Literary Lads: Remus Lupin
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Remus Lupin.
Kind, patient, lover of chocolate and a great friend. Werewolf.
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I envy Remus for his kindness and patience, for how he isn't (or only rarely) bitter after being treated like dirt by most people for most of his life.
I want to shake some sense into Remus, want to tell him that he does not need to sell himself short, that he deserves happiness as much as anyone else.
I feel sorry for him, and I empathise with him.
I don't agree with everything he does, but I find that I don't have to, that I get why he does what he does.
As a literary lad, Remus is a fantastic character, not a cardboard cut-out but a real character full of fantastic traits and flaws.
And because I can, have a quote from my thesis about the un/queerness of werewolves. Beware of academia speak ;)
Werewolves in Harry Potter are identified as queer by others, but there seems to be no connection to their inherent capacity to subvert by the werewolves themselves. They do not embrace their hybridity but rather choose between one or the other part of themselves.
While Remus Lupin is no doubt struggling with the dividedness resulting from his lycanthropy, he cannot be described as a true hybrid. He is not so much “a human divided against itself”* but rather regards the wolf as something apart from himself, even though it cannot be parted with. His dividedness is the result of internalised lycanthrophobia. Lupin submits to the norms by denying a part of himself.
Fenrir Greyback, by contrast, fully adopts his werewolf nature. His lycanthropy is not restricted to full-moon nights but has become the main component of his identity. Fenrir Greyback fully embraces what society regards as his otherness and is not afraid of the non-human part of his identity. However, he does so at the expense of his humanity. Unlike Lupin, Greyback is not struggling with his condition since he has become unified in himself - a wolf even in his human form. He, too, denies a part of himself and as such, like Lupin, fails to make use of the queer potential lycanthropy offers. Like Lupin, he does not transgress or queer boundaries, but rather accepts and reinforces them.
* Bernhardt-House, The Werewolf as Queer, the Queer as Werewolf, and Queer Werewolves in: Queering the Non/Human, 163
Literary Lads We Love
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