TBAY: Solzhenitsyn's Russia meets the Wizarding World

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52390

"So now that we're through with all that Invisibility Cloak talk," 
Elkins said, sprawling out on the lawn of the Safe House.  "What did 
you think of my spin on your Crouch theory?"

"Loved it," answered Eileen immediately. "The Pensieve scene is not 
nearly as upsetting to me now."  

No," agreed Elkins slowly.  "I don't suppose it would be.  It does 
make his behavior there quite a bit more sympathetic.  On a number of 
different levels."

Eileen nodded.  "You remember that in my original responses to the 
sections of the Crouch Novenna dealing with this precise point, I was 
very..."

"Emotionally distraught."  Elkins shuddered slightly.  "Yes.  I 
remember."

"Your picture of Crouch's behaviour was so black, and I really 
couldn't find anything to argue with it, except to start weeping and 
protesting it couldn't be true."

"Wildly and desperately denying all charges.  Yes.  And a brutally 
effective strategy it was, too."

"It was?"

"Well, assuming that your intention was to make me feel wretchedly 
*guilty,* it was.  As I recall, you were particularly distressed 
over the notion that Crouch Sr. might have thought that there was 
a chance that his son was innocent when he--"

"Yelled, 'You are no son of mine!'"  Eileen looked as if she were 
contemplating crying again.  "Yes.  I don't want him to have done 
that!  He couldn't have done that!"

Elkins sighed.  "Oh, you're just *spoiled,* you are," she said.  "You 
should try identifying with the man's son for a change, see how 
*that* feels.  Trust me.  You go contemplate the fate of the 
Longbottoms for a little while, and I think you'll find that a 
little renunciation between family members starts to look positively 
benign.  But really, you know, it did sort of surprise me that you 
should have been so upset over `you are not my son.'"  

"It did?"

"Well, yeah.  I guess that I just don't perceive the disavowal itself 
as all that much of a betrayal, really.  It pales in significance, to
my mind, when compared to the whole sending-someone-off-to-prison-for-
life-on-the-basis-of-scanty-evidence thing.  I mean, would it really
have made matters any better if Crouch had sent his son off to die
in Azkaban and *not* denounced him first?  Would it have been more
reassuring if he'd looked down at his son in the dock -- or, more 
precisely, chained in that horrible chair -- and said: 'Yes, son, I 
know that I'm your father, but I am a fair and unbiased man.  
Therefore, I am going to deny you your due process and railroad you 
to Azkaban, just like I do everyone else whenever it suits my 
political purposes?'  Surely that wouldn't have made you feel 
*better* about him, Eileen. Would it?"  

"Well," said Eileen.  "When you put it like that..."

"I should have thought that the kangaroo court itself would have 
bothered you more than the denunciation," said Elkins.  "Maybe it's
just me.  To me, the denunciation makes Crouch far more sympathetic,
particularly the way that he keeps raising his voice louder and 
louder to drown out his son's pleas.  It shows him as conflicted.  
Without it, he would come across as positively *inhuman* in that 
scene.  The denial of due process, though...well, that's a different 
matter.  Sending people off to effective death sentences without much 
at all in the way of evidence.  Allowing political expedience to 
override concern for the truth.  As far as I'm concerned, that's far 
worse than disavowal.  It's...well, to be perfectly honest, I 
consider it tantamount to murder.  Crouch's behavior in regard to his 
son is really only one short step away from filicide, in my opinion.  
Crouch Jr. may have been guilty, but he could just as easily have 
been innocent.  Sirius Black was."

"But if you factor in self-protection, the picture's a whole lot 
greyer," pointed out Eileen.

"Yes, it is.  And if you factor in the possibility of additional
evidence, evidence that Crouch suppressed, then that makes it even 
more so.  Not only does it give him self-protection as a motive, 
but it also gives him an at least somewhat better reason to have 
suspected his son to be guilty than 'he was caught in bad company, 
and besides, I know for a fact that he was out of the house that 
night,' which is pretty much what you're left with otherwise.  
And that really does make me feel a whole lot better about things, 
you know, because--"

"Hold on, hold on," said Eileen, frowning.  "That makes you feel 
*better* about things?"

"Well, yes.  It does.  Because the thing here is that I *do* think 
that Crouch genuinely believed his son to be guilty.  I said as much 
in the novenna.  I am far more willing than you are to accept the 
possibility that he had considerable doubts.  I don't see how he
couldn't have done, given the lack of evidence.  But I also did say 
that I thought that he at least believed in his son's guilt at the 
time of the trial.  I've always wondered why, though.  Why?  There 
seems to have been no real evidence.  It's always bothered me a great 
deal about this plotline, actually.  It just doesn't fit together 
for me.  If in fact there was some evidence, though, evidence that 
Crouch suppressed in order to protect himself, then that makes me 
feel a lot more comfortable with it.  Because otherwise, you know, 
it just seems so very out of character to me."

Eileen stared at her.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," she said.  "Out of character?
For Crouch?  That incarnation of all things infamous?"

"But I don't read him as the incarnation of *all* things infamous,
Eileen," objected Elkins earnestly.  "Just as the incarnation of 
*some* things infamous.  Things like political opportunism.  Things 
like disregard for the rights of others.  Things like unhealthy and 
narcissistic and devouring expressions of perverted _storge_.  Things
like hatred that masquerades as love.  But I can't ignore those last 
things in favor of the others, because that just doesn't seem to fit
in with his other actions in regard to his son.  Throwing Sirius 
Black and other random accusees to the mob as blood offerings is one 
thing, but his *scion?*  The son who carries his name?  The one whose 
individuation he has such a hard time accepting?  The one that he 
will later drag out of prison, keep alive and under control in his 
house, and try to indoctrinate?  The one that he perceives as his 
*mirror?*"

Elkins shook her head.

"I just don't buy it unless he had some reason to believe that the boy
was guilty.  Crouch was self-interested, all right, but his investment
in his son was a big *part* of that self-interest, and even if his 
political star was falling, I can't imagine that he was entirely 
without clout at the time of the Longbottom Incident.  If it had just 
been a matter of some Death Eater fingering a member of his family, I 
can't imagine that he wouldn't have been able to extricate himself 
from that position with a bit more competence and grace, witch-hunt 
atmosphere or no.  There had to have been something else. There's no 
indication anywhere that Crouch was disposed against his son before 
his arrest, and there's plenty of suggestion that precisely the 
opposite was true.  In his mad scene, he speaks of him with quite a 
bit of pride.  His behavior at the sentencing is that of a man who is 
outraged, and I've said before that I don't think that was *all* an 
act.  The entire public response to Crouch Jr's arrest isn't in the 
least bit consistent with a scenario in which young Crouch was 
perceived as a black sheep, or as a bad seed.  It's obvious to me 
that he was a golden boy.  Dumbledore's backhanded eulogy on him 
reinforces that.  JKR even went so far as to give him all that blond 
hair!"

"Although..." Eileen began.

"Yeah, I know.  Blond hair is a backhanded marker in the Potterverse
to begin with.  But still.  The parallel scenes also suggest that 
Crouch didn't think that his son was innocent."

"You mean the parallel with the QWC?"

Elkins nodded.  "At the QWC, Crouch renounces Winky, and I read that 
as a blood sacrifice, and as a diversionary tactic, and as a failed 
exorcism, and as an expression of projected self-loathing, and even 
as a bit of self-flagellation, as well.  Self-punishment.  All of 
which also works when applied to his son.  But it doesn't come out 
of *nowhere* with Winky, does it?  He did have some cause for feeling 
that she had failed him.  And he did have some cause for finding her
an appropriate mirror onto which to project his disgust with his own 
weakness.

"So as I see it," Elkins continued.  "He had to have had some cause 
for believing his son to be guilty, as well.  Maybe not the *greatest*
cause, maybe not good enough to warrant a guilty verdict, but at 
least something a bit better than a random accusation or guilt by 
association.  It just doesn't make any sense to me otherwise.  I 
interpret his reaction to his son as one of horrified recognition.  
His son was trying to bring about what he himself secretly desired: 
Voldemort's return.  There is projection going on there, but it 
doesn't make sense to me if I try to read it as a totally 
*irrational* projection.  I do read Barty Crouch Sr. as pretty 
seriously messed up, but I don't see him as totally delusional."

"No," said Eileen snarkily.  "That was his son."

"Now, now.  Even his son wasn't all *that* divorced from reality, 
really.  Especially not when you...well, you know.  Take one 
consideration with another.  But at any rate, the Invisibility Cloak 
left behind at the scene of the crime speculation helps me to resolve 
that problem, and it also ties in nicely with so many other things.  
Like the self-preservation.  Because I do read that Pensieve mob as 
out to get Crouch.  I think that they liked watching him suffer.  I 
think that they liked it when his son went all to pieces on him, and 
when his wife fainted dead away at his side.  And they loved the 
denunciation.  They ate that up -- just as Crouch knew that they 
would.  Because I am convinced, you know, that he was playing to the 
crowd a bit with that."

There was a short silence.

"It's not a very pretty scene," said Elkins quietly.  "On any level.  
In fact, I find it by far the most disturbing scene in the entire 
series.  Do you know that when I first heard that people had been 
making complaints about GoF being 'too dark for children,' I didn't 
even *think* of Cedric's death?  I didn't think of Graveyard at all.  
Or of anything having to do with Voldemort, for that matter.  I just 
immediately assumed that it was Pensieve they were talking about.  A 
sequence which apparently," she added, with a slight laugh.  "Doesn't 
bother children at *all.*"  

She shook her head.  "Children are so *weird,* aren't they?  I never 
understand children.  I didn't even understand children when I *was* 
a child.  I...Eileen?  Hey, are you all right?"

Eileen was staring blankly at the swingset, where the two Elkins' were
embroiled in a shoving match over Memory Charm theories.

"I identified with that mob in the Pensieve scene," she said dully.
"I've told you that, haven't I?  That I can see where that crowd 
was coming from?"

"Yeeesss," said Elkins cautiously.  "You've mentioned that before.  
Outrage on behalf of the Longbottoms, wasn't it?  Like Harry?"

"Yes," said Eileen.  "And no."  She paused for a second. "Argghh... I 
hate this. I just hate this. I've mentioned my first emotional 
response to Crouch Sr. on the list many times. Sympathy. And, of 
course, that response to his... charisma. But I've never really gone 
into the darker side of my emotional response on the list, have I?"

"Uh-oh.  Oh look, Eileen.  This isn't going to turn into a 
performance of 'Who's Afraid of J.K. Rowling' or anything, is it?  I 
mean, we're not playing a round of 'Get the Listmember' here, are 
we?  Please tell me we're not.  Because, you know, if you'd rather 
talk about something else..."

"I have this nasty suspicion," Eileen said quickly.  "That for all my 
bleeding heart tendencies, I would have been a Crouchist during the 
first Voldemort years, and absolutely worshiped the man. And believe 
it or not, this actually does *not* make me feel very kindly towards 
him.  Do you know what it's like to break away from that particular 
type of charm, Elkins?"

"Well, I--"

"It's an exhilirating experience. To stand on your own two feet and 
realize that whatever De.. errr... I mean, the hypothetical 
politician wants is not the be-all and end-all. But you also feel 
very angry. You want to strike back at that person for taking
advantage of you, of blinding your eyes to certain things. That's not 
entirely a healthy reaction."

"Isn't it?"  Elkins thought about it.  "Oh, I don't know," she 
sighed.  "I guess that depends on how you define 'healthy.'  It isn't 
an ideal reaction, no, but at the same time, it does seem perfectly 
natural to me.  It's also highly congruent with GoF's position as the 
midpoint of a bildungsroman, don't you think?  Because what you're 
describing sounds an awful lot to me like...well, it sounds to me 
like the same fundamental psychological dynamic that underlies 
some of the more troublesome developmental issues of adolescence.  
On a far more macrocosmic scale, of course.  But still.  Do you think 
that Crouch Jr. always disliked his father?"

Eileen stared at her.

"Because you see," Elkins explained.  "I've always imagined that at 
one time, he must have absolutely worshipped him.  He is *envious* of 
his mother: 'He loved her as he had never loved me.' His relationship 
with Voldemort is a substitution.  It's displacement. What does that 
say about how he likely once felt about his father?  He calls 
him 'disappointing.'  Disapppointment isn't too far off from 
disillusionment, is it?  You can't be 'disappointed' in someone 
unless you first had certain...expectations." 

"No," murmered Eileen.

"Mainly, though, I read it that way because as I see the entire 
Crouch subplot, Crouch's relationship with his son replicates on the 
personal level his political relationship with the wizarding world as 
a whole."

"Yes, so you've said."  

"And said and said and said.  Yeah, I know.  I repeated that sentence
like a mantra in the novenna, didn't I?  I think that it may have 
come up in three separate posts.  But that's because it really is 
just so intrinsic to my reading of this plotline.  It's the glue that 
binds it all together."

There was a long silence.

"Elkins," said Eileen, in a low voice.  "I really don't want to 
identify with Crouch Jr."  

"I am sorry.  But if Crouch's son is a faulty mirror to Crouch, then 
Crouch must also be a faulty mirror to his son.  That's just how 
mirrors work.  And if Crouch was a faulty mirror to his son, then he 
must have been one to the wizarding world as well.  Because as I see 
it, that's how that dynamic is constructed in the text.  Thematically 
speaking, leaders and fathers occupy the same symbolic position.  
Crouch Jr's antipathy towards his father reads to me like a backlash 
response, replicating on the personal level the public and political 
backlash that we see in the Pensieve."  

"The wizarding world couldn't have felt very good about itself,"
said Eileen slowly.  "They didn't just have something to regret in 
the small world of Canadian politics. They had to regret supporting 
some pretty horrible things.  So, naturally, they would have turned 
their anger on Crouch. They wanted him gone. Because he reminded 
them of themselves. He was their faulty mirror. I don't think the 
Pensieve Croud's jeering just represents the anger of the people 
who had been hurt by Crouch. I think it represents the far greater 
swell of anger from the people who had helped Crouch hurt others."

"Yes."  

"'Take him away. Shunt him aside to International Magical Co-
operation, where we'll never have to see him again. Where we can 
forget what we did.'" 

"Sweeping it under the carpet," agreed Elkins.  "Like the wizarding 
world does with everything having to do with that era.  Just like 
all of those acquitted Death Eaters."  

"By the way," added Eileen lightly.  "I think that public state of 
denial saved him.  Really, Crouch Sr. should have been brought to 
trial for what he did during the war.  And...NO!" she shrieked, as 
Elkins lunged across the grass at her.  "What did I say?  I...
oh."  

She blinked down at Elkins, who had thrown her arms around her.  

"Oh.  I see.  Well, all right then.  I thought that you didn't like 
hugging?"  She patted Elkins tentatively on the back.

"Eileen," gasped Elkins, letting go of her.  "Eileen, do you want 
to know why Crouch Sr. always makes me so very angry?"

"Because he reminds you of your--"

"No.  No, it's not just that.  It's also because I read him as a *war 
criminal.*  A war criminal who got away with murder.  A war criminal 
who was never brought to trial.  A war criminal whose victims are 
*still* suffering for his crimes, even by the time of the canon.  
He's a lot like Lucius Malfoy, or Nott and Avery, or all of those 
other guys whose past sins everybody seems to know about but nobody 
is willing to acknowledge.  Except that in Crouch's case, even the 
readers don't seem to care about it.  And that just...oh, it just 
*infuriates* me somehow."  She sat back on her heels, frowning.  "I 
think that I find Crouch such an immensely frustrating character in 
part because while everyone thinks of those Death Eaters as war 
criminals, I have never before heard anyone other than myself say the 
same thing about Barty Crouch."

"Elkins, I..."

"And the one time that I did say it -- on another list, that 
was -- everybody just *yelled* at me."

"I..."

"*Thank* you!"

"Elkins!"  Eileen pushed her away.  "Stop that!  You're scaring me."

"I wrote an entire post about this, you know," Elkins explained,
stumbling somewhat over her words.  "Midnight In the Golden Wood With 
Crouch.  A Novenna response.  But then I was afraid to post it."

"Afraid?  Why?"

"Oh, I don't know.  Because it's a topic on which I can get a little 
bit emotional?  A little bit strident?  A little bit ranty?  A little
bit...oh, hell, let's be fair here, okay?  A *lot* over-engaged.  
Frankly, I just can't keep my head on this subject at all.  And 
because as a means of addressing and acknowledging that problem," she 
concluded wearily, "the Affective Fallacy horsie joke really only 
works *once.*

"Also because I worried that it might have bordered on implied ad 
hominem," Elkins added, after a moment's pause.  "You know, sort of 
like the way that those posts objecting to Sympathy For the Devil 
readings by focusing really heavily on the plight of the DEs' victims 
can sometimes come across as accusatory?  There's that 'it's your 
sort of person who lets the terrorists win' flavor that can sometimes 
start creeping in?  Except that in this case, it would be 'it's your 
sort of person who lets the police state take over.'  And I 
particularly wanted to avoid that because, well...  Because it was 
January 24, all right?  When I was all set to post it."

Eileen frowned.  "January twenty...Oh!  Oh, I see.  You were worried 
about what Dicentra and I were talking about on that 
factional/fictional divide thread?"

"Yeah.  Specifically that passage about you being unusually sensitive 
to implications that you don't care about civil liberties.  You see, 
Eileen," explained Elkins with a rueful smile.  "*I* don't exactly 
want to identify with Barty Crouch Jr. either.  That's really not a 
positive reader identification for me.  I wasn't sure how serious you 
were, was the thing, and I really *wasn't* keen on the idea of 
reenacting some twisted variant on 'The Egg and the Eye' for the 
amusement of the 5000 lurkers."  

She shrugged.  "I know that you care very deeply about human rights, 
Eileen."

"Most kind of you," said Eileen drily. 

"I also think that Crouch should have stood trial.  For war crimes.  
But I doubt that he would have got a fair one.  Well," Elkins added, 
with a sudden grin.  "Not unless he stood trial *here,* of course.  
Because as everyone knows, here on HPfGU, we *always* give characters 
fair hearings!"

"Bringing him to trial would have meant that the society would have 
had to examine its own self," Eileen pointed out.  "Much better to 
exile him to Magical Co-operation... There was, of course, one other 
way to lash back at him, as I agree they desperately wanted to." 

"By implicating him personally in the Longbottom Incident."

Eileen nodded her head. "I would have been scared out of my wits the 
moment the Longbottom affair was traced back to my door, invisibility 
cloak or no invisibility cloak." 

"Yes, I suppose I would have been as well.  Dumbledore says that the 
attack on the Longbottoms 'caused a wave of fury such as I have never 
known.'  And he's...what?  150 years old?  Nor was Voldemort's rise 
the first war against Dark Wizardry he'd ever seen.  So I'm thinking 
that must have been quite some wave of fury.  I guess I would have 
been pretty nervous too.  People at the forefront of witch hunts 
do tend to get targetted in the end, don't they?  Today's inquisitor 
is tomorrow's heretic.  It's almost a cliche."

"The revolution eats its children," murmered Eileen.

"Oh, Eileen, Eileen!"  Elkins laughed wildly.  "*So* does the 
status *quo!*"  

"Pull yourself together," Eileen told her, smiling.

Elkins took a deep breath.  "Crouch was definitely trying to save 
his political career in the Pensieve," she said.  "But it is possible 
that he was also trying to save his own skin.  Eric Oppen suggested 
that possibility all the way back in April, actually.  He suggested 
that Crouch was afraid that he might be carted off to Azkaban himself 
if he didn't throw his son to the mob as a kind of a sop."  

She pulled a brittle yellowed message out of one pocket and unfolded
it gently.  "This is Eric, in message #37781:

> Face it, learned colleagues, Crouch Sr. was in a dicey position 
> himself at that trial. If he had shown any sympathy for his son or 
> anybody else on trial (Mr and Mrs. Lestrange?) he could have found 
> himself up on charges himself---I would not want to attract any 
> such thing with the Wizard World in what amounted to a lynching 
> mood. Distancing himself from his son the Death Eater in the most 
> public way he could was, if nothing else, a necessity for his own 
> and his wife's safety. We know that people were hauled off to 
> Azkaban without so much as trials, at his command. Wouldn't some of 
> these folks have people they'd left behind who'd _love_ to pay
> Crouch Sr. out?

Elkins smiled dreamily.  "I love it when Eric calls me a 'learned 
colleague,'" she sighed.

Eileen was staring at her.

"Elkins," she said.  "Are you actually *blushing?*"

Elkins jumped, then quickly folded up Eric's message and put it back 
in her pocket. 

"Yes, well," she said briskly.  "So Crouch could have been fighting
for his life there.  Which is indeed rather sympathetic."

"Pitiable, anyway," said Eileen, with a rueful grin.  "Wasn't it you
who said a while back that you always feel for the person who's 
fighting for their life, no matter what they've done to get there?"
 
"That was me.  And you were the one who agreed with me, I seem to 
recall.  Yet Barty Jr. was fighting for his life in that Pensieve
scene, and I fail to see you shed a tear about it."

"Yes, that's rather strange," said Eileen. "I have got weepy over 
Crouch Jr. several times, but it's never when reflecting on the 
Pensieve scene. The Pensieve scene just doesn't move me. I always 
feel remarkably cold-hearted towards Crouch Jr. there."

"I assume that you mean on re-reading?" asked Elkins.  "Or am I 
misremembering?  For some reason, I'd remembered you saying that he 
really tugged at your heart-strings there.  Was that just when you 
thought that he was innocent, then?  You know, the strange thing 
about this," she said thoughtfully.  "Is that I actually sympathized 
with him in that scene a whole lot *more* on rereading?  On first 
reading, I did think that he was innocent.  Yet I felt rather more 
strongly for his father."

"That's simply perverse, Elkins."

"Yeah, it really is, isn't it?  But I just can't help it.  It's 
always like that for me.  I always feel a whole lot worse for the 
guilty than I do for the innocent in those sorts of situations.  I 
think that it must be because I know how much worse it is to suffer 
for something when you know that you've brought it all upon 
yourself.  When you don't even have the knowledge of your own 
essential innocence to sustain you.  When you don't have anyone other 
than yourself to blame."

Elkins shuddered helplessly.  "It's precisely the same reader 
sympathy that I feel for Pettigrew in the Shrieking Shack.  Which is 
the reason that your own lack of sympathy surprises me so much, 
actually."

"What is?"

"Shrieking Shack.  You see, I wouldn't find it all that strange for 
anyone else to feel cold and unsympathetic towards Crouch Jr. in the 
Pensieve scene.  Not on re-reading, at any rate.  After all, his sins 
are truly dire.  Even if you assume that he was innocent of torturing 
the Longbottoms, he's plenty wicked enough elsewhere to make up for 
it.  And my own idiosyncratic reader response aside, Crouch Jr. 
really *isn't* written as a sympathetic character.  But I do find it 
somewhat surprising coming from you, Eileen, because you identify 
with Peter in the Shack, which I see as a very similar situation.  
They're both scenarios in which a character is about to pay a very 
high price for his crimes, and is absolutely terrified, and can't 
escape from what's about to happen to him, and desperately, 
hopelessly, wants to be spared his fate, even though he's really not 
at all innocent.  So what accounts for the difference in your reader 
response?"

There was a brief silence, while they thought it over.

"I wonder if it might be because Barty never actually confesses?" 
suggested Elkins.  "He protests his innocence to the very last.  
Peter, on the other hand, does abandon his denial eventually.  In the 
end, he's simply pleading for mercy.  Could that account for it, do 
you think?  Or is it possibly because you identified so very strongly 
with Crouch Sr. overall that it caused your reader sympathy to stay 
more narrowly focussed on him in that scene?  

"I don't know.  I'm just throwing out guesses here.  What do you 
think?"


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Elkins

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Crouch Novenna and responses: message #47927 and downthread replies