Is Umbridge on the side of good or bad? (was Re: Is Snape nice or good?)

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 127133


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "deborahhbbrd" <hubbada at u...> 
wrote:
 
> 
> 
> Deborah now:
> 
> She's a useful idiot, I think - not even a fellow-traveller. She's
> Organisation Woman, a born bureaucrat, and she genuinely believes 
that
> Rules Are Right. Remember when Henry II said 'Who will rid me of 
this
> troublesome priest?' and then was upset when the eager beavers went
> off and murdered Becket? She's have murdered anyone if the rules 
said
> so or someone in authority requested it. 
> 
> As I'm typing, she's sounding more and more like Eichmann. This 
needs
> more thought!
> 
> Deborah

Hickengruendler:

I think it's even more than that. She does not simply believe, that 
rules are right, she uses the rules to make her own wrongs right 
(partly through the Educational Decrees). If she were only a woman 
who slavishly believes in the rules, than she would never have sent 
Dementors to "silence" Harry, she would never have tortured school 
children with that quill, she would never have used her position to 
humiltate Sybill Trelawney like that. I think she is a major 
villainess and everything she does is to further hew own personal 
agenda. She is as evil as Voldemort or Bellatrix; she just couldn't 
show it as openly, because her aim is not to destroy or fight the 
wizard society, but to raise to power by (seemingly) legal means. The 
rules are just a tool for her.

Hickengruendler