses, but she is practically patted on the back for reprehensible behavior.In fact all horrible behavior is excused if the side of so-called light does it.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes, young people can rise above crappy families, but they usually need someone to help guide them on a better path. Who did Snape or Harry have,really?

I totally agree with you. In fact, I agree with pretty much everything you say. That is why so many of us are so critical of Dumbledore: he offered these boys no moral guidance and no emotional support. BUT-

The text does seem to present Dumbledore, uncritically, as a good man who truly reformed from his bad past. I somehow get the strong impression that we are supposed to criticize neither him nor Harry, while being encouraged to criticize the Malfoys and Snape. I'm still trying to put my finger on what it is, in the tone or structure of the books, that seems to push readers in these directions. In any case, as a reader, I do feel pushed.

Also, if a child is maturing at all, he or she will begin to question what he/she has been taught and come to his own conclusions. Growth does not equal passivity. But Harry is presented as almost completely passive, and that's meant to be a good thing!

My two cents.

[dreamingjewel.livejournal.com]

I think Rowling expects the reader to not question what they are reading in a serious way. There are all sorts of evil in the world and some come in the guise of goodness, but that concept seems to alude most. Following anyone blindly and without full knowledge of their agenda is not courageous but foolhardy.
I would love to see a story written in the aftermath of following Dumbledore Harry and company get a rude awakening

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to put my finger on what it is, in the tone or structure of the books, that seems to push readers in these directions. In any case, as a reader, I do feel pushed.


There are several factors, I think.

1) In the early books the characters are mostly sympathetic, so by the time we see their atrocious behavior in the later books, we're already emotionally invested and want to believe the best of them.

2) The actions themselves are presented positively through the adverbs and adjectives used to describe them. Harry's "gallant" crucio is probably the most egregious example.

3) The text itself never interrogates these actions, meaning that readers who look at only the surface level aren't prompted to look beyond the positive descriptors.

4) We see these actions only through the viewpoints of the main characters, and how much guilt and anguish it causes them, like Harry's utterly torturous detention for nearly eviscerating another student, or Hermione's tearful remorse for the absolutely heartbreaking necessity of mind raping her parents, destroying their livelihoods, and sending them to a foreign country where they'll be completely isolated with no support structure whatsoever.

Their victims are effectively silenced. We're almost never allowed to see any of the negative fall out or suffering our "heroes'" actions cause others. Because of this, their suffering becomes less "real" relative to the leads'.

I'm sure I'm missing other issues (the text has so many) but these were the ones that stood out to me.

[sunnyskywalker]

5) They don't suffer many of the negative consequences which you might expect in the real world (at least not on page), giving you even less incentive to interrogate those actions. So we never see Hermione's parents being damaged, angry, or not quite trusting their daughter anymore, and Hermione having to suffer that and not be able to "fix" it. None of the people Harry likes are horrified when he takes to hexing Filch to please the crows and tell him off, stop speaking to him, etc. Harry doesn't show up at Hogwarts in DH to find that most of the kids have turned their allegiance to Neville, who unlike Harry has been visibly helping them all year, and that Neville doesn't automatically trust that Harry knows what he's doing and insists on knowing at least the basics of Harry's plan before he risks his life for it - after all, look what happened last time he followed Harry on a "necessary" emergency mission!

6) Harry and co. are more often punished for things they didn't do or which aren't their fault/have extenuating circumstances, which gently pushes you into having an automatic reaction that people punishing Harry and his friends feels unfair, because all the emotional focus is on the times they were unfairly punished while all the times they got away with things actually deserving of punishment is glossed over (and often the focus put on their worry and rationales for their actions as in your point 4). So "everyone" turns against Harry because they think he's the Heir of Slytherin and Petrifying people, Harry nearly gets his wand snapped for defending himself and Dudley against soul-sucking demons, Harry has to carve "I will not tell lies" into his hand when he was actually telling the truth, etc.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Thank you both. These are all excellent points. The last two, especially, bother me a lot. I'm still irked that Harry did not apologize to Snape in OOTP after prying into the pensieve. Yes, I know Snape lost it and should also have apologized to Harry - but the boy is supposed to be the hero! He's supposed to grow up! Had any adult truly cared about him, they would have urged him to go and make the apology. That's what a young man who was maturing properly and developing some sort of moral core would have done.

Oh, well.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

Well, when Dumbledore caught Harry snooping into his pensieve in GoF, Harry apologised immmediately, only to be told by Dumbles that 'curiousity is not a sin'. We got the warning that being too curious could be bad for you - the Bertha and Florence story - but no hint from the Headmaster that respecting privacy is a desirable quality or that one needs to apologise for a violation of privacy.

[sunnyskywalker]

I hadn't made that connection, but wow, Dumbledore just keeps coming up with new ways to nudge Harry toward the dark side, doesn't he? (Speaking of Dumbledore and characters being authorially protected from natural consequences... if Draco had accidentally managed to kill Katie or Ron on-screen in HBP, I wonder how many people would cut his "good intentions" so much slack once Harry found out he knew what Draco was up to all along?)

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like it was HIS privacy that Harry violated. Hmm--I wonder if outing Snape to Harry was really why he left them out?

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

Harry and co. are more often punished for things they didn't do or which aren't their fault/have extenuating circumstances, which gently pushes you into having an automatic reaction that people punishing Harry and his friends feels unfair

6a) And even when they are in the wrong, the punishments are often extremely over-the-top and hence still unfair. For example, Harry was wrong to beat up Draco after the quidditch game in OOTP, but a few pages later Umbridge comes in and bans him from playing ever again, letting Rowling turn Harry into the injured party again.

7) The characters who do call the good guys out on their behaviour are almost always portrayed negatively from their first appearance a few chapters earlier, meaning that we’re already predisposed to disagree with them when they start criticising Harry. They also generally have some kind of irrational motive for disliking the heroes (e.g., Snape’s enmity towards James, Umbridge’s bigotry), so it’s easy to just dismiss their views as biased without enquiring as to whether they’re true.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Some really good observations in this thread. However, just to be nitpicky: while we're *told* (by characters) that of course it's totally the James thing for why Snape doesn't like Harry, the evidence is a little thin as to that being a major cause. The first time he mentions James to Harry negatively is in POA - when Harry has in fact been behaving like James did at some of his less-than-noble moments. Not an unreasonable comparison, nor indicative of irrational Potter-bias by itself. It's *Dumbledore* who first puts the James thing into Harry's - and our - head, with his comment in PS/SS. IMHO there's plenty of reason for Snape to have a dim view of the Boy Wonder on his own merits from PS/SS onward, not to mention speculation that it would be safer/better cover/etc. for Snape as DE-spy to deliberately foster an antagonistic relationship there.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, in retrospect that's clearly the case. But at the time, it's presented as if Snape is just taking out his dislike of James on Harry, and the reasons for rejecting this view don't really become compelling until the later books. (E.g., Dumbledore's manipulative and callous nature don't really come out until later in the series; early on, he just seems like a fairly standard wise old mentor character, so it's easy to just take his word for things.) By then we're already so used to seeing Snape as an unfair meanie and to taking Harry's side against his that it's easier to just ignore the contrary evidence and keep supporting Harry.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

The attitude that “my feelings are all that matter, the facts can go hang, especially if they make me feel bad” is textbook codependent, enabler thinking. It’s the passive evil that allows active evil to wreak havoc on the world.

It's also a way of thinking which seems to be depressingly common in wider society. Never mind logical arguments, just go with which side seems the nicest. Even if the other side's arguments seem to make sense, they're obviously wrong, because they're being made by a nasty person. And since everybody has the right to always feel good about themselves, nobody should ever tell you off or punish you when you've done something wrong. No wonder these books are so popular, their morality perfectly captures the modern zeitgeist.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

Jeez! I just about had a collapse sporking this chapter! The next one better be easier, or I may be too traumatized to continue.

I admire your courage and perseverance. Fight on and don't give up! You're doing a great job.

Myself, I don't think I could bear to reread it. Even looking up the occasional paragraph to check facts upsets me. I sometimes think of my copy as The Monster Book of Monsters. If I open it, it attacks me emotionally. I don't think that stroking its spine would help.

[oryx_leucoryx]

OK, according to Kreacher, Voldemort believed him to be dead. OTOH the plot in OOTP to draw Harry to the Ministry was based on information Narcissa heard from Kreacher over Christmas break. Did Kreacher tell Narcissa not to reveal that he was her source? How did Narcissa (or Lucius, for that matter) explain to Voldemort how they knew that it was Sirius for whom Harry would drop everything and rush to the Ministry?

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Would Voldy bother to remember Kreacher's name after all these years? Would he even have ever known it?

He probably just asked for a 'house-elf' and once Regulus supplies one, he doesn't bother with what that elf's name might be.