SKETCH: Azkaban and the Dementors

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 22489

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., meboriqua at a... wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., naama_gat at h... wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > 3. When was the alliance with MoM formed? Did Fudge initiate it? 
> > Under what circumstances? Why would the Dementors enter such an 
> > alliance - i.e., what's in it for them?>
> 

> Dementors controlling Azkaban get a guaranteed three meals a day.  
> Since Voldie was no where to be found, the Dementors (who are loyal 
> to no one) took the offer.  
>  

I recently re-read CS Lewis' Screwtape, and I was struck by the 
similarity of the fate of the damned in Screwtape's Hell and the 
victims of the Dementors.  Screwtape describes how human souls serve 
as a kind of sustenance for the demons - at one point , Screwtape 
tells his nephew that if he plays his cards right, he will be able to 
enjoy his "patient" through all eternity, "a brimming chalice of 
despair and horror you can taste as often as you like." (I'm quoting 
from memory). This sounds much like the dementors, withthe difference 
that there is at least an end to the suffering of Dementor victims. 

However if a tempter fails to damn the human to which he was 
assigned, then he suffers the same fate (i.e., to be damned in the 
human's place).

Lewis said the idea was not original with him - he borrowed it from 
the "horrible scenes of 'spiritual absorption'" in David Lindsay's 
Voyage to Arcturus. I'm not familiar with that work - has anyone read 
it?

    - CMC