Is Lupin Passive Aggressive? was Re: Sirius' Prank etc

[moongirlk]

No: HPFGUIDX 34426

Aww man!  I love my Lupin, and I just don't see what you're saying, 
but darned if you don't give enough good examples to make me wonder 
if I don't see it just because I like him.  Which is your fault and 
Mahoney's (wasn't Mahoney the one who brought that up?)  Drat!  But 
let me try anyway to defend my tragic hero's honor.

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
>  
> I am not so sure all of Lupin's behavior is 
> really mild-mannered. (Pippin peers over the top of her bunker 
> and prepares to lob another grenade at  G.R.A.B. ) It could be 
> passive-agressive.  He seems to show some suspicious 
> behaviors: resisting authority, forgetting to do things, putting 
> things off, alternating hostile assertion (breaking rules) and 
> dependent contrition, complaining of being victimized.

I admit to most of these behaviors in one form or another, but I 
can't ever remember him "complaining of being victimized".  He has 
been victimized, I grant you, but I don't remember him ever 
complaining about it.  Seems to me he's pretty stoic about it.

>  Lupin agrees to Dumbledore's plan to keep him safe but 
> secretly abets the animagi capers. He feels guilty about that, but 
> eagerly takes part in planning the next adventure. 

Does he say he felt guilty at the time?  I can't remember anything 
specific, but I got the impression he felt guilty as an adult looking 
back, but at the time was suffering from teenage selective stupidity-
itis, which I recall vaguely and with a twinge of shame myself.

He takes a 
> teaching position but puts off telling what he knows about Sirius 
> and about the One-eyed witch. 

Can't justify this one, but don't think of it as passive-agressive, 
just poor judgement.

> He's reasonable in the face of 
> Snape's provocation but ridicules him behind his back. 

I don't think he ridicules him behind his back - I think the boggart 
incident was all about Neville.  After all, had Snape not tortured 
the child regularly, the boggart wouldn't have taken his form.  You 
*have* to make the boggart rediculous in order to get rid of it, and 
as the lesson was about getting rid of boggarts, I don't see how he 
could have done anything that *wouldn't* make Snape look silly that 
would still allow Neville to succeed at his task.  His own enjoyment 
of it was I'm sure great, but incidental.  :D

> He doesn't leave a lesson plan for his sub though he knows he'll be 
> absent.  

Drat again, can't justify this one except as a plot device to get 
werewolves on the agenda.

> He agrees to take his potion but forgets to do so.  

I don't accept that as passive-agressive, or in any way intentional - 
he'd just seen his old lauded-as-a-dearly-departed-hero friend show 
up alive and well on the map.  Considering what he must have been 
thinking at the time, I can't blame him for being forgetful.

He 
> displays all this poor behavior on the job but blames his lack of 
> work entirely on his lycanthropy. 

He's declared the best DADA teacher they've ever had, which isn't 
much, but from what I can gather from discussions on the list, is 
generally considered one of the best teachers, period.  If he's this 
good at teaching even while he "displays all this poor behavior", I'd 
say he'd be worth a shot at other jobs as well, but he hasn't gotten 
the chance, because he's a werewolf and people hate/fear werewolves.  
I think (don't have books with me to check) it's mostly other 
characters who say that werewolves can't get work, and there's plenty 
of evidence from the books that this is true, and not some sort of 
blame game.

He finally confesses to 
> Dumbledore but doesn't mention the Map. Instead, he  returns 
> the Map to Harry, saying that James would have been 
> disappointed if Harry never found his way out of the castle. 
> Contrast that with Sirius' advice to Harry to stay put in GoF and 
> his continuing correspondence with D.

Which in turn contrasts with Dumbledore's own behavior in giving 
Harry the invisibility cloak.  The map is a tool, and I think Lupin 
believes Harry has learned his lesson and will be using it for the 
right reasons from now on.  I saw it as a vote of confidence in 
Harry, not a subterfuge against the headmaster, who would likely have 
given it back to Harry himself had he been in the position.

> 
> Whew! I wouldn't claim that all Lupin's actions above are the 
> result of veiled hostility. But they do seem to form a pattern, 
don't 
> they? Lupin doesn't grumble much, except about the taste of the 
> potion, and he never shoots any one a resentful look, so I could 
> be wrong. 

And I dearly hope you are, as much as I admire your skill at 
presenting the case.

> But I wonder. How much hostility there is in Lupin's 
> shack lines depends on how you read them, IMO. Even spoken 
> in a light voice,  "No one's going to try and kill you till we've 
sorted 
> a few things out, "could sound very ominous, depending on 
> where you put the emphasis and the pauses. 

I can't think of a way to say that that wouldn't sound ominous, 
unless you leave out the last half of the sentence.  But I think it's 
*supposed* to be frightening and chilling.  From Peter's perspective 
Lupin is quietly and rationally discussing killing him, and that's 
just plain freaky.  Killing someone is not meant to be a rational 
thing to do.  And he is very much talking down to Pettigrew, as if 
he's impaired somehow and must be spoken to like a small child.  I 
think it was part of the dehumanizing thing that has been discussed.  
In part I think it's because he's shocked and enraged and disgusted, 
and in part it's to distance himself from someone he's always thought 
fondly of.  He's spent the last 13 years thinking of a brave little 
friend who was murdered trying to avenge their other dear friends.  
Now that he knows the truth, he's got to make it fit into his world.  
His apparent way of explaining Peter getting James and Lily killed 
and framing Sirius is to believe that he (to paraprhase Eliza 
Doolittle) doesn't have a feeling heart in him.

I don't know how this fits into the passive-agressive thing, though.  
I think Lupin is, for the most part, a very self-controlled 
individual, but in that scene I don't think he was in control of 
himself - he was all about controlling (and punishing, verbally and 
physically) the *worm* who caused death and ruin for all of his 
friends and left him alone in the world again.
I think this is one of the things that makes me love him, in a 
perverse way.  I love knowing someone is capable of something 
horrible, but they resist those impulses and choose to 'be good'.  
Unfortunately in order to know that about a person, you have to 
witness something like that.

Ok, just revealed something rather creepy about my own little self, 
didn't I?  I think I'll quit now then.


kimberly
who thinks Pippin is spot-on about what Dumbledore would have done, 
and hopes that someday the other characters (and she herself) will 
develop instincts so good.