Courtesy and ambition

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 1209

Peg's chew toys for the day: Courtesy and ambition.

Courtesy. I note that Rowling often signals that someone is on Our Team
by making them
courteous. Lupin is a particularly good example of this, as is
Dumbledore, who is always able
to say something tactful to smooth out spats between staff, students,
and members of the
Ministry of Magic.

We perhaps should have been suspicious of the faux Mad-Eye Moody from
the very beginning,
starting when he turned Draco into the amazing bouncing ferret. How
rude! (Even though it
WAS funny.)

The Dursleys and the Malfoys show the opposite tendency. They are as
rude as they can
possibly be--remember how Mr. Weasley chided the Dursleys because they
wouldn't say
good-bye to Harry? (Contrast that behavior with Mr. Weasley's in the
same scene, who
apologized for the mess he made of the Dursley's living room, and tried
to make polite
conversation with Dudley.) And remember when Mr. Weasley got into the
brawl with Lucius
Malfoy (and yes, Lucius Malfoy started it). Mrs. Weasley brought Mr.
Weasley to his senses
by an appeal to courtesy ("What will the Grangers think?").

Side note: then what do we make of Snape, who is incredibly nasty and
rude (such as his sneering comment when Malfoy hexed Hermione's teeth,
making them grow? "I see no
difference.") His nastiness in book 1 was part of the reason Harry, Ron
and Hermione were
so surprised when they discovered that Snape was actually guarding
Harry's life, rather than
threatening it. Snape's lack of courtesy is one technique Rowling uses
to hide her cards about
what's really going on with him. If he's Our Man Snape (i.e., on Our
team), why is he so nasty? I think this characteristic of Snape is one
of the ways Rowling keeps us off balance as to knowing whether he's
really to be trusted or not.

Ambition. Ambition is one of the primary markers of the House of
Slytherin. It creates a
weak spot for characters that can lead them to turn them to evil. (This
is the primary reason I
worry about Percy's future in particular.)

Ambition brought down both Barty Crouch Sr. (who aspired to be the
Minister of Magic)
and Jr. (who aspired to be Voldemort's right hand man).

Dumbledore identifies ambition as the primary reason that Fudge is not
doing his job and
seizing the moment to do what he has to do to stop Voldemort.

Again, Rowling uses ambition as part of the reason we don't trust Snape:
he is lusting after the
Defense Against the Dark Arts Job.

And yet . . . it's not quite so simple, is it?  (With Rowling, it never
is.) Harry is ambitious, too: he wants to win at Quidditch, which makes
him search out an answer to manage his fear of Dementors in PoA.  And
although he didn't enter the Tri-Wizard Tournament, once his name comes
out of the goblet, he wants to win it. He realized from the beginning
that whoever had put his name in might very well have nefarious
motivations, but he didn't struggle very hard to get out of competing.
Was that because he believed Dumbledore and the faux Moody, that he had
no choice to compete--or did his own ambition make him swallow
Voldemort's bait, even though he had his eyes open to the danger?

And then, to compound the complexity of it all, Rowling took one of
Harry's noblest moments, his decision to conquer his personal ambition
and instead share the Tournament win and the glory with Cedric--and that
decision sealed Cedric's doom.  Now THAT's irony--take your hero's
noblest decision and have it lead directly to a terrible, tragic
disaster. (As a writer, I found myself hopping up and down with a
combination of joy and envy of her skill when I read that--oh, damn,
JKR: what a twist!)

Further comments?

"Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels . . ."

Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Peg
Who really does try to be polite and isn't feeling particularly
ambitious at the moment.