The Dullest Redemption Subplot Ever (WAS: Evil Is...)

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51632

Errol wrote:

> Draco hasn't really done anything yet. But I think its that *yet* 
> that is under attack. He does seem setup on a fast track to 
> Deatheaterhood. I`d say redeem him from JKR!! ;-)

Hee!  Well, I guess my point there really was that people sometimes
like to use the word "irredeemable" to refer to Draco, and often cite
the fact that he dissed Cedric's memory on the train as proof 
positive of this assessment.

My feeling on this is that, first of all, I agree with Cindy on the 
redeemability issue.  Anyone with free will is redeemable no matter 
what they have done.  Furthermore, I would say that the moral 
universe that the author is setting forth in the books shares this 
assessment.  We have been given Snape's plotline to serve as its 
illustration within the text.  I somehow suspect that Snape did worse 
things in his time than making nasty comments and trying to get a 
hated teacher's pet hippogriff executed.  ;-)

Secondly, though, I wanted to make the point that, far from 
being "irredeemable" at this point in the storyline, Draco hasn't 
even done anything bad enough yet to make him *require* all that much 
in the way of "redemption," IMO.  Questions of his "redeemability" at 
this point in time therefore strike me as somewhat premature.  To put 
it bluntly, as far as I'm concerned, the boy isn't even *damned* 
yet.  His sins are minor, the harm he has caused slight.  I see no 
blazing fires of perdition whence he currently needs to be plucked, 
if you get my drift.  

I do see him as on a collision course with serious badness, to be 
sure.  But it's difficult for me to evaluate his 'evilness quotient' 
in quite the same light as many others seem to be doing, because 
honestly, I just don't think he's done anything too dreadful yet, and 
I'm far more concerned overall with what people actually *do* than 
with what they think or desire or feel or say.  

Cindy, for example, wrote this:

> Then Draco is spiteful, malicious, racist, angry, hurts others, 
> takes pleasure in their misfortune and doesn't ever do anything 
> good. Whether we use the label "evil,", we wind up in exactly the 
> same place, do we not?

> I'd be very surprised if JKR is among those who thinks that people 
> who are spiteful, malicious, racist, angry and take pleasure in 
> hurting others are not evil. 

And all I could think was that it sounded to me rather like Snape.  
Who is our narrative representative of a *redeemed* Death Eater.

And then she wrote:

> I'm thinking that sounds like evil by the definitions of most 
> people.

Does it?  It certainly doesn't sound like my definition of evil at 
all.  Of the things mentioned above, only "hurts others" and "doesn't 
ever do anything good" qualify.  The rest are just feelings and 
attitudes.  They can certainly *motivate* people to do evil, but 
then, you know, so can misguided notions of love, loyalty, justice, 
devotion or protection.  So can thoughtlessness, callousness, 
ruthlessness or ambition.  So, for that matter, can mental illness.
But that doesn't mean that possessing any of those things makes 
someone evil.  They're just things that you need to watch carefully, 
if you suffer from them, because they can often lead people to *do* 
evil.  But they themselves do not make someone evil -- although they 
might make someone a person we do not find particularly sympathetic.  

I don't really think that JKR thinks that feelings of spite, malice, 
anger, prejudice, sadism or schadenfreude make people evil either.  
I think that if she did, then she would not so often show us Harry 
feeling precisely those things.  In fact, though, we are continually 
shown evidence of Harry feeling precisely those things.  He 
fantasizes about torturing Snape.  He wants to kill Sirius Black.  He 
identifies with the jeering, hissing Pensieve mob.  He enjoys 
watching Dudley suffer.  He suspects people of criminal actions on 
the basis of personal dislike for them or for their House affiliation 
(Snape in PS/SS, Draco in CoS).  He thinks ill of Cedric Diggory for 
reasons of pure black *envy.*  The Sorting Hat considered putting him 
in House Slytherin.

I'd say that the text makes it clear that you can feel all of those 
things and still be okay.  It's only *acting* on them that gets you 
into trouble.  That, at any rate, is how I interpret the thematic 
emphasis on choice.

So when Dicentra writes, for example:

> To this I would add that evil has to do what you want, not just 
> what you do. If you continually *want* to do evil deeds over good 
> ones, you're evil, even if you don't actually do them.

I would have to disagree.  I think that if you override your desire 
to do evil deeds, then you are doing well, no matter how badly you 
may want to be doing them.  

So far, Draco's envy, spite, malice, and so forth has led him to 
commit a rather petty series of crimes: crimes little worse, in fact, 
than those which Snape also engages in from time to time.  Verbal 
abuse.  Bullying.  Gloating over others' misfortunes.  Vindictive 
behavior.  When confronted with *real* evil, however, he seems rather 
at a loss.  He flees from unicorn-blood-swilling Quirrellmorts and 
dementors on trains.  He loiters around in the woods while his father 
and all of his DE buddies harass the muggles, and he shows not the 
slightest sign of interest in actually watching what they are doing.  
He's not craning his neck to watch the dangling muggles and getting 
off on what is happening to them.  Instead, he's just hanging around 
in the forest and throwing strangely ambiguously phrased taunts in 
the Trio's general direction.

I certainly do think that Draco is very much at *risk* due to his 
tendencies towards resentment and envy and malice and spite.  Very 
much so.  But they are not alone sufficient, IMO, to place him in a 
position from which he desperately needs to be redeemed.  Only once 
they lead him to take rather more serious *actions* will that be the 
case, and so far, that's just not happened.

> The theme here would be "save him from his future". 

Yes.  I agree that right now this is precisely what Draco needs to be 
saved from.  Although really, he often strikes me as far more in 
danger of a nervous breakdown than of becoming Ever So Evil in the 
classic sense.

> But he's cast in the negative quadrant of the storyline, so I guess 
> he's fair game for a `redemption theory' however lame. ;-)

Oh, indeed!  And I didn't mean to suggest at all that the entire 
topic was lame or anything.  Not in the least!  I was just hoping to 
point out that so far, the kid just hasn't really *done* anything all 
that terrible.  His sins exist more in the realms of the potential 
than in the actual at this point in the story, IMO.


Elkins