World-building: Plot holes are a lot easier to make by mistake than atmosphere for the average author. Most of the “this place sucks” seems atmospheric to me—Rowling may not have thought as poorly of her world as I do, but I doubt she thinks it’d be a great place to live after the wonder wore off.
Yet the “this place sucks” atmosphere doesn’t actually kick in for real until Book 5, when the protagonist finds himself on the wrong side of the barricades for the first time (and also when Rowling leaves the teenage angst tap on). Until then, the dominant theme is that of a marvellous, whimsical magical world that’s so dazzling with its uniqueness that you don’t stop to question the holes and contradictions. It seems likely that touches such as Vanishing kittens are meant to be seen in this context rather than the negative one of the later books (which in any case focuses heavily on formal structures such as law, politics and media rather than day-to-day social practices).
Unambiguous evil: I disagree entirely. Yes, the Death Eaters and Dementors are unambiguous, but Snape drove back and forth across that line so many times that it’s ridiculous(“possible”, really?), Grindelwald was appealing enough to draw Dumbledore in, Hagrid was criminally stupid half the times we saw him(literally), Lockhart/Slughorn/every politician were some combination of pathetic and loathsome, Percy Weasley was an utter git and a massive enabler, and I could go on. Admittedly, most of those weren’t big-E Evil, but they certainly did not lack for human flaws and ill consequences. Don’t let the unambiguousness of Voldemort or Umbridge fool you.
That’s exactly my point. Apart from Snape, the reader never has to stop and think “is this person good or bad?” Grindelwald is charming but proto-evil even in his youth (based on his views), Hagrid is unambiguously well-intentioned even at his stupidest, Lockhart and Slughorn are clearly low-grade evil (though at least by the time we get to Slughorn, Rowling is learning to make bad people slightly sympathetic), and Percy Weasley has no redeeming features until he actually gets redeemed. You never have to think in order to tell good from bad (apart from Snape). And this leads me to believe that if something is not portrayed as bad in the least, then you’re not meant to think it is, because it seems foolish to save all your subtlety for details of world-building and use none in characterisation.
Slaughter: It wasn’t that long ago that’s precisely what happened. And even today, I spent the last few days with the part of my family that’s farmers, and all of them have been hunting since childhood. Perhaps that’s “desensitization”, but if so it’s an utterly common sort in the right cultures. Death being locked away is a modern innovation, not the natural order of things.
That’s not relevant in this context, though. We’re not dealing with people from cultures elsewhere in the world, or from a different time period. We’re dealing with modern British children, some from Muggle society and some from wizard society, engaging in practices that contradict at least the norms of Muggle society and possibly the wizard one as well.
But Vanishing is not suffering, it’s simply death, as odd as that sounds. That’s a lot easier to handle when it’s applied to animals.
Yup, and that would certainly reduce the psychological impact of Vanishing Charm practice to some extent. Of course, there are also other spells practised on live animals that do not have this saving grace (“your pincushion still quivers in fear whenever somebody approaches it with a pin”).
I find your impressions of good and evil rather amusing. Grindelwald is basically a utilitarian, something that most people are, he just doesn’t do it very well. Slughorn was specifically introduced to be a good guy Slytherin, if a bit weaselly, so I disagree with you there as well. And Percy’s a tool, but he’s not actually evil, he’s mostly just self-important and clueless—ditto Lockhart, for that matter. It’s nowhere near as morally arguable as MoR, but it’s hardly a world of cardboard either.
Re Vanishing, that’s a fair point. But to counter—what do the kids get told about where the cats go? Regardless of the truth of the matter, if they’re told “Oh, we just bring them back after class”, then they’ll be fine with it.
Lockhart mindwiped a bunch of people to steal credit for their good deeds. He ended up attempting to mindwipe Harry and Ron. He’s evil.
Evil, perhaps, but also correct about some important points. If you compare his back story to Harry Potter’s interactions with the public in the remainder of the series, Lockhart does handle fame better and if he’d taken credit (and if there hadn’t been a series of additional threats waiting in the wings that he had no reason to expect) it would have been better for Harry to have been ignorant of his own involvement.
Lockhart’s fame-sink argument may well have been just as correct for all those other, earlier people he swindled.
But I agree that Rowling meant him to be irredeemably evil.
If you compare his back story to HJPEV’s interactions with the public in the remainder of the series
What does the EV stand for in this case?
Edit:
Lockhart does handle fame better and if he’d taken credit (and if there hadn’t been a series of additional threats waiting in the wings that he had no reason to expect) it would have been better for HJPEV to have been ignorant of his own involvement.
He tried to mindwipe them before they actually killed the basilisk. And I always read
“The adventure ends here, boys!” he said. “I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body—say good-bye to your memories!”
as indicating a complete mindwipe, of the sort that (not coincidentally) happened to Lockhart when his spell backfired.
Okay, fair(though most of the reason most people disliked Lockhart had more to do with the incompetence than the evil, from what I’ve seen). But I stand by Percy—he reminds me of Elaida from Wheel of Time, if you’ve read it. Not actually evil, and in fact trying to be good, but so utterly incompetent about it that everyone’s surprised by that.
But here’s the thing—his portrayal has pretty much no redeeming features. He’s not even “nice unless you get in the way of his ambitions”, he’s just low-grade nasty all the time, except when he’s being blatantly patronising. Whatever the big picture view of his personality, at any given time he is either 100% unpleasant or actually redeemed.
I think that goes for most of the other characters as well. They aren’t portrayed as, say, positive 10% of the time and negative 90% of the time—instead, every single thing they do conforms to the same moral level. Someone like Lockhart couldn’t pet a kitten without it being a PR move (or possibly without accidentally hurting it to demonstrate his incompetence).
Granted, but it’s possible to be unpleasant without being evil. In fact, that was my original point—you said “we never need to think about who’s evil”, and then went through my list and sorted 2⁄5 into the wrong box. Yes, Percy’s a jerk and Slughorn’s a single-minded social climber, but neither of them actually means ill any more than Hagrid does. That doesn’t make them evil.
In fact, that was my original point—you said “we never need to think about who’s evil”, and then went through my list and sorted 2⁄5 into the wrong box.
Wrong box? I think you might be giving your interpretation a bit too much credit, especially with Lockhart.
Yes, Percy’s a jerk and Slughorn’s a single-minded social climber, but neither of them actually means ill any more than Hagrid does. That doesn’t make them evil.
‘Evil’ isn’t a synonym of ‘malicious’.
Indifference combined with the aggressive seeking of a particular incompatible goal can well and truly result in fitting the description of ‘evil’ so long as the judged remains sufficiently socially near that making a moral judgement makes sense. “Actually meaning ill” is not required.
Maybe “evil” is a word with too many connotations. Let’s try “bad”. If a character is “bad” in the Potterverse, then they will be the same level of “bad” 100% of the time, whether that level is “being obnoxious and sucking up to authority” or “casual murder of anyone who gets in the way”. They will never display moral complexity unless their name is Severus or Draco.
I’m reminded of the attribution fallacy. The protagonists act well or badly in response to the circumstances they’re in. The antagonists have “badness” of one sort or another as an integral feature of their character, and all their actions reflect it.
Yet the “this place sucks” atmosphere doesn’t actually kick in for real until Book 5, when the protagonist finds himself on the wrong side of the barricades for the first time (and also when Rowling leaves the teenage angst tap on). Until then, the dominant theme is that of a marvellous, whimsical magical world that’s so dazzling with its uniqueness that you don’t stop to question the holes and contradictions. It seems likely that touches such as Vanishing kittens are meant to be seen in this context rather than the negative one of the later books (which in any case focuses heavily on formal structures such as law, politics and media rather than day-to-day social practices).
That’s exactly my point. Apart from Snape, the reader never has to stop and think “is this person good or bad?” Grindelwald is charming but proto-evil even in his youth (based on his views), Hagrid is unambiguously well-intentioned even at his stupidest, Lockhart and Slughorn are clearly low-grade evil (though at least by the time we get to Slughorn, Rowling is learning to make bad people slightly sympathetic), and Percy Weasley has no redeeming features until he actually gets redeemed. You never have to think in order to tell good from bad (apart from Snape). And this leads me to believe that if something is not portrayed as bad in the least, then you’re not meant to think it is, because it seems foolish to save all your subtlety for details of world-building and use none in characterisation.
That’s not relevant in this context, though. We’re not dealing with people from cultures elsewhere in the world, or from a different time period. We’re dealing with modern British children, some from Muggle society and some from wizard society, engaging in practices that contradict at least the norms of Muggle society and possibly the wizard one as well.
Yup, and that would certainly reduce the psychological impact of Vanishing Charm practice to some extent. Of course, there are also other spells practised on live animals that do not have this saving grace (“your pincushion still quivers in fear whenever somebody approaches it with a pin”).
I find your impressions of good and evil rather amusing. Grindelwald is basically a utilitarian, something that most people are, he just doesn’t do it very well. Slughorn was specifically introduced to be a good guy Slytherin, if a bit weaselly, so I disagree with you there as well. And Percy’s a tool, but he’s not actually evil, he’s mostly just self-important and clueless—ditto Lockhart, for that matter. It’s nowhere near as morally arguable as MoR, but it’s hardly a world of cardboard either.
Re Vanishing, that’s a fair point. But to counter—what do the kids get told about where the cats go? Regardless of the truth of the matter, if they’re told “Oh, we just bring them back after class”, then they’ll be fine with it.
Lockhart mindwiped a bunch of people to steal credit for their good deeds. He ended up attempting to mindwipe Harry and Ron. He’s evil.
Evil, perhaps, but also correct about some important points. If you compare his back story to Harry Potter’s interactions with the public in the remainder of the series, Lockhart does handle fame better and if he’d taken credit (and if there hadn’t been a series of additional threats waiting in the wings that he had no reason to expect) it would have been better for Harry to have been ignorant of his own involvement.
Lockhart’s fame-sink argument may well have been just as correct for all those other, earlier people he swindled.
But I agree that Rowling meant him to be irredeemably evil.
What does the EV stand for in this case?
Edit:
He tried to mindwipe them before they actually killed the basilisk. And I always read
as indicating a complete mindwipe, of the sort that (not coincidentally) happened to Lockhart when his spell backfired.
Gah! Thank you. I’ll excuse myself by saying I just got up, it’s early ‘morning’ for my graveyard shift.
That would quite exactly undo the entire reason I use that name. How embarrassing.
Reply to Edit : You’re right. It’s been too long since I read the original and I’ve allowed certain fanfiction to cloud my judgement.
’E’s Very habitual when it comes to writing names in acronym form, clearly.
Okay, fair(though most of the reason most people disliked Lockhart had more to do with the incompetence than the evil, from what I’ve seen). But I stand by Percy—he reminds me of Elaida from Wheel of Time, if you’ve read it. Not actually evil, and in fact trying to be good, but so utterly incompetent about it that everyone’s surprised by that.
But here’s the thing—his portrayal has pretty much no redeeming features. He’s not even “nice unless you get in the way of his ambitions”, he’s just low-grade nasty all the time, except when he’s being blatantly patronising. Whatever the big picture view of his personality, at any given time he is either 100% unpleasant or actually redeemed.
I think that goes for most of the other characters as well. They aren’t portrayed as, say, positive 10% of the time and negative 90% of the time—instead, every single thing they do conforms to the same moral level. Someone like Lockhart couldn’t pet a kitten without it being a PR move (or possibly without accidentally hurting it to demonstrate his incompetence).
Granted, but it’s possible to be unpleasant without being evil. In fact, that was my original point—you said “we never need to think about who’s evil”, and then went through my list and sorted 2⁄5 into the wrong box. Yes, Percy’s a jerk and Slughorn’s a single-minded social climber, but neither of them actually means ill any more than Hagrid does. That doesn’t make them evil.
Wrong box? I think you might be giving your interpretation a bit too much credit, especially with Lockhart.
‘Evil’ isn’t a synonym of ‘malicious’.
Indifference combined with the aggressive seeking of a particular incompatible goal can well and truly result in fitting the description of ‘evil’ so long as the judged remains sufficiently socially near that making a moral judgement makes sense. “Actually meaning ill” is not required.
Maybe “evil” is a word with too many connotations. Let’s try “bad”. If a character is “bad” in the Potterverse, then they will be the same level of “bad” 100% of the time, whether that level is “being obnoxious and sucking up to authority” or “casual murder of anyone who gets in the way”. They will never display moral complexity unless their name is Severus or Draco.
I’m reminded of the attribution fallacy. The protagonists act well or badly in response to the circumstances they’re in. The antagonists have “badness” of one sort or another as an integral feature of their character, and all their actions reflect it.