[HPforGrownups] Re: Brty Crouch Jr. (was More thoughts on the Cloak)

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 158877

Cassy wrote:
>
> I think the movie handled this theme quite poorly. We
> somehow lost an important statement about stooping to
> the level of the enemy and sacrificing everything for
> power. Crouch Sr. is no longer an obsessed loathsome
> politician, but a somewhat tragic figure. In the movie
> Dumbledore even says that evidence against Barty Jr.
> was overwhelming. So we also loose an example of act
> of injustment comitted by the Ministery, which, in my
> opinion, is quite important since we saw several of
> them in different books (Sirius in book 3, Stan in
> book 6).

> Abergoat writes:
>
> Very well said, Cassy. JKR's interviews have given us every reason to
> believe that she feels evil is created, not born. Barty seems very
> likely to have been someone similar to Regulus, caught up in something
> he regretted. But unlike Regulus, Barty got arrested for a crime he
> probably didn't commit, and if so the injustice of it turned him from
> morally weak into something more evil.

Magpie:
That doesn't jibe with the Barty I see in the books.  It seems to me that 
part of the twist of GoF is that Barty *was* guilty and was already beyond 
"morally weak" when he went to jail.  He was an absolutely fanatical 
follower of Voldemort, wasn't he?  Though his father got him out of Azkaban? 
I think he loved doing that Crucio for Neville as well. I also thought Barty 
Sr. was a tragic figure in the book.

He can be a tragic figure and also power-mad--that made him more tragic.  At 
the end he was talking about being proud of Barty Jr. and Jr. seemed to have 
replaced his father with Voldemort.  So yeah, the Crouch's relationship 
definitely seems to be a huge part of Barty's ultimate personality, but I 
don't think he was quite as innocent as we're led to believe by Sirius' 
description mid-way through the book.

-m