OOP: A person is more than the worst thing they have done

[curly_of_oster]

No: HPFGUIDX 63748

> Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 10:38:19 AM, bluesqueak wrote:
> 
> > Sirius, who turned 
> > away from the `Black' side as a teenager, treats his house elf > 
> > in a contemptuous way that would make any DE proud .

Suzanne responds:
> This probably has come up before, but there is just now way
> I can read all the posts coming in right now:
> 
> Wasn't it Sirius, who told Ron (I think) that you should
> look how a person treats their inferiors to get a real
> measure of what that person is like?
> 
> I was quite surprised to see him treat Kreacher the way he
> did, after the lecture he gave Ron.

I think this *has* come up before, but I'll give it a reply anyway.  
Someone earlier suggested that Sirius' poor treatment of Kreacher 
was a failure of his own test, in terms of how one treats his 
inferiors.  However, I don't think the situations are quite 
analogous.  I never got the sense that Sirius was unpleasant to 
Kreacher because he was a House Elf, and therefore of inferior 
status (whatever Dumbledore may have implied later).  I thought that 
he was unpleasant to Kreacher because *Kreacher* was unpleasant 
himself, because he served Sirius' mother (even dead, a rather 
horrid woman), because he went about muttering nastily at everyone 
in the house, and because he was a terrible reminder of a painful 
past that Sirius thought he'd long ago escaped.  It also seems that 
trying to be kind to Kreacher, as Hermione does, works no better--
Kreacher is still just as nasty to her, calls her a mudblood, etc.  
While Sirius certainly could have made an effort to be nicer to 
Kreacher, I can understand why he doesn't like him, and I'm not 
really very convinced that it would have made any difference.  And, 
as I said, I'm not sure that this has much, if anything at all, to 
do with whether Kreacher is 'inferior' or not.  Does anyone doubt 
that Sirius would have been just as contemptuous of his mother (not 
an inferior), were she still alive?

Lisa