Punishing Marietta

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 120835


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" 
<delwynmarch at y...> wrote:

> Del replies:
>
> As Clavell said, there is *no excuse* for defying legally 
> constituted authority. And yet somehow it's *Marrietta* who is the 
> bad egg for *supporting* the legally constituted authority!

With that quote, I think the 'no excuse' part is perhaps genuinely 
best taken as a rhetorical trope, because if you pushed him an inch, 
he would probably admit that there are many, many excuses for defying 
legally constituted authority--under the right circumstances, of 
course.

<snip>

> It's very easy to judge other people according to what *we* know, 
> but is it right or fair?

True--we need to remember that when judging characters, their level 
of knowledge.  And with Marietta, there are a lot of unknown factors 
in operation as well.  Still doesn't get her completely off the hook 
for me, for general thematic reasons.  She's a good parallel in some 
regards to Percy--let's call them similar problems, in broad 
strokes.  Both people are in situations that leave them not 
completely unsympathetic.  However, both people, operating on 
the "yay authority!" perspective, screw up factually--and it is 
presented to us at least in part as various kinds of moral and 
logical failings.  Percy elevated an authority who, if he had really 
processed all of the information fully, was already suspect to him, 
into the supreme position.  That's dereliction of duty of a citizen, 
in a sense, to keep your government good.  Marietta broke faith with 
her friends out of fear (and if we're playing a judging game, her 
lapses are, because of that, somewhat lesser), but she also failed to 
keep trust in those who kept trust in her, and also fell to the 
temptations of the status quo.

Rowling's Big'n'Obvious Point in OotP is that Authority does not 
always do the right things and should not be followed blindly--no, it 
is practically a moral imperative to deny it at times.  A point with 
a fine and long tradition in political theory, of course.  What makes 
it fun is that she gives us characters with conflicted situations, 
and doesn't leave everything totally black and white.

I think the worst and prevalent error that we as analysts make in 
this series is the wholehearted embrace of the slippery slope, 
though...

-Nora is traveling and thus incommunicado the rest of the day: enjoy