[HPforGrownups] I've got a Sirius problem (long!)

[Monika Huebner]

No: HPFGUIDX 25758

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pigwidgeon37 at yahoo.it [mailto:pigwidgeon37 at yahoo.it]


> after a period of happy lurking (due to writing my very own fanfic
> that is threatening to become longer than GoF), I feel that I just
> have to make myself very unpopular with 90% of you, professing that I
> really got a problem with the character of Sirius Black- I'd even go
> as far as saying that I rather dislike him. Now, practically
> everybody out there is pro-Sirius and so I thought I might eventually
> bore you with my Why-Do-I-Dislike-Sirius- analysis:

First of all, calm down, no one is going to put you through the
shredder. ;) Being pro-Sirius doesn't mean that I overlook the
scenes you mentioned, on the contrary I think they are crucial to the
understanding of his character. To me they look both like
a plot device (to maintain his alleged vicious nature as long as
possible) and as a means to show what happens to people who
go through what he went through. A long time ago, on a snowy
Sunday morning, I posted a rather long analysis of why I believe
that Sirius is suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
I won't inflict you to go through the archives, I'll rather try to
elaborate my point again. If you want to look through the archives,
search for PTSD rather than anything else, it won't give you back
hundreds of messages. The subject has also been discussed when
Carole posted her character summary back in February.
For everyone who is likely to find the following boring, hit your
delete key now, because this is going to be long. ;)

> What I would have expected from myself was that, after the whole
> story about Sirius and Peter had been revealed, the image of Sirius
> would correct itself in hindsight, making everything he had done
> before fit into a pattern that became clear once  I had finished and
> re-read the book

Well, that is exactly what happened to me, knowing his whole story
made everything understandable (not necessarily excusable, though,
I'd like to point this out, although it doesn't change my feelings for
him in the slightest way). First of all, let's look at what qualifies
as a traumatic stressor:

	From DSM-IV - American Psychiatric Association (1994)
	Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders
	Fourth Edition. Washington, D.C.

	A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both the
following were present:

(1) the person experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event or events
that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the
physical integrity of self or others.
(2) the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness or horror.

Well, what Sirius saw in Godric's Hollow certainly wasn't an ordinary
event. Although he didn't see the murder of James and Lily himself,
he was confronted with the outcome of Voldemort's (and Peter's)
activities, and he certainly felt helplessness and horror. Remember that
Hagrid said that he was "white and shaking". That indicates that he
might have been in shock. Please note that people react differently
to the same events, and that what is traumatic for one person, won't
traumatize someone else. But Sirius' behavior clearly indicates that
he was greatly affected. At this point, he should have gotten help,
but didn't, so he went after Peter which led to the death of twelve
people and to his arrest. In his state of mind, this certainly didn't do
him any good, and IMO that is the main reason why he broke out in
hysterical laughter when he was led away.

PTSD is a mental disorder with a distinctive symptomatology
that differs a bit between men and woman, which has its roots
in human evolution. To put it in a rather simplistic way, men
used to fight, while women used to "flight" or "freeze" when
attacked by someone or something. When you have PTSD, you
are somehow stuck in this defense reflex after the threat is
over. So, men first try to fight, and it takes them awhile before
they freeze, although this differs from individual to individual.

> Anyway, it didn't work this way for Sirius. Why did he have to
> destroy the portrait of the Fat Lady, when she refused to let him
> into Gryffindor Tower without a password?  When he entered the boys'
> dormitory to get Scabbers, why was it necessary to slash Ron's
> bedcurtains with a knife instead of drawing them back? He had to drag
> Ron into the tunnel and to the shrieking shack, but was breaking his
> leg in the process absolutely inevitable?

It surely wasn't inevitable, at least from your "healthy" point of view.
But one of the classic PTSD symptoms consists of uncontrolled outbursts
of anger and rage, which, in the worst case, can lead to criminal
behavior. In Sirius, this effect might have been increased because
he seems to be a more impulsive person, although I am not really
sure of this. The only hint to this we have is the incident with Snape,
and he was a teenager then, so I prefer to be careful with making
such statements. Anyway, my point is that in PoA, he very likely
is unable to control his anger, not because this is his nature, but
because he is suffering from a psychiatric disorder that has its
origin in both his involvement in the deaths of Harry's parents and
12 years of unjust imprisonment. In fact, he still is in an ongoing
state of trauma, having no support system, no one to talk to,
hiding from the Dementors, fearing for his own life and not in the
least for Harry's life.

> Hadn't Hermione kicked him,
> how far would he have gone in defending himself against Harry's
> attack in the Shrieking Shack

I still want to believe that he wouldn't have choked Harry to death,
but of course we can't be sure of this. It depends on what was going
on in his head at that moment, but this, only JKR knows it. There's
the possibility that, given his state of mind, he didn't really realize what
he was doing. Again, this is not meant to be an excuse, just an
explanation, and of course no one has to agree with this.

> These are the major points that make me uneasy about Sirius: The man
> has a tendency towards violence I definitely dislike and which, IMO,
> can only partly be explained away by his twelve years in Azkaban.

Here I can't agree with you. His violence can be explained as
above, and Azkaban is not the only reason for it, but just one of it.

> If
> Azkaban was an ordinary prison, where the use of brutality and
> violence is essential for surviving, we could give him credit for
> having got used to it.

I have to disagree again. Long term imprisonment like in prisoners
of war or in concentration camps definitely qualifies as a major
traumatic stressor. The longer you stay in such an "institution",
the more likely it becomes that you will be seriously traumatized.
You don't need other prisoners to teach you how to use violence
to survive. 12 years in Azkaban will leave you as an emotional wreck,
and each time I reread PoA, I'm impressed about how realistically JKR
has portrayed this. Maybe because she once was involved with
Amnesty International? Just for an example of "real life": quite a
lot of the political prisoners of the former East Germany seem
to suffer from PTSD, even if they were never tortured and never
experienced any other kind of physical violence during their
imprisonment. Sorry, I can't give you a source here, I have read
this awhile ago in a study at a German university website.

> If his outbursts of uncontrolled rage were
> directed only against Snape and Pettigrew, it would be more than
> understandable (more for Pettigrew than for Snape, but anyway).

No. The whole problem is, that if you suffer from PTSD, you
don't react "rationally". Domestic violence is a big problem
for men suffering from this disorder. In general, their wives
and children don't have anything to do with the cause of their
trauma(s).

> So my problem with Sirius is: What damage might a person who is so
> quick-tempered and so violence-prone do during the next book(s)? His
> character makes him far too susceptible to some nice scheme concocted
> by Voldemort& Malfoy, turning him against somebody on the Good Side,
> thus seriously endangering the Old Crowd and maybe even Harry or one
> of his friends. I can see Sirius causing somebody's death and dying
> himself in some kind of repentance-induced kamikaze action, that
> would fit the picture I've formed of him.

I can't see what you described, and I am pretty sure we won't see
very much uncontrolled rage from Sirius anymore. There was a reason
why JKR sent him to the Tropics for a whole summer. She had to
get him out of the way (of course), but she also had to give him
the opportunity to recover a bit, and therefore he needed to be
in a place where he could feel safe. Of course four months aren't
enough to recover from 13 years of ongoing trauma, but it had
to be enough for him to get a grip on himself. Hence the seemingly
"different" personality we saw in GoF. I don't think it was different
at all, I just think that we got a glimpse on his real personality.
But that's just my personal opinion.

For anyone who is interested in some background information on
what I have said in this post, I'd recommend the website of
the National Center for PTSD, they have information both for
the general public and a nice collection of clinical articles.
http://www.ncptsd.org

Monika

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