Real Wizards Aren't Squeamish (Pettigrew, Wizarding Culture)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 34421

Quite some time ago, Cindy wrote:

> Oh, I think there is one character even less sympathetic than
> Karkaroff, who has at least reformed himself into a headmaster
> of a school.  Pettigrew is worse, IMHO.

Aw.  Poor widdle Peter.  Can't you cut him some slack, Cindy?
I mean, what's he ever really *done* -- other than betraying all
of his friends, facilitating the return of Voldemort, abducting
Bertha Jorkins and aiding in her torment and death, and murdering
12 anonymous Muggles and poor Cedric Diggory, that is?  I mean, hey.  
We all make *mistakes,* right?

Heh.  No, you're right.  Pettigrew's seriously bad news.  But
I still find him more sympathetic than Karkaroff somehow.  Maybe
that's because Karkaroff still has some pride.  He's smug and
preening and sleek and vain, he vacillates between smarming up
to Dumbledore and snarling accusations at him, he's mean to his
students (with the exception of Victor), and his solicitousness
to Victor...well, maybe that was just me.  Was I the only one
left with the unsettling suspicion that Karkaroff's relationship 
with Victor might have been neither purely pedagogical nor purely 
platonic -- and almost certainly not purely consensual?

OK.  So maybe I just have a very sick mind.

But even leaving aside for the moment the question of inappropriate
relations between Karkaroff and his pet pupil, there still wasn't
very much there to garner my sympathies -- until he starting reacting 
to the reappearance of the Dark Mark, that is, at which point he did
start to rack up some sympathy points with me.  I sympathize readily 
with desperation, and with people trapped in no-win situations.

Pettigrew, on the other hand...well, every time we see the poor
wretch, he's in some state of utter abjection.  If he isn't grovelling
for his life, then he's weeping in helpless terror at his impending
death at the hands of his old classmates, or he's cringing in fear
and revulsion from his Evil Undead Baby Master, or he's screaming or
sobbing or moaning in physical agony.  He's a broken man; his life is 
just one long unending misery; I don't believe that he's enjoyed 
a single moment of happiness or pleasure or even real contentment 
since the first day he joined Voldemort's cause.  Even as a rat, he 
seemed profoundly depressed. ("Sleep...eat...sleep...eat...")

And, yeah.  That *does* make him somewhat sympathetic.  To my way of 
thinking, at least.  

But then, given that Cindy's admitted that she values toughness
highly and identifies with it, while feeling little but contempt for 
vulnerability and frailty, I strongly suspect that this is 
*precisely* what makes Pettigrew her candidate for Least Sympathetic 
Character.

And then there's also the squeamishness issue.  Cindy, again:

> Wormtail?  He's one of the few characters who we know doesn't like 
> to kill people or see people killed, although he did what he had to 
> do when he blasted all those Muggles on the street.  That 
> assessment is based on Wormtail's reluctance to curse/kill someone 
> in GoF, and his unwillingness to look Harry in the eye in the 
> graveyard.

Agreed.  Although he *is* capable of killing without even a moment's
hesitation.  He doesn't balk for so much as a second before offing 
Cedric Diggory in the graveyard, and he couldn't have pulled off
his snookering of poor Sirius if he'd messed up the timing on the
muggle-blasting stunt.  He may not care much for it, but he doesn't 
*falter.*

But I would agree that he doesn't like it very much.  And again, I 
suspect that this probably acts as a black mark in Cindy's books, 
while it's rather a sympathy point in mine.  Although I do feel a
certain degree of contempt for the hypocrisy displayed by those
who condone killing while being themselves unwilling to get their 
hands dirty, it still makes me think better of people when they seem 
squeamish about it.  I don't like killing.  

Cindy wrote:

> Anyway, I don't think that there are that many characters in the 
> series who are squeamish about killing people.  

I think that this is an important observation, and one that strikes
to the heart of a number of the topics I've brought up here recently: 
Where the Bleeding Hearts?, for example, or my discomfort with the
idea of the equation of weakness and wickedness.

I very much liked Barb's observation that the most Bleeding Heartish 
character we've seen so far is Hermione, as well as her suggestion 
that this might have a lot to do with the fact that Hermione is 
muggle-born and thus out of step with wizarding culture as a whole.  
I agree with her entirely.  Wizarding culture is *not* our own, and
it differs in ways that run far deeper than a mere reliance on magic 
over technology.

The wizarding culture of the books strikes me as one that retains
much stronger traces of Warrior Ethos than our own does.  Wizards
seem for the most part decidedly un-squeamish about killing, or
indeed, about violence in general.  Students at Hogwarts are exposed
as a matter of due course to a degree of physical risk that strikes
many readers (it would seem) as excessive or even horrifying, and
they are expected to learn to handle this with aplomb.  Timidity
is only marginally better tolerated by the teachers than it is by
the students themselves (far less so in Snape's case, but even the
generally humanistic McGonagall has very little tolerance for it);
cowardice is simply and purely and completely loathed.

The pureblooders' emphasis on the concept of "wizarding pride" is 
also telling, to my mind, as is the fact that duelling is still a 
common enough practice for it to be taught as an extracurricular 
option at Hogwarts.  Pride -- and a particular kind of pride at that, 
a *combatative* pride -- is evident throughout the books as a trait 
on which the culture as a whole places a high degree of emphasis.

It's always struck me as amusing -- amusing and also kind of sad,
really -- that the Slytherins seem to ascribe to this ethos very
nearly as closely as the Gryffyndors do.  They're supposed to value 
cunning and deceit, and achievement through any means possible, and 
all of that, right?  They're supposed to value *sneakiness*.  They're
supposed to value the ends over the means.  So why on earth should
they care about things like warrior pride, or physical courage, or
dignitas, or in-group loyalty?

But they do.  They care about all of that a great deal.  We see it 
with Voldie and his Death Eaters, and we see a lot of it with Draco 
Malfoy.  Accused of having bought his way onto the Quiddich team, 
Draco actually loses his *temper.*  If he's such a good little Slyth 
boy, then shouldn't he have simply smirked?  After all, isn't that 
just the sort of practice that he's *supposed* to be engaged in?  
Finding the underhanded way to get things for himself?  Exploiting a 
situation by any means possible?  Really, he should be taking *pride* 
in his utterly House-sanctioned behavior.  But he's not.  He's 
ashamed.  And he doesn't like being accused of cowardice, either. And 
he feels honor-bound to avenge insults against his mother's name.  
And...

And, well, it's all just plain *sad,* if you ask me.  The poor Slyths 
just can't win: their House emphasizes the very values that their 
overall culture most strongly militates against.  No matter how many 
times they may win the House Cup, no matter how loudly and shrilly 
they may proclaim their superiority by virtue of blood or money, no 
matter how successful their Old Boys may have been at attaining 
positions of power and prestige, the fact still remains that they're 
losers by cultural default, and they know it.  Small wonder that 
they're so prone to envy and resentment, or that Evil Powers find 
them so very easy to corrupt and to seduce.

> By the way, Lupin and Sirius really weren't thinking all that 
> straight in the Shrieking Shack.  If I felt I had to dispatch 
> another human being in cold blood while that person begged for his 
> life with three 13-year old kids standing around watching, I'd ask 
> the kids to go stand in the hall.  

You would think.  But if wizarding culture really does adhere to
a fairly strong warrior ethic, then maybe it wouldn't particularly 
occur to Sirius and Lupin.  After all, the kids are wizards-in-
training.  They're expected to be pretty tough.

And, of course, Ron couldn't walk.

But yeah, I agree that if they'd been thinking more clearly, they
probably would have at least tried to send the kids out of the room.


-- Elkins