[HPforGrownups] Re: Lockhart - Yuck!

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 19526

Indigo wrote:

> > and you would define evil as.....?
> >
> > Susan
>
> Lockhart probably rationalizes to himself that memory charms don't
> really hurt anybody.
>
> I think he's cowardly and fraudulent more than truly evil.

So in your definition, evil requires deliberate intent to be so? And
knowledge that you are? And acceptance of that fact? The ability to
rationalize one's actions to oneself does not make those actions
non-evil.

> I don't believe he would wipe out all the muggles if he had the
> chance.

And evil requires grand scope? Smaller acts cannot be evil?

> I don't believe he would even memory charm without a good reason.

Self-interest is apparently good enough reason--he attempted to cast a
memory charm on Harry and Ron twice. Didn't simply say he might, *did*
it.

>  He actually was trying to teach the DADA class, after all.

Well, on the first day, maybe....

>  He was abyssmally bad at it, but if he was all that evil, I don't see
> him treating the students nearly as well.

There is evil by intent. There is evil by omission. In Catholic
reconciliation you confess both--sins of commission and sins of
omission. Both are sins.

Lockhart mostly muddles along and seems harmless enough, if more
irritating than a rock in your shoe. He treated people well because he
loves adulation and you just don't get that without treating people
well. I'd suggest he did a disservice to the class, not only by being
too scared by the pixie incident to do anything else real, but by
wanting their adulation so much he postured for it, rather than actually
*teaching,* which would take the focus off him and onto his students
(horrors!!). This *was* probably unconscious; I doubt he realized this.
This is omission.

But he did cross the line into commission. One, in his books, he didn't
simply take the credit for others' achievements--he harmed them to get
it, which is evil. And two, he was cheerfully and unhesitatingly ready
to harm Ron and Harry to protect himself. This is also evil. In those
instances, there's the intent, if not the scope. So yes, I'd call
Lockhart more evil than not, if only on a small scale.

> And if he were truly as evil as all that, he could easily have viewed
> Harry as 'competition' and moved to take the young one out of the
> limelight so Gilderoy could be shone
> upon all by himself at Hogwarts.

Oh, but he did. He identified Harry as competition from the instant he
saw him. His way of handling this was to minimize Harry as a celebrity,
and to work Harry into his own P.R., remaining the larger Name. I think
he might have done more drastic things, save that his ego was such that
he quite honestly believed he was too big a deal for anyone to upstage.
[echoes of Voldemort and how *his* ego trips him up occur to me].

> I consider him more a tragically flawed character  -- Vanity makes him
> do really stupid things.  But he doesn't do them out of malice.
> He just doesn't _get_ that the world doesn't revolve around him.

That he is misguided does not alter the fact that what he did was evil.
And he knows it, or he would not attempt to compound the evil in an
attempt to hide it, by memory-charming Ron and Harry. He knows he has
something to hide. His public would desert him not simply because others
did the feats he claimed, but because he had made the false claim and
stolen their achievements. Otherwise he could go to his public with the
same line he gave Ron and Harry:

    "My dear boy," said Lockhart, straightening up and frowning at
Harry, "Do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as
well if people didn't think *I'd* done all those things....<details
deleted>"
 <a few paragraphs later>
    "Awfully sorry, boys, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you
now. Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never
sell another book ---"
<and Ron and Harry disarm him in time>
(pp. 297-8, CoS, US)

He tries again, in the tunnels, and actually gets the spell off--the
only thing that saves Ron and Harry is the abysmal state of Ron's
damaged wand that makes the spell backfire.

So he is ready, willing, and able to harm Ron and Harry in order to hide
his actions, so that his celebrity status will be protected. This is
cold, calculating, and yes, evil.

--Amanda


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