JKR characterizations--oversimplification?

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 115015


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pookasmorning" 
<margotcragg at h...> wrote:

> I'm not sure where you get this "man of conviction" thing. Nothing 
> he did in PoA suggested that he was fighitng for some ideal. He may 
> hate the Dark Arts, but he didn't escape Azkaban to fight evil; 
> he's there to take revenge out of loyalty to James. Sirius has 
> convictions, but they're subjective. Anything tainted with the Dark 
> Arts is purely evil, and his ideals needn't apply to them. He's 
> loyal and true to his word, but only to those he feels deserve his 
> respect. And so on.

I ain't Jen, but I've always read his rejection of his family and all 
of their principles as an action taken on conviction--he clearly 
disapproves of the pureblood philosophy, and mocks the idea that 'to 
be Black was practically to be royal' (I'm misquoting, but you get 
the idea).  

Now, if you're requiring this decision to be made on something like 
the Kantian categorical imperative, I think *everyone* in the series 
is going to fail a test of convictions.  Maybe only DD has morality 
on that level of abstraction, and I have my doubts about him.

Joining the Order seems to be a choice made out of some sort of 
conviction, for everyone involved.  It's also a conviction to have 
nothing to do with the Dark Arts, to reject that path which does seem 
to lead to real power.

> That doesn't make him any less good or likable, mind, but he is a 
> force of loyalty and friendship rather than of abstract moral 
> convictions. If James kicked a house elf and told Sirius the elf 
> deserved it, who do you think Sirius would believe?

I don't know, and neither do you. :)  He might believe blindly in 
James, he might stare at James and ask him why he was being such a 
git.  It's an interesting hypothetic, but I don't think it tells us 
much.

-Nora sez: Anyone want to help me transcribe some music from 
partbooks?