DEs: What's my motivation? (long)

[Hayes]

No: HPFGUIDX 81324

In what little of my spare time I've been trying to
think through a question that came up much earlier on
the board (see how little spare time I have!), but I
am unable to find the original post now (thanks,
yahoomort).  That is, I want to know what motivates
the Death Eaters to become Death Eaters.  I've laid
out some ideas of what we do know, but I keep running
up against a fundamental absence that is very
suggestive: we don't really know much about the dark
arts beyond what Fake!Moody told us in GoF.

My list is meant to be suggestive, even sporting, but
not thorough (take aim or fill in as you please):  

1. No matter what political side you are on in real
life, you usually assure yourself (or work to clarify
to yourself) that you are on the right one, but you
can never know for absolute sure, a job usually left
to the writing of history <dodges mugs thrown at her
from people who are always perfectly sure they are
always choosing the good side always>.  In other
words, I'm fairly sure that we all think we're on the
right side.  If they were more than fictional
constructions, the Death Eaters would think they were
on the right side too; however, the narrative language
is so, well, unyieldingly "those are the evil cads,
look at them!!" that it's hard to see what their
justification or motivation is.  I will concede that
this probably has something to do with the fact that
these are children's books.

2.  The Death Eaters practice the "dark" arts; theirs
is the "dark" side; their name itself is "death"
eaters.  In case you missed it, they are the baddies;
they're on the bad side.  And it's way too postmodern
for JKR to put in a bit about the DEs trying to
"reclaim" and "appropriate" the terms of evil. 

3.  They're the equivalent of racists.  Really bad
racists.  As in KKK racists (the hoods! the hoods! 
why always the comparison to Nazis?).  But racism is
not some simple formulation ("they just *hate*
different people"; "they're just ignorant"); no,
unfortunately it's also a complex and historically
contingent response to socio-political developments
like economics and immigration.  Plus, there is a big
difference between garden-variety racism (upheld, as
it is, by institutional racism) and becoming a KKK
member.  So there is a definite difference between
believing in blood purity and becoming a Death Eater
in the books, as Sirius explains to Harry when
describing how people supported Voldemort's ideas but
thought he was "too killy" (crass summarizing; I don't
have my books near me). 

Okay, so thus far we know they're bad.  They're bad
because they're bad and do bad things and think bad
things. I fear I'm in the land of tautology, so I will
move on.

4.  The language LV's followers use puts them on the
same -- or worse -- level than house elves (the
closest to slaves we have in the series).  They call
him "master," he abuses them and makes them do all of
his dirty work.  Seems an odd thing for wizards, who
do have some power independent of a leader, to do. 
Voldemort seems to have more than one agenda going on
-- two, we know of now: kill Harry; become the most
powerful wizard ever -- and we already know that he
doesn't have qualms about killing and torturing his
own followers (Regulus Black, Avery).  Hmmm . . .
that's a bit of a gamble, that is.  In other words,
you would have to believe in the ideology, have a
personal/economic/historical stake in that ideology,
be pretty pissed off personally, and want to be pushed
around.  All right.

5.  If being able to use an unforgivable -- or at
least the Crucio curse -- means having really to mean
it, as Bellatrix tells Harry, that suggests a sort of
sadistic component to the dark arts, in that it is
necessary to the "dark" arts that one wants to harm
another for harm's sake and not for justice or even
revenge <that is, if we trust Bellatrix; she could be
lying for all we really know about the Dark Arts>. 
But MacNair comes to mind: Death Eater, magical
creature executioner, Death Eater.  This matches #4
above, where the masochism of the Death Eaters as
Voldy's "slaves" appears.  

6.  So, what we have is a suggestion that there must
be an S/M component of, for lack of a better term (and
thank you to a friend for supplying it because it
didn't occur to me), "Death Eater Culture."    

7.  I still don't have any complex and foundational
motivation for why Death Eaters' go bad, and their
embracing of the various terms of "evil" (instead of
saying they're on the side of goodness and light). 
But I am interested in the fact that JKR seems to
sidestep that whole question of motivation by filling
in the oscillating turns of sadism and masochism
inherent in DE/Voldemort relationships where the
motivation should be. We can't get a glimpse of the
complexity of the choice to become a Death Eater right
now because too many of the DE characters we know
(with the notable exception of the story of Regulus
Black) fall into slightly sadistic or masochistic
characterizations.

So there may be no complex motivation at all within
the narrative.  But my guess is, and here I go on to
wild speculation, that Harry will dabble in the DA.  I
think he/we need to know more about these durn dark
arts that are so darkly attractive to so many dark
characters.

--Hayes, who is shocked! shocked! you actually read
this far.



=====
"Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then . . . . I contradict myself."-- Walt Whitman

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