Umbridge / Blaise's mother / evil author / Snape

[Carol]

Carol wrote in
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/3424>:
> 
> << Actually my posts (I think there were two of them) postulated a
> connection between Dostoevky's doubly fiction Grand Inquisitor and
> Umbridge as High Inquisitor. <snip>
> 
Carol:
> Of course I have often encounteried people speaking of Dostoevsky's
> Grand Inquisitor, altho' I haven't read The Brothers Karamazov
myself. Rowling is a much more literary person than I am and surely
has read it. There probably was a connection between GRAND Inquisitor
and HIGH Inquisitor in the back of her mind, but I guess your question is
> whether there was a connection in the front of her mind. I'm not
> qualified to discuss whether the Grand Inquisitor was sincere, but I
> feel quite sure that Umbridge was NOT sincere about having the best
> intentions for the Hogwarts students. She did NOT think they were
> 'helpless children' or she wouldn't have been afraid of their army. If
> she hadn't been afraid of their army, she wouldn't have worked so hard
> to prevent them from learning hands-on magic.

Carol responds:
You should definitely become acquainted with Dostoevsky's (or should I
say, Ivan Karamazov's) Grand Inquisitor. (His story is a parable told
by Ivan Karamazov to his brother Alyosha. Ivan calls it a "poem," but
the version he recites to Alyosha is prose.) The Grand Inquisitor may
have more in common with what Dumbledore would have become had he
persisted in his plans to dominate the Muggles than with Umbridge. He
believed that the truth was dangerous and that it was better for the
peasants to have a hope of heaven than any dangerous ideas about
freedom. I don't think the connection was at the *back* of Rowling's
mind. I think the similarity in titles and the (superficial?)
similarity in philosophy and methodology was intentional. The Grand
Inquisitor (a fictional character within a work of fiction) was more
intelligent and less easily detected than Umbridge. 

If anyone is interested, here's a link to the parable itself

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/existentialism/dostoevsky/grand.html

and another to an excellent analysis of it

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/fremantle.html

Here's a helpful synopsis, which breaks the scene into its component
parts:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/existentialism/dostoevsky/grand-analysis.html

You can always resort to Wikipedia is you want Grand Inquisitor Lite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor

Catlady:
> 
> I suppose if she had really believed that Voldemort had returned,
she wouldn't have tried prevent everyone from resisting him ... unless
she was secretly negotiating with him (perhaps through Lucius, who
hadn't been captured at the Dept of Mysteries yet) and had been
promised a reward for being the inside mole!
> 
> Assuming that she wasn't working for Voldemort, I don't actually
know for whom she was working. Could she have possibly believed that
keeping Fudge in power while doing down Dumbledore was for the good of
the wizarding nation? Easier to think that she cared for what was good
> for Fudge rather than for what was good for the community --
devoting herself to furthering Fudge's career, in a sublimation of
romantic & erotic love much like Bellatrix's for Voldemort. Or did she
merely use Fudge to get herself the power to sic Dementors on people
and use Cruciatis on people? ,snip>

Carol:
I don't think it's a sublimaination of romantic or erotic love. She's
clearly using Fudge and his insecurities in her own bid for power
("What Cornelius doesn't know won't hurt him.") The question is, as
you say, whether she knew (through Lucius Malfoy or perhaps through
Selwyn?) that Voldemort was really back and didn't want Fudge to know.
She would, in that case, be manipulating Fudge to distrust and fear DD
and, through him, manipulating the Daily Prophet to discredit DD and
weaken his influence, the better to enable DEs to infiltrate the MoM.

OTOH, she could know nothing about Voldemort and simply be working for
herself, still manipulating Fudge and discrediting DD but with the
intention of being the power behind the throne (running the British WW
in Fudge's name but passing laws that support her own agenda--which
may be her friend, Lucius Malfoy's agenda, as well), in which case,
she might really believe that the less the students knew about DADA,
the better--not only for her, but for them. Keep them ignorant and
happy. If they know too much, they might rebel. (The Grand Inquisitor
thinks that bread, meaning food, and freedom are incompatible. If you
feed the poor and keep them ignorant, but with faith in a bettr life
to come, they'll be happy. That sounds to me a lot like Umbridge's
(apparent) view of the students as happy little children who will rely
on her as their friend to look out for their interests instead of
thinking for themsleves and protecting themselves. She doesn't want
them to be free; she wants them to happily do her bidding.

I'm not arguing a definitive interpretation here, especially since I'm
now leaning toward an Umbridge who knew that LV was coming back and
supported his teturn. But since Fudge *didn't* know that and both
denied and ignored what evidence was presented to him (notably,
Snape's Dark mark), i think that someone who knew the truth must have
told her. And that person had to be a DE who was present in the
graveyard and saw LV resurrected. And the only DE she herself mentions
is Lucius Malfoy--only, of course, she doesn't identify him as a DE.
(I think she suspects Snape's DE connections, as well, but she never
uses them against him, perhaps because Malfoy speaks well of him).

Carol earlier:

> 
> << Actually, he [Neville] would have taken Slughorn's spot since
Snape had swiched to DADA in HBP and headmaster in DH. I can't see
Snape returning to teaching Potions if he had survived and been
publicly vindicated. >>
> 
Catlady:
> If he'd survived and been publically vindicated, he would have been
offered to keep the Headmaster position as long as he wanted.

Carol:
Yes. That's what I meant. He wouldn't have gone back to either Potions
(already taken over by Slughorn) or DADA (assigned to some new,
permanent teacher). he'd have stayed on as headmaster, as you say, for
as long as he wanted the position (and given that he's only 38, that
could be quite a long time). I only meant that, in the unlikely event
that Neville was given the Potions position rather than Herbology,
he'd be replacing the re-retiring Slughorn rather than Snape, who had
already, twice, put the Potions post behind him.

Carol, apologizing for her apparent lack of clarity