Knave or Fool?

[terri_testing]

“Tell me honestly . . . do you think me most a knave or a fool ?’” asked John Willoughby of Miss Dashwood, and I think it’s time we addressed that question directly with regards to our friend and mentor Albus.

Comments

[guardians_song]

I tend to see Albus as incredibly and ridiculously /weak/ (rather like a cockier version of Peter Pettigrew, come to think of it) rather than evil - "evil" being too complimentary, as it implies there's a solid person in there to be evil. I cite JKR's insane interview that claimed Albus, formerly a very moral student, saw nothing wrong with genocide while head over heels for Gellert. What?

Still, I'll play with the theory:

"One is Albus’s giving up both Gellert and the pursuit of world domination after his sister’s death. Why, unless continuing to pursue that shared dream had become impossible to reconcile with his own image of himself as a decent (ish) man? Even if he shook off Gellert only in disgust for Gellert's having abandoned him to the mess of hushing up their mutual murder, why abandon his grandiose dreams if he hadn’t had a change of heart-and therefore, a heart to change?"
Perhaps, upon reflection, world conquest wasn't as easy as he'd hoped? Alternatively, perhaps Albus is one of those contest-winners who never quite get over the end of their school years. Real life is hard. Much better to retreat into a permanent cocoon of Gryffindorism, surrounded always by doting fans. And now that he's a grown-up, he can MAKE Gryffindor win if he says so! So there!

"The second is the Birdbath of Doom. What was Albus sniveling about after drinking Tom’s potion, if he wasn’t feeling remorse or something like it?"
Harry is so full of shit as to the explanation he gives for the potion. Kreacher saw "horrible things" and cried for his Mistress Black. There's no indication whatsoever that whatever Albus saw had ANYTHING to do with Ariana, Gellert, or Aberforth. He cried and screamed, he blathered nonsense in his delirium, and Harry's explanation is crazier than any fan essay. For all we know, he was screaming for the invisible tormentors not to harm his trophies.

That's funny enough that I'm halfway tempted to adopt it... ;)

"Can anyone else find any irreducible attestations to virtue in his behavior, or conversely, unarguable evidence of his villainy?"
Leaving a presumably-magical child for ten years with magic-haters.

Full stop.

[mary_j_59]

That's interesting, because, I believe, one definition of evil is weakness. It's not a positive quality in itself, rather, it's lack of integrity and the absence of good. And I'd say those things do define Albus Dumbledore, even more than they define Tom Riddle. Both are weak, I think, but Dumbledore is more so.

That said, there are some villains who are driven by recognizable human emotions like anger, envy, pride and fear. Villains like these seem more capable of redemption than those who, on some basic level, simply aren't there. Albus Dumbledore may well be one of the latter - a hollow man. C.S. Lewis called them men without chests.

[sweettalkeress]

It's interesting that you bring that up because this past summer I watched an anime featuring a villain who, as you say, just wasn't all there. And he was easily the scariest villain in a series with some pretty terrifying people. He could go through the day with a beautiful boyish smile on his face and at the same time plot to wipe out most of humanity and strangle a man to death with his bare hands for crossing him. What made him interesting was trying to figure out how and why he wasn't all there and to what extent he wasn't all there (it's implied, though never spelled out, that he'd gone numb from post-traumatic stress).

[sweettalkeress]

"Harry is so full of shit as to the explanation he gives for the potion. Kreacher saw "horrible things" and cried for his Mistress Black. There's no indication whatsoever that whatever Albus saw had ANYTHING to do with Ariana, Gellert, or Aberforth. He cried and screamed, he blathered nonsense in his delirium, and Harry's explanation is crazier than any fan essay. For all we know, he was screaming for the invisible tormentors not to harm his trophies."

Tell me about it. Before the last book came out, my parents (who are not Snapefen by any means) theorized that Dumbledore in that scene had been forced to adopt the persona of Snape begging Voldemort to spare the lives of Lily and her family.