Remorse -- Dementors -- the Crouch Family

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 34827

Cindy wrote (of Crouch Jr.):

> He didn't exactly decline to switch places with his sick mother.  
> No, he was happy to get out of Azkaban (where he was reliving all 
> of his unhappy memories) to live with dear old dad (where he could, 
> uh, relive a lot of unhappy memories).  

Well.  He *was* dying at the time.  

Of what, though?  Remorse?  Despair?  Pneumonia?  Was young Crouch's
swift decline due to a delicate physical constitution, or was he 
unusually sensitive to the effects of the dementors?  And if the 
latter, then why?  What memories could such a young man have that 
would be so terrible that reliving them would drive him to his death 
bed after only one year in Azkaban?

Being a Death Eater and having helped to torture two people into 
insanity would certainly provide *me* with plenty of bad memories, I 
think, but for this to be the explanation for young Barty's decline, 
then we would have to assume that he actually felt some remorse, 
which doesn't seem terribly consistent with his behavior in GoF.

Of course, that was twelve years later.  People change.

Perhaps it's just because I'm sick, but I rather like imagining 
Crouch Sr. pointing one trembling finger at his Imperio'd son and 
saying: "All right, young man, you just sit there and *think* about 
what you've done!"

And the poor kid having no choice but to comply.

The irony, of course, is that after the first five years, it really 
stopped bothering him all that much.  And somewhere around year 
seven, he started finding it all, well...kinda *cool,* actually.  

And so the teenager who was dying of remorse and despair in Azkaban 
is transformed into a sociopathic sadist, thanks to dear old Dad and 
his misplaced notions of parental duty.

But on a related subject...

Devin wrote:

> I think of remorse as a rather positive emotion, in its being
> often the first step to forgive or apologize and as an emotion
> that is very human and essential.  I bet you anything remorse
> is one of the last things on anyone's mind in Azkaban.

I certainly agree with you that remorse is a *useful* emotion, but 
it's hardly a *happy* one.  The dementors are said to drain their 
victims of happy memories and emotions, not necessarily of beneficial 
ones.  Sirius' knowledge of his own innocence is certainly beneficial 
to him -- it's part of what enables him to keep his sanity -- but the 
dementors can't take it from him because it isn't pleasant.

I'm sure that there's plenty of remorse to go around in Azkaban.  
Just imagine being forced to relive your worst memories when the 
worst things that you can remember are also the worst things you've 
ever *done.*  <shudder>

But that's one of the things that's always bothered me about the use 
of dementors as prison guards, actually.  Aside from the fact that it 
is unspeakably cruel, doesn't it also seem that their presence would 
punish the truly remorseful far more than it would the blase or the 
sociopathic or the simply uncaring?  That just doesn't seem fair, 
somehow.

I also always find myself wondering about that statement that long 
enough exposure to the dementors renders people "just as soulless and 
evil as they are."  Exposing your prisoners to something like that 
really doesn't seem like a very wise idea, does it?  I mean, just 
*think* of the recidivism rate!


<Cindy had to force herself to shake off the mental image of Crouch 
Sr. imploring, "I do and do and do for you, and this is the thanks I 
get?">

Nah.  That was always more Mrs. Crouch's tactic, surely.

"I give, and I give, and I give..."


-- Elkins, now shuddering at a few unhappy memories of her own...