Sirius (WAS: House Elves and Slavery)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 126584


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, elfundeb <elfundeb at g...> wrote:

> Debbie:
>
> Based on his actions across three books, I find myself at a loss to
> explain why he rejected his family. 
> ... (snip)
> I doubt any further backstory is forthcoming, but if I
> were writing it, Sirius would be first and foremost rejecting his
> family (it does seem that his mother was a nasty piece of work), and
> incidentally rejecting whatever ideology they espoused.  This would
> allow for his inconsistent treatment of house elves, as they were so
> far in the background (like a good servant) that the inconsistency 
> of treatment didn't even occur to him.  They weren't human.

Question: do you find Harry's rejection of Draco on their first two 
meetings to be personal or ideological?  I find it, interestingly 
enough, to be both.  Harry rejects Draco because of the attitudes 
Draco espouses, which manifest themselves in distinctly unpleasant 
behavior which reminds Harry of Dudley.  With Sirius, it may well 
have been the same thing.  His near family is so unpleasant strongly 
*because* of the ideology that they espouse.  They make nasty 
comments about other families who are inferior, they have strict 
standards of decorum and ideas about what the proper place of 
everyone is in the world, and they don't tolerate variation.  Twelve-
year old Ron knows what "Mudblood" means, both as in what it stands 
for--but he also has a definite idea about the approach to the world 
and other people that those who use it have.  It's not a word that a 
nice, in the deep sense of the word, person uses.

Ideology is something that can be expressed as a partial root of an 
action without it being fully consciously manifested as such.  You 
don't even have to resort to the slipperiness and skeezy Marxism of a 
Jameson to argue that.

> I also find the following statement from JKR's website amusing: 
> "Sirius is very good at spouting bits of excellent personal
> philosophy, but he does not always live up to them."  Based on what
> Sirius actually does in the books, I'm not sure he ever tries to 
> treat his inferiors with respect.  We have to take Dumbledore's 
> word for it, without any supporting evidence.  In fact, not once 
> but twice his contempt for what he considered to be lesser beings 
> (Pettigrew and Kreacher) provided essential information for 
> Voldemort.

Pettigrew is a hole, but if we take your read on the Marauders' 
dynamic, we end up with a lot of unexplained things.  The first is 
that your take is profoundly cynical, and I'm not sure that's the 
direction that JKR is going to take their story--it takes a lot of 
the potential pathos and meaning out of it if Peter was always this 
complete toady.  As well, if Peter was always such a tool, was he a 
good enough actor yet committed enough to a scary cause to go into 
the Order?  Dumbledore must have approved of him.

Sirius' failures fall into the pattern of the personal.  He treats 
Kreacher badly largely because Kreacher is a horrible reminder of the 
past that he thought he had escaped forever, that he is now chained 
to as his mental health degenerates.  He doesn't think that Snape has 
any "latent good qualities", but we have an unknown-yet-promised 
backstory for why he and Snape hate each other so personally.  
Speculation in that front has proven spectacularly inconclusive.

And, ummm, is Sirius alone to blame for the Secret Keeper switch?  
Because I seem to remember two other people being involved in it as 
well, and we all know who wore the pants in THAT family.  (Can you 
see Lily meekly acceding to something she isn't completely sure of 
that involves the safety of herself and her family?  I can't either.)

-Nora rejoices, for the library is closed and no more work may be done