[HPforGrownups] TBAY: Solzhenitsyn's Russia meets the Wizarding World

[Eileen]

No: HPFGUIDX 52774

"I'm really not surprised you find Crouch's behaviour
a lot less upsetting now," says Elkins. "And though I
don't entirely approve of your attitude towards the
man, I am glad to see you a little less emotionally
distraught. All that weeping and Wildly and
desperately denying all charges. A brutally effective
strategy that was."

"It was?" says Eileen.

"Well, assuming that your intention was to make me
feel wretchedly  *guilty,* it was."

Eileen thinks about this a little while. "It wasn't
all acting," she says at last. "I really was
emotionally distraught over what you were saying about
my poor Mr. Crouch. Of course, on the other hand, I
was playing to the crowd."

"As I recall," says Elkins, "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 looks as
if she were contemplating crying again.  "Yes.  I
don't want him to have done that!  He couldn't have
done that!"

"So you wanted him to say, "'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?'

"Errr... no."

"What exactly did you want him to say?"

Eileen fidgets a little with her hair. "I don't know,"
she says. "I really don't know. It's terrible, but I
still admire Crouch for that performance. Getting
through that trial with such drama must have taken a
lot of willpower. Tough and steely resolve." She
sighs. "But I suppose that the "I have no son" is just
emblematic of the whole affar. What I would have liked
would be for Crouch Sr. to have been entirely sure
that his son deserved Azkaban, even if what Crouch was
doing was horribly wrong. No hypocricy. Just a
question of the ends justifying the means."

"That can't be," says Elkins. "I've explained that
there wasn't enough evidence to convict Crouch Jr.
Dumbledore after all seemed unconvinced."

"But at least, Crouch Sr. believed his son was guilty,
don't you think? At least?"

"I *do* think that Crouch genuinely believed his son
to be guilty," says Elkins. "I said as much in the
novenna. But I've always wondered why, though."

"Because he found the invisiblity cloak?"

"Yes, that makes a lot more sense. 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."

"Disturbing still," says Eileen mournfully.

"That it is, 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."

Eileen stares at Elkins. "You too?" she says after a
long while. "You thought that too? And when people
would ask me if they thought they should read GoF to
their kids, I would say, "Well, there is the Pensieve
scene. That's a bit... intense," and they'd look at me
crazily and ask, No, did I think the part with someone
dying was appropriate to read to their kids?"

"The Pensieve sequence apparently doesn't bother
children at all," says Elkins.

"No, it doesn't," says Eileen with a smile. "I know
from experience. I've done my own unofficial studies
of this exact point among the numerous children I
know. And it doesn't bother them in the least. Me, it
always bothered me. Not least because I identified
with the Pensieve mob. When one breaks away from that
sort of charm, one becomes angry, like the Pensieve
crowd."

"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?"

"No," says Eileen. "I've always imagined that he would
have absolutely worshiped him."

"Did you?" asks Elkins. 

"Yes, I can imagine that he would have been an
absolutely intolerable kid when he first came to
Hogwarts. "My father" this and "my father" that, I
imagine. There's a trace of it left in the Pensieve
scene, I think, where he seems so shocked his father
isn't going to get him out of this one. Barty Crouch
Jr., as I see him, was the sort of person who needs
someone to worship." Eileen pauses. "I am feeling so
warm towards him right now, Elkins."

Elkins snorts. "You know why, of course?"

Eileen turns white. "Elkins," she says shakily. "I
really don't want to identify with Crouch Jr."

"Just stop struggling, and sit back and try to enjoy
it."

"Ughhh, I feel so... complicit."

"Poor you," says Elkins snidely.

"But I can't help it," says Eileen. "Really, Crouch
Sr. should have been brought to trial for what he did
during the war."

"Eileen, do you want to know why Crouch Sr. always
makes me so very angry? It's because I read him as a
*war criminal.* I've never heard anyone but myself say
that before. And te one time that I did say it -- on
another list, that was -- everybody just *yelled* at
me."

"Are you serious?" asks Eileen.

"Dead serious," says Elkins. "Crouch seems to the be
the War Criminal You Do Know."

"I thought..." begins Eileen. "I seriously thought
that everyone knew *that.* In fact, I didn't even
think that was up for discussion. Of course, he was a
war criminal. You mean, there are people who don't
think that?"

Elkins nods vigorously.

"Oh my!" says Eileen. "That's... scary."

"If you always knew he was a war criminal," says
Elkins suddenly. "Why have you been so stalwart a
defender of his?"

"Even when I was doing the tragic hero thing, I was
taking it for granted that in real life I wouldn't be
defending most tragic heroes. Tragic heroes are good
at committing war crimes too. So, you know, even my
most impassioned defences of Crouch were based on the
understanding that he should have been tried for war
crimes... An understanding which I thought was shared
by the general population."

"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. After you
mentioned to Dicentra that you were unusually
sensitive to implications that you don't care about
civil liberties. I didn't want it to sound like, "it's
your sort of person who lets the police state take
over."

"No, of course not, Elkins. I know you wouldn't ever
accuse me of that." Eileen stops short. "Though," she
adds, "considering I did say I might have supported
that particular police state, you'd have every right
to. I might be precicely the sort of person who lets
the police state take over, even if I do care very
deeply for human rights." She pauses. "There, that's
another thing. I don't mind being accused of having
all sorts of horrible character traits, because it's
true, I do, and I'll accuse myself of them. It's when
people act as if those character traits make me
less... oh, I don't know the word. Insinuate that I
don't care for justice, because I'm easily swayed by
charisma, or insist that I don't objectively value
other people because I'm inclined to narcissism."

"In other words," says Elkins. "You think the tough
and steely should cut the SYCOPHANTS a break."

"Yes," says Eileen exactly. "We may not be exactly
paragons of moral virtue, but we're not all black.
We're grey!"

"And sympathetic."

"Yeah, and sympathetic. Especially when we're fighting
for our lives."

"Unless one's name is Crouch Jr."

Eileen starts. "That *is* rather strange. 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?"

"Oh no, everytime I read it, he manages to really tug
at my heart-strings," answers Eileen quickly.

"But you said..."

"I said that I never get weepy *reflecting* on the
Pensieve scene. At least not from Crouch Jr's point of
view."

"And when you're reading?"

"When I'm reading, he almost convinces me that he's
innocent. It's a never-fail. I must have read that
Pensieve scene a few hundred times. It's the chapter
I've most read in the entire series. I could almost
recite it by heart, and yet every time I read it, I
start feeling, "Oh, maybe he's innocent. He sounds so
sincere!"

"Then, why would you feel unsympathetic when you were
merely reflecting about the scene? That isn't like
you. You felt for Pettigrew in the Shrieking Shack and
the two positions are very alike."

"I know. I know."

"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?"

"You know who I do feel for most when reflecting on
that scene?" says Eileen.

"Who?"

"Oh, Mrs. Lestrange, of course."

Elkins stares at her. 

"Yeah, weird isn't it? But I've mentally put myself in
her position much more often than the others. She
would have been what? Twenty-two? And facing a
life-time in Azkaban, knowing what is waiting for you,
and yet putting a very brave face on it. I feel quite
a bit for Mrs. Lestrange."

"But not for Barty Crouch Jr." says Elkins slowly.

"Because I'm angry at Crouch Jr. for manipulating me,"
says Eileen simply. "Which is also a matter of
sympathizing with his father, of course. He can't get
away with almost convincing me he's innocent the one
moment and expect reader sympathy the next moment for
being guilty. I'm still resenting that play acting
that preyed so effectively on my emotions."

Eileen.

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