Here via Snapedomgeri_chanOctober 26 2007, 01:29:17 UTC
Excellent essay! You know, I've always sympathized with Percy, although I suspect that wasn't what the author intended. His main faults are that he's stuffy and a little embarrassed by his family's poverty--not exactly noble traits, but hardly capital crimes, either. What teenager or young adult hasn't found his parents embarrassing at times? Even when he supposedly betrays his family by siding with Fudge, they also betray him, in a sense, by saying that he couldn't have earned his job as the Minister's assistant on his own. But then, as you said, no one is trying to look at the situation from Percy's point of view.
As for Lupin...Snape/Lupin is my OTP, so it's hard for me to be objective and separate fanon Lupin from canon Lupin, but I suspect that you're right. I think he genuinely feels guilty about the bullying, but it's probably more out of a general moral sense than any personal feelings about Snape. I keep thinking about his statement in HBP that he neither likes nor dislikes Snape, and I wonder if he's really being honest. Is it possible to feel complete indifference towards someone you have such a long and acrimonious history with?
I mentioned in response to another essay about bullying that I think the books send a very disturbing message. On the surface they preach tolerance, but actually tacitly condone bullying--if you're a Gryffindor.
I also wonder if Hermione should be added to the list of Gryffindor bullies, for disfiguring Marietta's face (apparently permanently) with the word "sneak". It's not exactly a prank of the sort that the twins or the Marauders would play, but it is another case of a Gryffindor setting herself in judgment over someone else.
Re: Here via Snapedommaryh10000October 27 2007, 14:46:01 UTC
Welcome. I'm glad you liked the essay.
I've been trying to understand bullying in the books and I've come to think that there's not a double standard, per se. The books aren't saying that bullying is okay when Gryffindors do it -- I think they're saying that Gryffindor bullying is okay because the kind of bullying they do is different than the kind of bullying Slytherins do.
Personally, I find both kinds of bullying so appalling that I can't pick one or the other as worse.
The horrible thing about Gryffindor bullying is what looks like a total inability to see the victim as a real person in their own right. It's the idea of "if I don't mean to hurt you, but you're hurt anyway, it's your own fault." And the idea that "if I think you're bad, it's okay for me to attack you, even if you're not threatening me or anyone else at the moment."
The horrible thing about Slytherin bullying is the deliberate intent to harm and use people for your own ends.
A Gryffindor sees what Slytherins do as awful because they intend to hurt people that they may admit are innocent to further their own ends.
A Slytherin sees what Gryffindors do as awful because they're hurting other people for *no reason at all* and they blame the victim for his/her own pain.
While I wouldn't say that Hermione does not bully sometimes, the case of Marietta Edgecombe does not seem so straightforward to me. Hermione didn't *choose* Marietta as a victim: *anyone* who had betrayed the DA would have been so disfigured. So the punishment for betrayal, the way Hermione set it up, couldn't allow for circumstances, since she couldn't know who the person punished would be.
It is revealing that she chose what appears to be a permament mark as the punishment. DH implies that Dark curses are irreversible. Of course, that doesn't mean that all irreversible curses are therefore dark, but it does leave open the possibility that Hermione's curse in this case was Dark.
As for Lupin...Snape/Lupin is my OTP, so it's hard for me to be objective and separate fanon Lupin from canon Lupin, but I suspect that you're right. I think he genuinely feels guilty about the bullying, but it's probably more out of a general moral sense than any personal feelings about Snape. I keep thinking about his statement in HBP that he neither likes nor dislikes Snape, and I wonder if he's really being honest. Is it possible to feel complete indifference towards someone you have such a long and acrimonious history with?
I mentioned in response to another essay about bullying that I think the books send a very disturbing message. On the surface they preach tolerance, but actually tacitly condone bullying--if you're a Gryffindor.
I also wonder if Hermione should be added to the list of Gryffindor bullies, for disfiguring Marietta's face (apparently permanently) with the word "sneak". It's not exactly a prank of the sort that the twins or the Marauders would play, but it is another case of a Gryffindor setting herself in judgment over someone else.
Reply
I've been trying to understand bullying in the books and I've come to think that there's not a double standard, per se. The books aren't saying that bullying is okay when Gryffindors do it -- I think they're saying that Gryffindor bullying is okay because the kind of bullying they do is different than the kind of bullying Slytherins do.
Personally, I find both kinds of bullying so appalling that I can't pick one or the other as worse.
The horrible thing about Gryffindor bullying is what looks like a total inability to see the victim as a real person in their own right. It's the idea of "if I don't mean to hurt you, but you're hurt anyway, it's your own fault." And the idea that "if I think you're bad, it's okay for me to attack you, even if you're not threatening me or anyone else at the moment."
The horrible thing about Slytherin bullying is the deliberate intent to harm and use people for your own ends.
A Gryffindor sees what Slytherins do as awful because they intend to hurt people that they may admit are innocent to further their own ends.
A Slytherin sees what Gryffindors do as awful because they're hurting other people for *no reason at all* and they blame the victim for his/her own pain.
While I wouldn't say that Hermione does not bully sometimes, the case of Marietta Edgecombe does not seem so straightforward to me. Hermione didn't *choose* Marietta as a victim: *anyone* who had betrayed the DA would have been so disfigured. So the punishment for betrayal, the way Hermione set it up, couldn't allow for circumstances, since she couldn't know who the person punished would be.
It is revealing that she chose what appears to be a permament mark as the punishment. DH implies that Dark curses are irreversible. Of course, that doesn't mean that all irreversible curses are therefore dark, but it does leave open the possibility that Hermione's curse in this case was Dark.
Reply
Leave a comment