JKR, HP, Evil - MOM/McCarthy - Azkaban

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 19563

Scott wrote:

>The question I am now asking myself is just who is evil in the canon.

If I may rephrase slightly, I would ask myself who does evil at what 
moments.  Everyone in real life does evil, but how much of a 
preponderance of evil does there have to be before you label a 
=person= evil?  I would rather focus on defining what makes actions or 
intentions evil and not try to take the even more difficult step of 
defining people.

>--So Voldemort feels no empathy and that's why we believe he's evil? 
>It's not that simple is it? Lockhart feels no empathy for those whose 
>memories he destroys  and yet many of you don't see him as evil.

Well, I do (again, rephrasing it as "Lockhart does many evil things" 
to avoid the "what makes a person evil?" problem), and for me this 
lack of empathy is central.  Evil deeds are those that sacrifice 
another's well-being for one's own.  There, that's a very rough go at 
a definition.

>I do believe that people are good but I also believe they are evil.

My view exactly.  And the powers upon which we draw, and which we 
serve by our actions, are both good and evil; some personify them and 
call them God and Satan.  

I also agree with Scott that "we have to decide for ourselves" what is 
good and what is evil.  However, this in itself is not relativism.  We 
(individuals, societies, religious communities, etc.) have to decide 
because there is literally no alternative; as creatures with wills, we 
have to decide or refuse to decide, which is in itself a moral choice. 
 But the fact that discernment must ultimately be left up to each of 
us doesn't mean there is no evil or good but what an individual 
decides.  Many of the Nazis really believed that what they were doing 
was good.  I suspect McVeigh believes the same of himself.  I believe 
that they are wrong--not just that they have a different point of view 
than I do, la de da, to each his/her own, but that in this matter I am 
right and they are wrong.

Most cases, of course, are a lot harder to decide.

The fact that HP is secular (Ebony's point) doesn't have much to do 
with the relativism issue, IMO.  What if, a la Narnia, it were a 
Christian allegory instead?  We the readers would still have to make 
our own judgments about which actions were good and which were evil, 
and why.  Religion, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), cannot 
save us from being moral agents who make our own choices about what is 
good and whether to practice it.  Even if one surrenders one's will to 
God, that's a decision one has made . . . and IMCUO (In My Completely 
Unverifiable Opinion), there is no way to be absolutely certain that 
what one has surrendered to is indeed God and not Satan or one's own 
delusions.  Please understand me, I am not suggesting that religious 
people are delusional!  Just that the human will cannot be willed 
away.  It is there, and we are responsible for what direction we send 
it.

"Preacher was talking, there's a sermon he gave,
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved.
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied."
          --Bob Dylan, "Man in the Long Black Coat," from _Oh Mercy_.

I respectfully disagree that our consciences are vile and depraved, 
but I sympathize with the problem.  How does one know whether one is 
obeying "that of God within" or some evil impulse?  That problem does 
not disappear when one walks into the door of a church.

That inner voice takes different forms in Harry.  Is the voice that 
tells him to kill Sirius the same voice that tells him to resist the 
Imperius Curse?  Or is it the same as the voice that coaxes him to 
give in to the Imperius Curse?  Or are they three different voices?  I 
don't think Harry's a schizophrenic or that anyone in particular is 
speaking to him.  The voices within illustrate the complexities of the 
inner life; we all have voices, aspects of ourselves you might say, 
that tell us conflicting things, and at certain times it's very very 
difficult to know which ones to heed.  Harry ignores the voice that 
commands him to kill Sirius, but he isn't sure it was the right thing 
to do until later, when he finally trusts him.

I guess my point is that JKR not only takes the effects of evil 
seriously, she recognizes that good and evil are intertwined and it's 
very hard at times even for a very good person to sort out which of 
his desires are good and which are evil.  I think that far from being 
a dangerous thing to teach children, that is a moral lesson our world 
desperately needs children to learn.  We have to teach them right from 
wrong, but we also have to teach them how to discern right from wrong 
themselves, and to do that we have to acknowledge to them that that is 
often difficult--that in fact no adult knows how to do it quite 
correctly.

Barbara wrote re: McCarthyism/MOM's suspension of civil rights:

>Ironically, it is also reminiscent of Soviet tactics
>that led to many people being summarily shipped off to
>Siberia 

An irony that was noted by courageous Americans of those years.  The 
McCarthyites (some of them) believed that what they were doing was 
all-American; their opponents (some of them) believed that opposing 
them was more in keeping with American ideals.

>(which I think is a more fitting parallel to
>Azkaban than Alcatraz, the similarity in names
>notwithstanding; people who've returned from Siberia
>certainly seemed to have had all the happiness sucked
>out of them).

It is a good parallel.  Alcatraz is a good one, too, though.  Aside 
from the name and being on an island, its prisoners often entered sane 
and left insane (Al Capone e.g.).

Amy Z

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  "And I think that werewolf over there fancies you."
  Lupin was taken aback. "What? Pete?"
  Sirius grinned. "No, the pretty one in the blue."
             --Cassandra Claire, Draco Sinister ch. 14
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