Malicious vs. mischievous (was Re: Lupin's Edge/Twins' Edge?)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 36031

Hi, Ama.

Wow.  Such timing!  

You caught me at a kind of difficult time for these questions, as 
I'm actually working on a truly massive Percy post right now that 
does touch on a number of these issues -- and probably in much 
greater detail than anyone could possibly ever want to read about 
them! ;-)

But I'll try to give some short replies right now.

Ama asked:

> I had trouble understanding how the twins' teasing,
> especially of their siblings, could be construed as
> malicious.  It then occurred to me(!) that perhaps I
> just don't get your use of the word malicious.  

I was using malicious to mean "with ill-will, with the
intention of causing harm."  

Mischievousness is *quite* another matter. I've no problems with 
mischief.  I've been known to wreak a bit of that myself, from time 
to time.

> Now, there ARE malicious pranksters, but IMHO, the
> twins' pranks stem from a love of mischief, not
> malice.  They like harrassing people, and they're
> often inconsiderate, but malice implies intent to
> cause pain.  I don't think the twins really have it in
> for anyone.  

I agree with you that in general, the twins' love of pranks
derives from a sense of mischief and not from malice.  I do
think that the twins are often insensitive, and that they
therefore do often cause harm without intending to, but that
is a *very* different thing than malice, which as you said, requires 
an active intent to cause pain.  In CoS, for example, when Percy 
points out to the twins that their teasing of Ginny is really 
genuinely upsetting her, rather than cheering her up as they had 
intended, then they stop it at once.  Their teasing of their siblings 
is not generally intended to cause real harm, and I do not see them
as malicious people on the whole.

But I think that by the beginning of PoA, the twins really *do* have 
it in for Percy, and that they really *are* trying to get at him.  
Certainly by the beginning of GoF, I see genuine malice in the twins' 
actions against Percy.  

Percy's relationship with the rest of his family has been in a steady
state of decline ever since the first book, and by the time we reach 
GoF I see a great deal of genuine animosity there, a great deal of 
anger and bitterness and resentment festering under the surface of 
the Weasley family dynamic.  What was once good-natured has by Book 
Four become not at all friendly; things that were previously merely 
sources of tension have become rather serious schismatics. 

It's really not at *all* One Big Happy Weasley Family in GoF, if you 
ask me.  Tensions are running very high in that household on a number
of different fronts.  We see it in Molly's rants against the twins 
(and in front of company, too!); we see it in the twins' own 
frustration with their family's inability to support them in pursuing 
the future that they've chosen for themselves; we hear it in Ron's 
tone every time that Percy comes up in conversation throughout the 
course of the entire novel.  And Percy himself isn't getting along 
with anyone, not even his parents, who were once his allies.  He 
quarrels with Arthur over politics, and even Molly, once Percy's most 
fervent champion within the family dynamic, yells at him at one point 
when she thinks that he's criticizing his father.  Things are getting 
tense, and things are getting ugly, and I think that the twins' 
treatment of Percy reflects this.

I wrote (and Ama quoted):

> >I don't think it's accidental that they go after
> >Percy on precisely the same points for which he is
> >always being praised by their mother, or for which
> >they themselves are always being *criticized* by
> >their mother.

Ama wrote:

> Percy has always been perceived as an insufferable
> prig.  

No, I don't agree that he has.  In PS/SS, he certainly shows a
tendency to pomposity and bombast, but this isn't *nearly* as 
notable or as overwhelming an aspect of his character as it will 
become in later volumes.  Nor do I see any indication that Percy's 
family has always perceived him as an insufferable prig.  Far to the 
contrary: Percy's good opinion is something that Ron values highly 
enough for it to be presented as a major part of his *triumph* at the 
end of the novel, and Fred and George both evidently value Percy's 
company enough to bother bullying him into spending Christmas with 
them, rather than with his Prefect friends.  Family or no family, I 
don't really think that they would have bothered to do that if they 
had really considered him to be an "insufferable prig." 

Mind you, by the time we reach GoF -- possibly even by time we've hit 
PoA -- I think that the Weasleys for the most part *have* begun to 
think of Percy as an insufferable prig.  But then, can you really 
imagine Fred and George trying to convince Percy to spend some 
quality family time with them in PoA?  Or in GoF?  

The relationships within that family have been *changing,* IMO.  And 
not at all for the better -- particularly where Percy is concerned.

> But Ron, in SS, confides in Harry about having a lot to measure 
> up to, and notes that F&G get good grades.  And yet Percy was 
> already a target way back then.  

Was he really all that much more of a target than any of the twins' 
other siblings at that point?  More than Ginny, for example?  I don't 
know if I really think that he was.  The twins don't seem to me to 
really start gunning for Percy in particular until sometime in CoS.

When Ron is telling Harry about having a lot to measure up to on the 
train, he seems if anything *more* envious of Bill and Charlie and 
the Twins than he does of Percy.  The animosity which will later come 
to characterize Ron's entire attitude towards Percy is strikingly 
absent in PS/SS.  I suspect that the twins' particular animosity 
towards him hadn't quite kicked in yet either.

> So it's not Percy's academic achievements, it's his attitude, 
> revealed by his penchant for bombast, that convinces the twins ol' 
> Percy needs taking down a peg.  And he does!

Well, if by "taking Percy down a peg" one means "making mock of him," 
then I'd say that this is precisely the sort of thing that actually 
*encourages* him in his penchant for bombast.  The pomposity and the 
puffing and the self-aggrandizement all seem to be how Percy responds 
to feeling insecure and unhappy.  The relatively content Percy of 
PS/SS is not nearly as pompous or as unpleasant as the secretive and 
worried adolescent Percy of CoS, who in turn is *still* more bearable 
than the utterly stressed-out NEWT-bound Percy of PoA.  By the time 
we get to GoF, Percy is feeling genuinely alienated and unhappy; he 
has therefore become completely insufferable and unlikeable and 
impossible to be around.

The way I read it, Percy and the twins are caught in a kind of a trap 
when it comes to their relationship.  The less secure Percy feels, 
the more he struts; the more he struts, the more the twins pick on 
him; the more the twins pick on him, the less secure he feels.  It's 
a vicious cycle, IMO.


> I believe if the twins really were malicious, if they
> had really taken their mother's words to heart, they'd
> have become saboteurs.  Yet in GoF we never see the
> twins stealing and altering Percy's homework or
> destroying his cauldron reports; instead, they limit
> their pranks to childishly bewitching his badge and
> sending him dragon dung at work, hardly spiteful IMO. 

Well, there are degrees of malice, certainly.  In PoA, the 
twins do not, it is true, try to sabotage Percy's schoolwork or 
(heaven forbid!) his NEWTS.  They don't torture him or murder
his owl or throw him down a well either.  ;-)

But the level of harrassment that we see them engaging in when
it comes to the badge at the beginning of PoA most certainly did
strike me as having crossed the border from the realms of good-
natured teasing into the lands of genuine malice.  The twins can be 
insensitive, true, but they are not *that* insensitive.  They're 
badgering Percy into a near nervous-breakdown with their antics at
the beginning of PoA -- he's beside himself with agitation -- and I'm 
pretty sure that they not only knew that, but that they *liked* it.

Again, I think that Molly's constant carping on the twins plays a 
big part here.  I think that the twins are angry and frustrated with
what they perceive as a lack of respect for their talents, and that
Percy stands as the all-too-obvious outlet for this anger.  I also
think that Percy's own issues make him very difficult to like at 
times, and that this also makes him a tempting target.  I do not see
the twins as Evil.  But I do think that in the last two books, there
is genuine malice -- by which I mean, a real desire to cause harm -- 
motivating their actions against Percy.  I do see their behavior as 
rather spiteful.

(And BTW, if someone sent me dragon dung at my brand new desk job at 
which I was very eager to make a good impression, then I think that I 
would most *certainly* consider that an act of sabotage!  But I don't 
believe for a moment that the twins thought of it that way when they 
planned it out, so I agree with you that spiteful or not, they are 
still merely pranksters, and not saboteurs.)

> I think that F&G's prank playing is a coping
> mechanism; like Percy's ambition and Ron's temper,
> it's their way of dealing with poverty (and it may
> very well be their way out, if the joke shop gets off
> the ground!)  

I agree.  And it is certainly unfortunate that their coping mechanism
should interact so very badly with Percy's -- although I tend to think
that Percy's coping mechanism isn't so much his ambition per se as it 
is his "puffing," his assumption of that rather desperate and 
pathetic and utterly unconvincing air of self-importance that he 
seems to fall back on whenever he is feeling uncertain of himself.


> Perhaps they think laughter is the best medicine and because it 
> works for them, it will also cure everyone's ailments-Percy's 
> bigheadedness especially, Ginny's fear is another.  

I certainly believe that the twins' motives towards Ginny are 
well-meaning.  I believe that their intentions towards Percy in
PS/SS are kindly.  By PoA, however, I don't really think that's 
the case any longer.  

> They may be perceived as thoughtless, but they're well-meaning 
> too. Thus I can't see their actions as malicious and therefore 
> make the distinction between malicious and mischievous 
> pranksters.  

Hmmm.  Perhaps I'm just a bit more willing to forgive malice than 
you are?  Even people who are on the whole well-meaning can still act 
with malice, and often *do,* particularly when they are angry.  Harry 
himself gets quite a good number of malicious moments within the 
books, but he is still an exceptionally well-meaning character 
overall.  I don't think that the twins are *utterly* malicious 
pranksters in the least.  Feeding the Canary Cream to Neville, for 
example, may have been a bit unkind, but I don't think that it was 
intended that way -- I don't think that it was intentionally 
malicious.  But I do think that malice does motivate a number of 
their pranks -- the toffee incident with Dudley leaps to mind -- and 
that this tendency is particularly evident when it comes to their 
harrassment of Percy.


-- Elkins