Seeing gray in a black and white book/Free passes to characters

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165113

Lilygale wrote:
> I'm responding to the idea of "intent" just to make the point that
intent is a multi-layered thing.  Taking the neo-Freudian view, our
intentions come from our conscious (ego) but also unconscious 
elements (the "Dark Side" id and the "Light Side" superego, to 
oversimplify shamelessly).  In OotP, what could JKR mean when she says
Harry does not really want to use Crucio?

Carol responds:
I'm not sure what you're referring to her--some remark by the
not-always-reliable narrator or Bellatrix's taunt about "You have to
mean them [Unforgiveables]?" I've always taken her reamrk to mean
that, with regard to the Cruciatus Curse, you have to want to hurt
someone in the senes that you enjoy inflicting intense and sustained
pain rather than a fleeting desire to punish a real or perceived
injustice (sadism vs. righteous anger). With regard to AK and Imperio,
respectively, you would have to really want someone dead (which might
be one reason why the kids wouldn't be able to give Fake!Moody more
than a nosebleed) or really want to control them (rob them of their
will and force them to submit to yours--which ought to have been a
clue that the teacher forcing them to skip or do acrobatics was not a
good man). But it's Bella, not JKR, who says it. (I think, in this
instance, Bella knows whereof she speaks, having had to learn the
curses herself, and having really mastered Crucio and become a master
at it because she's such a saidst.)

Lilygale:
 My (neo-Freudian) interpretation is that Harry really and truly has
an instinctive, id-driven desire to hurt Bellatrix in retaliation for
killing Sirius.  At the same time (and this is what determines Harry's
moral stance), his ego and superego restrain his behavior by tempering
his emotions.  That is, Harry's sense of self and sense of morality
will not allow his id to act with full, infantile emotional force. 
They hold him back to the extent that, when he casts Crucio to satisfy
his id, he also cannot really cause harm because his ego/superego will
not allow that.  Harry wants to hurt, but he could not live with the
consequences of that evil.  Harry's actions reflect his surface
conscious wishes/desires, but he is also controlled by layers
underneath, without conscious awareness. 

Carol:
Well, that's one way to look at it, but I'm not sure that JKR had
neo-Freudian psychology in mind. I'll grant you that not all intention
is conscious (including the intention of the author), but I'm not sure
that I find labeling the various elements of the mind all that
productive. I think it's simply that, much as he wants to punish
Bellatrix in that moment, he can't hold onto the desire to inflict
pain as she does (long enough to Crucio the Longbottoms into insanity,
with the help of her little gang) because he doesn't enjoy inflicting
pain even on an enemy--which is why Crucio is a weapon of Dark Lords
and Death Eaters, not of the good guys. The sooner Harry figures that
out, the better. I don't think conscience (superego) has anything to
do with it, or he'd have figured out by now exactly why he shouldn't
use it.
> 
Lilgale:
> In HPB, when Harry's id *may* be  more strongly in control (we don't
know for sure but perhaps his hatred may be stronger towards Snape
than Bellatrix), we as readers are not allowed to see if his
ego/superego would overcome his id – Snape acts as his conscience for
by blocking the curses.  
> 
Carol:
Interesting, but again, I'd rather talk about motives and
relationships than Freudian categories. Id or no id, Harry's hatred of
Snape is already more intense and personal than his hatred of
Bellatrix, whom he "knows" only from Dumbledore's memory of her
sentencing, and even then he didn't put her name together with that of
the Lestranges, a married couple who became DEs (not that thaey were
married while they were in Hogwarts, I hope) and who are missing from
the graveyard circle (along with the always-overloked Rabastan) until
Harry sees their names on the Black family tapestry in OoP. He knows
on some level (especially after Bella Crucios Neville in the DoM) that
Bellatrix and her cronies Cruciod the Longbottoms into insanity, but
her crimes aren't personal to him as they are to Neville, or as
personal as Snape's sarcasm and point deductions, which, even before
Harry learns that Snape was once a DE, lead him to blame or suspect
Snape on every possible occasion. I wouldn't call it "id"--just a very
personal (and mutual) hatred and mutual suspicion that intensifies
beyond endurance for both parties in HBP. Snape blocks his curses,
yes, parrying them when he could easily use Protego to deflect them
back onto Harry. Is he Harry's conscience or is he just showing Harry
how much Harry still has to learn, that arrogance and a desire for
revenge are not what's required to defeat the Dark Lord? I think he's
still, for perhaps the last time, in the role of teacher here.

Lilygale:
> So how does this neo-Freudian analysis translate to the bathroom 
scene?  Harry thinks of the Prince as his friend and ally.  But the 
Prince has allied himself with Harry's id.  The Prince has offered
Harry an illusion of superiority (over Snape) by allowing him to get
superior grades and high praise in Potions.  

Carol responds:
Where do you see a sense of superiority over Snape? I see Harry
(ironically) crediting the HBP (Snape) with being a better *teacher*
than Snape in both Potions and DADA, but I don't see Harry thinking
that he's a better potion maker than either Adult!Snape or the HBP. He
knows perfectly well that the potions improvements aren't his own,
that he's getting credit he doesn't deserve, that the inventions are
the inventions of his new "friend," the Half-Blood Prince. But the
illusion of superiority over Snape? He's afraid of Snape's finding out
about his Potions book and informing Slughorn that his Potions
performance has nothing to do with Lily's genes and everything to do
with the notes of some unknown teenage boy from an earlier era.

Lilygale:
The Prince has seduced Harry into thinking that offensive spells are OK.  

Carol:
But you're crediting an active will to the HBP's notes, written for
his own eyes twenty years before. Neither the book itself nor the
no-longer extant boy who wrote the notes intended for Harry to read
them, however much Harry may think of the book and its author together
as a friend who helps him out of tight spots or provides enlightening
reading after hours. If Harry is being seduced, it's not by the book
but by his own desire to learn and use new hexes and, possibly, to
show up Hermione in a class where she's always done better than he
has, or, alternatively, to lap up Slughorn's praise and attention,
which he can't bring himself to admit he doesn't deserve. On the one
hand, he's acting just like James, who would have hexed McLaggen
without a second thought; on the other, he's acting like Lupin, who
can't bring himself to admit anything that will lessen Dumbledore's
regard or trust.

Lilygale:
(I agree that "for enemies" is most likely interpreted by Harry as an
offensive rather than defensive spell).  

Carol:
Considering that he was considering trying it out on McLaggen, not in
self-defense but as a James-style punishment for annoying him, I'd say
that's a given. Draco was going to use Crucio, the Darkest spell
either of them knows next to Avada Kedavra, so an offensive weapon
labeled "for enemies" seemed tit for tat (and fully justified) at the
time. *Seemed* because, understandably, he wasn't thinking clearly
(though, unlike Alla, I think he feared being tortured, not driven to
insanity).

Lilygale:
By casting Sectumsempra instead of another known spell, Harry is
trusting his "friends" judgment.  But why?  Because his id really
really wants to hurt Draco (Harry's felt that urge for years) – and he
justifies this urge by rationalizing that he can trust his friend.  
Harry has  made a serious error in judgment – never trust an inanimate
object's judgment over your own, to paraphrase Arthur.  That error in
judgement occurred before the bathroom scene, I believe, in that canon
shows us that Harry wanted to try out the spell.  In the heat of the
moment, Harry was governed by his darker side (id) rather than his
ego.  It's an understandable error given the heat of the moment, but I
agree with others who hope that Harry learns to understand his own
impulses and desires more thoroughly.

Carol:
I don't know that id or even trusting his friend has anything to do
with it. But certainly he chose to hurt Draco rather than use a
trie-and-true spell like Expelliarmus or Stupefy. But if he'd *really*
wanted to hurt Draco in the sense of Bella-style enjoyment of pain,
he'd have been better off using Protego, which would have deflected
Draco's Crucio right back onto the caster.

Carol, who just picked up her "Trust Snape" sticker (hooray!)