James' essence/some Sirius and his family WAS: Re: Choice and Essentialism

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154115

Alla wrote:
> Why are you keep coming to explaining their hatred of each other
with this statement?

Carol responds:

Because *Sirius* does. IMO, it's his whole reason for bringing up the
Dark Arts, which, for whatever reason, *he* associates with Snape
(and, IMO, with Slytherin in general because of his family). I'm not
sure that *James* shares these associations.
> 
Alla:
> I said it several times that it is NO excuse AT ALL,

Carol:
Good. We agree on that, at least. :-)

Alla:
 but 
> independently of that what is the reason to doubt Sirius words?

Carol:
Because he's not an objective observer, for one thing. IMO, Sirius has
a blind spot regarding James and sees nothing but good in him, and he
has an equal blind spot regarding Snape, and sees nothing but bad in
him. Even JKR has said on her website that Sirius can't see the good
in Snape (which suggests that the good is there and not imagined by
Dumbledore). I don't trust Black's view of Regulus as an "idiot,"
either. There's a great deal he doesn't know about either Severus or
Regulus. (In the case of Regulus, we're not much better off.)

What I am doubting is not so much Sirius's assertion that James hated
the Dark Arts, period, as the qualification that he *always* hated
them. I am also objecting to his use of this statement as an excuse
for James (a point we agree on and that I'm merely repeating here for
clarification) and as James's reason for hating Severus, in part
because this reason for hating Severus seems unsupported by canon
evidence. (If you could only show me one iota of evidence that
Teen!James really hated the Dark Arts, or that he hated Severus
because he associated him with the Dark Arts as Sirius implies, I
would be less adamant on this point.)

I am conceding that the (young) adult James may well have hated the
Dark Arts as Black believes, but there's no indication that it was his
primary motivation for joining the Order as it appears to have been
Sirius's. And, at the risk of pounding my point into the ground,
there's no indication that the young James held any such belief, as
the word "always" implies--or rather, denotes.

Also, and this I don't think I've made wholly clear, James, who
*enjoys* hexing people, seems to be having a good time in the Pensieve
scene (at least until Lily calls him a "toerag," when he becomes angry
and ugly and wants to remove Severus's underpants). Until that point,
he seems to be merely entertaining Sirius by attacking Severus.
Arrogant and bullying and altogether unjustified in his show of power
(if two on one on an opponent whose mind is on his exam counts as
power), but not truly vicious until that point).

Although Snape rather inexplicably hates James more than he hates
Sirius (I could speculate on his reasons, but I don't want to go off
track), it seems to me that Sirius (as man and boy) hates Severus more
than Teen!James does, and the reason for that hatred is his own family
history, which gets deflected somehow onto Severus Snape. I don't get
the sense that James has any such personal *hatred,* as opposed to,
say, an aversion for a talented but nerdy and sullen boy in the House
that Gryffindors love to hate. Certainly James's own family history
would not breed in him anything like the near-pathological hatred that
Sirius feels for his whole family.

Alla:
> 
> That is NOT quite what James says. He says because he exists if you 
> know what I mean. It is your right to interpret it as typical 
> statement of the bully, who loathes his victim very existence, while 
> I am interpreting it as JKR hiding something in this statement.

Carol:
Yes, we all know that she hides things, often in plain sight, so you
could be right. I happen to think that what it hides is a lack of
legitimate motivation. If he could have justified himself in front of
Lily and the whole fifth-year class, IMO he would have done so. I do
agree that "because he exists" is not a reason, but I think that if he
had another reason, he was ashamed to state it. ("He's a Slytherin and
he's nerdy! He doesn't deserve to live, unlike me, the Gryffindor with
good reflexes who can transform into a stag.")

> Alla:
> 
> So, Sirius says partial truths now? What part of his statement is a 
> partial truth? James always hated Dark Arts, what is not true here?

Carol:
I said this already, but let me repeat. I don't think that James
*always* hated the Dark Arts (there's no evidence that he hates them
in the Pensieve scene), or that James's hating the Dark Arts is the
whole truth as an answer to why James tormented Severus Snape, which
is the reason Sirius makes the statement in this scene. (He's trying
to defend the indefensible by associating Severus with Dark magic and
James with opposition to Dark magic as represented by Severus.) Look
at the context in which the statement is made:

First Lupin makes the excuse that James was only fifteen, to which
Harry replies, "I'm fifteen!" Then Black says "placatingly," "James
and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each
other. . . . James . . . was popular, he was good at Quidditch, good
at pretty much everything. And Snape was *just* this little oddball
who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James--whatever else he
may have appeared to you, Harry--always hated the Dark Arts" (OoP Am.
ed. 670, my emphasis).

Can I make it any clearer? Black's very inadequate assessment of
teen!Snape is intended to diminish him (*just* a little oddball) and
make James (the popular athlete) look good, to excuse James's behavior
by associating Teen!Snape with the Dark Arts and Teen!James with
hatred of the Dark Arts. And Harry doesn't buy it, at least not at
that time. He points out that James attacked Severus "for no good
reason" because Sirius said he was bored--*not* because James
associated Severus with the Dark Arts (as Black clearly does).

I'm treating the statement as a partial truth *within the context of
the conversation with Harry*, not as an out-of-context assertion about
James's character in general, as you seem to be doing.

I also think that Sirius may be confusing his own hatred of the Dark
Arts with James's motivations, just as in OoP he confuses Harry with
James. I think it's Sirius, not necessarily James, who associates
Teen!Snape with the Dark Arts. And while even Dumbledore says that the
adult snape knows a lot about the Dark Arts--and values his
expertise--we have no indication except Sirius's words that the young
Snape was "up to his eyes in the Dark Arts." There is no supporting
evidence for his assertions, and because he hates Snape, he cannot be
viewed as an objective witness.
> 
> Carol:
> > Even if James did oppose the Dark Arts as a kid at school, even if 
> he disliked Severus because he associated him from Day One with the 
> Dark Arts, that was no excuse for his behavior. (Nor does it excuse
his accomplice, Sirius Black.)
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Tries VERY hard to locate the part in her post where she said that
it was an excuse.

Carol:
I wasn't necessarily speaking to you here. I know that we agree on
this single, but fortunately important, point. I was just trying to
make my own position clear.

> 
> Alla:
> Does  "Sirius projecting his reasons for hating Severus onto James" 
> means that he is a liar after all?

Carol:
Of course not. Projection is a psychological defense mechanism,
performed unconsciously. We see Sirius projecting James onto Harry
several times in OoP. It isn't conscious, it isn't deliberate, it
isn't lying. But it doesn't make his views accurate, either, assuming
that he is indeed doing it.
> 
Carol earlier:
> > As I said, I'm not saying that Sirius is lying, only that he may
be mistaken, looking at young James in light of the heroically dead
adult James.
> 
> Alla: 
> He maybe mistaken? That means that statement is not true, right?

Carol:
No. It means that it *may* not be *wholly* true because it *may* apply
to a later period than the one in the Pensieve (or earlier). He *may*
be mistaken about James *always* hating the Dark Arts, about the
intensity of that hatred, and about the relationship of that hatred to
Severus Snape. (He seems to regard hatred of the Dark Arts as
synonmous with, or at least the cause of, James's hatred of Severus
Snape.) None of which means that he's deliberately lying, though he is
certainly making excuses for James's behavior, as you seem to have
conceded. And, as I said, I think he's seeing Teen!James in the light
of what James later became, a hero, instead of the unflattering but
accurate light of schoolyard bully.

I think that James hated (or cordially disliked) Severus Snape for
rather different reasons that we don't yet know (which could fit in
with your idea that "because he exists" is hiding James's real
motives)--in part *because* he was so talented, IMO, and in part
because of the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry, and because he wasn't
handsome and popular and had a rather sullen personality. In a way, he
was a "snapegoat"--but one who, if fought one on one without a
surprise attack, could "give as good as he got."

> > 
> > Clearly Severus did care about the exam, which is why he was 
> rereading
> > the exam questions. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> They did not care about the exam means they knew the subject worse? 
> You know, two students whom Mcgonagall remembers as two of the most 
> talented kids in school?

Carol:
It means that they didn't possess his in-depth knowledge. McGonagall
is not an impartial witness. They are in her House, and we know she
favors the Gryffindors, and they excel at her subject. She is seeing
them--James in particular--through rose-colored glasses because he's a
hero who died fighting Voldemort. She didn't witness the scene in
which Sirius and James humiliated Severus, nor does she see him in the
classes at which he excels. (I imagine that he was no slouch at
Transfiguration, as he's pretty handy with a wand and at nonverbal
spells, but she's not thinking of severus snape. She's thinking of her
fond memories of James Potter and the supposed murderer Sirius Black
and poor little Peter Pettigrew, supposed murder victim. This is not a
time to be objective, any more than slughorn is objective in his
memories of Lily.

> Alla:
> 
> James joined the Order at seventeen or eighteen, as I said it is
your right to think that he changed so much, I find it HIGLY unlikely, 
> personally.

Carol:
By which time he had saved Severus Snape and stopped hexing people in
the hallways. Maybe Lily had a favorable influence on his character.
And do we know how old he was when he joined the Order? All we know is
that he was an Order member who had defied Voldemort three times by
the time of his death. It seems likely that he was a member at the
time Harry was born and baptized as well, perhaps even when Harry was
conceived (which I like to think of as Halloween night and the night
of the Prophecy). James would have been about twenty then.

If you see no difference between James the family man and Order member
who died trying to save his family and James the bully who wanted to
remove Severus's pants, then I guess there's nothing more to say.

Alla: 
> And I do like James after pensieve scene more, but not because of
his actions there, but because it added complexity to his character.

Carol:
Thanks for the explanation. I wondered why you would consider him
likeable. I'm glad it's the complexity that you like, not his actions.
I think he's an arrogant, inconsiderate, egotistical show-off as well
as a "bullying toerag" myself.
> 
Carol, hoping that she hasn't exceeded the new limit as Yahoo informs
her that she hasn't posted today ("There are no messages matching your
query") and she thinks this is really number five