Sirius' Prank & Lupin (WAS Dehumanizing Language--Sirius' Prank)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 34385

Jo, who is now worried about sending her child to summer camp, asked:

> However, would you want to take your revenge upon any offspring
> of any of those people if they happened to fall within your
> sphere of influence?

No, of course I wouldn't.  At least, I should certainly *hope*
that I wouldn't.  

But you know, even if I *did* find in myself that kind of vengeful
impulse (which I doubt that I would, but I suppose it's possible), 
I would still manage to resist it somehow.  Desire is one thing.  
Action is something else entirely.  We all have sadistic and 
vindictive impulses (er...don't we?).  That doesn't make it 
acceptable to go so far as to act on them.

I do find Snape's problems with grudge and bitterness and envy and 
resentment -- as well as his instinct for cruelty -- all highly 
sympathetic.  I identify with them: they're tendencies that I share,
things that I have struggled with myself.  But his behavior is 
absolutely appalling, and while I can often (more often than I'm 
comfortable with, actually) empathize with it, I can in no way 
*condone* it.

(Oh, and BTW, about summer camp?  If your child doesn't get picked on
regularly at school, then s/he will probably be just fine at summer 
camp.  If your kid's the Designated Scapegoat, on the other hand, as
I always was...well, you just never know.  S/he might be just fine at 
summer camp anyway.  But I'd be wary.)


Cindy wrote:

> This isn't going to be easy, but I'm going to give it everything 
> I've got to explain why Sirius is not so bad, and uh, why Sirius is 
> not so bad.  

I think that people may have misunderstood me here.  I don't 
actually think that Sirius is a bad guy at all.  I *like* him.  
Honest, I do.  And even the prank doesn't really make me think
all that badly of him.  It was a monstrously thoughtless and
insensitive thing to do, yes.  But he was sixteen.  I did some 
pretty stupid things as a teenager myself.  I'm perfectly willing
to forgive him for the prank, myself.  (Hell, easy for *me* to say, 
right?  He didn't play the prank on *me.*)

Or, as Cindy wrote: "It was a dumb mistake that a dumb kid made,
it's long since over, and that's that."

But at the same time, I can't really feel too harshly towards
Snape for still feeling angry about it, either.  Yeah, I know.
It's Snape.  He holds onto grudges forever, he can't ever let 
anything *go,* he's trapped in an arrested state of development,
and on top of all of that, he's also cruel and vindictive and 
sadistic and unjust.  Yes, yes, yes.  All granted.

But I just can't find it in my heart to blame him for this
particular grudge.  Did he ever even receive an *apology?*
I somehow doubt it.  Or if he did, then I'll bet it came from 
James, on Sirius' behalf.  Ugh.  Horrid even to contemplate.

(Not, of course, that I think that he would have accepted an 
apology, even if one had been offered to him.  But still.)

And besides, the hostility is hardly one-sided, is it?  Sirius
gets all snarly over the mention of Snape's name even *before*
Snape shows up and starts putting on his Great Big Bad Villain 
Act.  The anger and the hatred are mutual, which doesn't absolve 
either one of them for being such Big Babies, of course, but which 
does make me feel more generous about Snape's attitude.  Let's face
it -- Snape's not exactly a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy.  
Unlike his vendetta against Harry, or his viciousness to Lupin, 
his hatred of Sirius is not and has never been a one-way street.

<Cindy argues that Sirius, having spent the past twelve years
in Azkaban, is himself trapped in a state of arrested development,
and so can be forgiven both for continuing to make school-boy
jibes about Snape to Harry et al and for lacking the maturity to 
just suck it down and admit that his "little prank" was exceptionally 
stupid and wrong-headed>

Eh.  I agree with you that he can't have been expected to have
gained much in the way of maturity while moaning in Azkaban.
But he didn't go to prison until he was in his twenties, no?  
Plenty of time for it to have occurred to him that maybe trying 
to use one of his best friends as a weapon to murder another 
teenager might have been a tad, well, *impetuous,* to say the 
least.  Plenty of time to have come to the conclusion that "he 
was utterly unpleasant, and so deserved it" is perhaps not the most 
appropriate sentiment to express when you're talking about an action 
that could have *killed* someone.  

I mean, I like the guy too, Cindy.  But he certainly is *flawed.*  

Of course, for all we know Sirius might be perfectly willing to 
acknowledge that his prank was a dreadful error *now*.  It has, 
after all, only come up that one time -- and he was kind of
distracted by being all obsessed and hell-bent on his vengeance
on Peter at the time.  So, you know, I'm not even willing to go
so far as to say that he's *not* sufficiently mature these days
to admit that he was wrong.

I was just saying that the one comment on the event that he *did*
make didn't win him any points from me.  And that I can't 
honestly blame Snape for still being peeved about it.

As for Lupin...

> So here goes, and as a courtesy, I'll throw in some Lupin to soften 
> you up before we get to Sirius.

<faint smile>

Lupin can always soften me up.

<shakes head firmly>

There, now you see?  That's precisely why I rearranged the subject 
matter.  Didn't want to get _too_ sloppy while talking about Sirius
and Snape, after all.  That just wouldn't do.   

But Lupin now...

> I wasn't troubled much by Lupin's behavior in that scene.  I didn't 
> see him as cold-blooded, well, at least for a person about to kill 
> someone in cold blood.  He had a tragic, no-win situation to 
> resolve, and he dealt with it in a methodical, fair, mature and 
> business-like manner.  I really don't see any other way he could 
> have reacted consistent with his character....Peter never even 
> expressed any remorse for what he did, so I don't see how Lupin 
> even has to reach the question of whether he ought to show mercy.

<Cindy goes on to defend Lupin's refusal to show Peter mercy>

Again, I think that you misunderstood my major point there.  What I 
found so chillingly dehumanizing about Lupin's behavior in the 
Shrieking Shack wasn't so much his eventual agreement to help Sirius 
kill Peter (although that is pretty chillingly dehumanizing, IMHO) as 
it was what I perceived as a decided tinge of sadism that started
to creep into his tone toward the end of that scene.

Clearly we read his dialogue there very differently.  You say that
he deals with the matter "in a methodical, fair, mature and business-
like manner."  I would say that in some ways he does.  But in other
ways...I don't know.  The particular manner in which he addresses
Peter himself struck me as fairly sadistic, actually.  It's a 
particular type of sadism, a sadism that masks itself as mild-
mannered reasonableness -- it's not all that distant, in fact, from 
that "I am your reproachful parent figure" tone that we see Voldemort 
taking with his DEs in the graveyard in Book Four.

Not that I'm equating the two characters, of course.  Lupin's a
sweetie.  But the situation is an ugly one, and it has a nasty effect
on all of those people, each according to his temperament.  Sirius 
gets brutal, and Peter grovels pitifully, and Lupin...well,
Lupin starts to edge into a rather sophisticated brand of verbal 
cruelty.  That's just how someone of his particular temperament 
expresses extreme anger and hostility.


-- Elkins