Choice and Essentialism (was:Re: Understanding Snape)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 153942


> Betsy Hp:
> Exactly.  While the choices a character makes puts them on a 
certain 
> path, those choices don't *make* the character who they are.  They 
> are who they are.  As Dumbledore says, don't look at abilities, 
look 
> at how those abilities are *used*.
> 
> James had a lot of charm, leadership skills, magical skills and 
> creativity.  For a while he *chose* to use those skills to torment 
> people he didn't like.  But at some point he came to a cross-roads 
> and chose to go in a different direction.  His abilities remained, 
> but he chose to use those abilities in a different way. 

Magpie:
I'm just jumping in here anywhere, because I think this is something 
at the heart of the series, though not always in terms of 
philosophy.  I think often it's more just about characterization and 
plot.

The funny thing is I remember thinking it was very important what DD 
said, that our choices "show" who we are, not "make" us who we are--
it is an essentialist statement.  Yet JKR in an interview, I 
believe, actually references that statement as saying that DD is 
saying our choices "make" us who we are, like she doesn't understand 
the difference or didn't see why she shouldn't say one thing when 
she meant the other.

So I think we wind up with a rather confusing mix of JKR's basic 
idea that whoever your parents are you can make the right choice, 
her not seeing the important difference between "show" and "make" in 
that sentence, and the way she writes her characters.

I think one of the things that is so appealing about her characters 
is their essential nature.  The kids' natures are perhaps a little 
less formed with room for change, but really most of her characters 
have their thing that they do and they keep doing it.  It's actually 
kind of comforting to read, I think.  We see Remus making the same 
mistake as a teen as he makes as an adult.  We see Sirius always 
needing to rebel because he is a rebel.  Sirius implies that James 
*pretended* to change to Lily, but that the change wasn't really 
that complete.  As I've said before, I don't think James did really 
change.  He wasn't a bully who became a nice guy, he was just always 
a personality that sometimes came out as bully and sometimes as 
protector.  

The fun part is identifying what the essential part of the person 
is.  We can often be tricked by focusing on the wrong things in a 
character--and maybe that's partly where the Sorting Hat comes in.  
People always wonder why Hermione is not in Ravenclaw when to me it 
seems obvious her character is far more Gryffindor.  So as I think 
Alla said, is is really about choice or just the hat figuring the 
person out?    

Right before HBP came out I remember describing the way I saw the 
world of HP as being a lot like a chess game.  Each character is 
important based on where s/he is on the board, how s/he is carved 
and how s/he can move.  The carving is more detailed for characters 
we know more, that's just stuff like looks, personality, details 
about their life.  Where they are on the board is about how they tie 
into the story--Hermione is a more important character than Neville 
but Neville's position on the board is more important, because 
Hermione is just a free agent who chooses to help Harry while 
Neville has ties to the DE plot etc.

But then there's the move.  I don't quite see the distinction 
between abilities/choices I think you've described.  It's not, to 
me, that Hermione loves rules but chooses to break them and becomes 
friends with Harry and Ron, because Hermione's "move" is not that 
she follows rules, but that she relates a certain way to rules until 
the moment she predictably breaks them.  At this point it just 
clearly seems like it's Hermione's nature to break rules in the 
kinds of situations she does, not that it's in her nature to follow 
rules but chooses to go against it.  That's her pattern.  Similarly 
Neville seems timid but his "move" has always been about throwing 
himself into very dangerous situations under certain types of 
circumstances.  

What I describe as the characters "move" is what I think of as their 
essential choice, the choice that defines them.  Maybe choices is 
the wrong word there.  What I mean is that the characters often seem 
defined by what they do in a certain intense situation.  With Lupin 
he's a great guy, but he's more tested in situations where his 
desire to be liked wars with what he knows is right--if I were 
defining Lupin I'd say that was the most important thing.  He's a 
great teacher etc., but the character isn't built around the idea of 
being a great teacher--that would be someone different.  He's built 
around that flaw of wanting people to like him.  That is what he 
always chooses above all else.  

Peter Pettigrew's is most rightly defined by what he chooses to do 
when his life is threatened--put to the test Sirius most probably 
have stayed loyal to James.  (He'd probably be never more himself 
than when he died protecting the secret.)  Peter always chooses to 
kill or hurt others to save himself.  Rats are survivors, and that's 
what Peter puts over all else.

JKR loves Jane Austen and the mysteries in her books are often 
recognition stories, the "answer" is often about the essential 
nature of a character.  That's why I think what she often does with 
her antagonists is hide that nature.  Snape's the most obvious 
example--what is his essential nature?  Did he really change?  I'm 
not sure he did.  I think we may just not yet have learned about his 
testing moment yet, we have not yet learned what thing is most 
important to him.  

I wrote about this right before HBP, as I said, and at that time I 
was wondering where she was going to go with Draco, who in OotP had 
had his position on the board clearly defined in a key place.  Yet I 
realized I wasn't yet sure what his "move" was.  We'd seen him do 
plenty of things, but looking back I realized I didn't think we'd 
really seen his defining thing; he'd perhaps been thwarted too often 
or just been too superficial.  HBP then went right to that, putting 
him in a position where he sped along to meet that moment of truth. 
The most I came up with then was that he'd always been a bluffer and 
bluffers in JKR's world always wind up pushed into the role they've 
lied about playing.  A lot of things that *seemed* like they might 
have been Draco's priority, and could have been written to be, fell 
away.

And yet again the book postpones the choice, I think.  We do get 
more information about Malfoy's essential nature than we had before 
in that there are at least now things we know that he *doesn't* 
choose, we see certain things may be less of a priority.  He doesn't 
share Lupin's priorities or Peter's.  DD's words are all encouraging 
him to make the right choice, though it's sort of unclear what his 
choices are.  

I guess in a way it comes back to the whole "Mauvais Foi"/Malfoy 
idea, which as it was explained to me is about making the choice to 
live as your own true self.  Draco as a character is maybe all about 
non-choice so far.  As a character he's active, but makes choices 
based on "bad faith," which refers to acting as "one of them" 
instead of an individual, denying your own nature to identify as a 
label or part of a group--the DEs are practically all about that.  
The end of HBP is important because Draco finds himself unable to 
act as "one of them" by killing Dumbledore (perhaps due to parts of 
himself he's tried to repress or separate from), so is forced for 
the first time to make his own choice.  It seems significant to me 
that what Dumbledore offers him is actually the chance to opt out of 
life literally, to be protected by a faked death and basically avoid 
choosing once again. But the plot takes that possibility away from 
him, perhaps because no one has the luxury of opting out.

I hope that this means in the second half of the story that begins 
in HBP that Draco, having missed a chance to opt out, will be pushed 
again into having to make the more difficult choice (not to accept 
protection but to act against Voldemort).  I have a hard time 
believing that Harry would accept less, or even that Draco would be 
able to accept protection from Harry.  It would then make sense that 
Harry's last thoughts on the matter in HBP were to acknowledge the 
signs of choice he did see in the Tower, giving him something to 
work with, a sort of narrow end of a wedge.  It's possible Draco's 
essential choice could always be to freeze, to not choose, to allow 
himself to be acted upon...but that's quite a depressing idea for a 
17-year-old in a kids' series, and I think Draco's shown too much 
desire to act and be part of things for that to really work.

I don't know if all that made sense.  It just really is the way 
JKR's characters come across to me; change isn't their forte.  (It's 
one of many reasons I can't accept any of the theories where Snape's 
had changing motivations over the course of the books--it would 
undermine the satisfying "click" that's sure to come when his true 
nature is revealed.)  This does not contradict that theme of second 
chances, though.  Because often the first chance is what leads to 
the discovery of that essential nature.  Snape did not blow it by 
joining the DEs, because that wasn't his essential choice.  Likewise 
Malfoy didn't damn himself by accepting Voldemort's assignment and 
joining the DEs either.  I think Voldemort and Dumbledore have very 
different ideas about followers.  Voldemort has no qualms about 
trapping someone as a follower when they are young, playing to their 
hatred or anger or thirst for glory or revenge--as you said, in HBP 
Voldemort keeps trying to take away Draco's choice.  Voldemort wants 
his followers to simply share his desires and choices.  Dumbledore, 
I think, prefers to know his team is making an informed choice.  
That's why his team is mostly stronger, and also why of the two 
Dumbledore seems more representative of free choice.

-m