[HPforGrownups] Peter/ Death and Justice

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 37086

In a message dated 27/03/02 18:40:37 GMT Standard Time, MmeBurgess at msn.com 
writes:
> I say:
> I believe that DG might be confusing the issue here to a certain extent.  
> What "they" (Remus and Sirius) did not know was what Peter would do.  Yes, 
> they knew he was dangerous, yes, they knew he had contributed to the deaths 
> of James and Lily, but there was no inidication while he was still in rat 
> form that he was going back to Voldemort to kill many more.  Even after he 
> was transformed and had told his story, while they might suspect what he 
> was planning to do, they did not KNOW it.   
> 

I agree. As far as Sirius was concerned, Pettigrew was a weak, 
self-interested little rat, who would not go back to Voldemort unless he was 
sure that he was once again the biggest bully in the playground. We cannot 
blame Sirius and Lupin for not predicting that Pettigrew was to go back to 
him in his weakened form and particularly not for failing to realise that he 
would be the agent who restored him to power. 
I think Marianne has it right:

>I believe that 
>Peter has no center.  Maybe he's amoral, maybe he's completely self-
>centered and ego-driven.  I'm not sure how to describe it.  I think 
>that his own self-interest/self-preservation is the most important 
>motiviation he has. 

>He's not so good in school?  Then he aligns himself with three very 
>bright boys who can and will help him out.  And, maybe he's not such 
>a weak wizard; maybe he's lazy, but can get away with it because he's 
>got these friends who will carry him along with them.

>Times are tough and scary?  He aligns himself with the side he thinks 
>is most likely to win the war.  

Isn't this exactly the picture of evil/darkness that some of us have been 
building up? The contrast between *amorality* of the Dark side and the 
enlightened acknowledgement of and fight against evil of the Light side. Yet 
again, we have a character who does evil not out of any mistaken conviction 
that what he does is right, but out of sheer self-interest, because it's 
easier and more profitable than standing up for right - if he can even 
recognise it. 

Whilst I'm in the area, I wanted to challenge the validity of DG's Hitler 
analogy.

>But let's tweak the example a little bit. At the risk of invoking
>Godwin's law, let's pretend that 1) I'm French 2) my yard is in France
>3) It's 1941 and 4) that's Adolf Hitler lying unarmed in my backyard. 

The problem I have is that you're using a *wartime* analogy. If the Shack 
incident had happened during the last (or even the next) Voldy war, then I 
think it might have had some validity, but at the time it did happen, 
theoretically, at least, Voldemort was at bay, there was no war going on and 
citizens taking the law into their own hands would be likely to get what was 
coming to them (and rightly so, IMO, although I suspect the MoM would go over 
the top by my standards). Situations of war change both our perceptions of 
our duties and the responsibilities which society gives us. As far as the MoM 
was concerned, the only state of emergency concerned the escape of Black and 
even Snape intended to turn him over to the Dementors for what would have 
been, officially at least, 'justice'. Another failure of the analogy is, to 
my mind, that although as a Frenchman in 1941, I would know what he had done 
to my country, I would not know anything like the full extent of the evil 
that was to be played out. (Although now I come to think about it, it works 
from *my* POV: Sirius and Lupin only knew part of the story, not how it would 
play out.)

Eloise


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