Marrieta and Hermoine

[juli17 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 120901

In a message dated 12/31/2004 1:32:51 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com writes:

> charme again,
> 
> This is just my 2 cents and may be off topic (List Elves, I'm SORRY!!!) as I 
> 
> have seen this question posed before in debates on this message board 
> several times and I'd submit what a friend of mine tells me:  everyone is a 
> "god" in their own heads, so as he says, asking the question is pointless. 
> :) 
> 

Julie says:
I agree that everyone has a "god" in their heads, i.e., a personal sense of
morality. But no one *is* God, i.e., the repository of Morality (a single 
code
everyone must follow). Those who believe they are that repository and have 
the power to force it upon others practice something we call tyranny.

It's the same problem with anyone saying "what is good is what *I*
consider good, and what is evil is what *I* consider evil." There are 
no black and white definitions of good or evil; they are subjective 
and can change based on perception and circumstance.

(Granted, clearly some things like harming or killing another person 
unprovoked, human slavery, etc, are generally considered evil by 
most of humanity. Beyond that, good and evil are usually very 
relative terms.)


Neri replied to another post:
You are making a good case about Marietta being just a weak person who
was caught between contradicting loyalties, but this is life, and this
is war. Hermione had to take precautions, for the good of the whole
group, that a single sneak would find it hard to betray them all, and
she did just that. NOT doing it would have been failing to protect all
the rest of the group. It would have been wrongdoing towards Ernie,
Susan, Lavender, Neville, Ron and all the other members.

Julie says:
I agree. In fact, I do see Marietta as a weak person who was 
caught between contradicting loyalties. That she would end up
suffering for betraying either one side or the other is a likely and
perhaps even a just result. I still feel some sympathy for her, being
that she was caught in a difficult situation, and being that she is a 
teenager, still young enough to allow peer pressure to influence her 
ultimately bad decision to join the DA. She was definitely wrong, 
(for signing the parchement when she had doubts about whether
she would or could honor its oath), but I don't think she is evil.

I also agree that Hermoine needed to protect the group in some 
manner. But I think her method was unnecessarily harsh, and
given that it went beyond simply identifying the traitor and delivering 
a swift punishment to send a message, it contained a deliberate 
measure of vengeance. And there is where I think Hermoine deserted 
the higher moral ground just a bit.

Julie 


 


 



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