[HPforGrownups] Re: Kreacher the Plot Device Elf - Madness, Magic, and Honor

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 161852

Magpie:
>And why isn't Dobby 
>then mad for not going along with Lucius' opinions on Harry? Why 
>isn't it madness for the House Elves at Hogwarts to not clean up 
>Gryffindor Tower when they're insulted? Or Winky to continue to 
>worry over Mr. Crouch after he fires her? It seems like Dobby is 
>considered crazy by other House Elves because he wants freedom, not 
>because he has ideas about which masters are proper to serve. 

Bart: 
Dobbie is definitely insane by house elf standards. They have a different psychology than humans. Now, JKR hints that they were a manufactured race, and it is hard wired into them, and it could also be argued that Dobby is an evolutionary step for house elves; of course, survival of the fittest does NOT mean survival of the best. 

Now, let's take a look at house elf psychology. Their motivating factor is to follow the orders of their masters/mistresses. They are magically bound to do so, as well. Their pleasure/pain centers are probably geared for it (not that JKR necessarily thought it through this far), so that it is so painful for them to even think of disloyalty that they have to deliver pain to themselves (kind of like when an itch is so bad that you scratch it until it is bleeding) to overcome the bad feeling. The problems with Winkie and Kreacher is when their masters are at odds with each other; they tend to be geared towards the master to whom they have been attached to the longest. I (and. apparently, so does  Dumbledore) am certain that, had Sirius not resented Kreacher so much (and there was the additional problem of Mrs. Black's portrait still being around), and had used more patience, Kreacher could have been brought around. 

Now, if a house-elf is fired, their entire motivating factor is removed; they would generally go into a funk. To take a salary for what they do is several magnitudes worse than prostitution for humans. So, the clothing Hermoine leaves behind are more than an insult to the house elves; it is like leaving hidden poison needles. Dobby was more than able to see a higher good; he had managed to overcome instincts that should have been hard-wired into him. From house elf standards, he is as insane as, for example, a human who steals babies from hospitals because s/he thinks that s/he can give them a better home. 

Bart