"Morality" and "tolerance" in the HP books (Was: a sandwich)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 178894

> a_svirn:
> I have never doubted Hermione's ability to "tackle problems", though I
> find "enlisting help" an interesting euphemism for blackmail. 

Pippin:
Touche

a_svirn:
What it has to with house elves though?

Pippin:
Hermione wanted to help house-elves because she thought they couldn't
stick up for themselves. That changed to wanting wizards to see that
abusing house-elves was dangerous as well as cruel because house-
elves can retaliate. She succeeded in getting Harry and Ron to
recognize this. 

Harry could no longer deny that Sirius had been cruel to 
Kreacher and that Kreacher had fought back in the only way he
knew. Harry had been neglectful of Kreacher himself, and did not
care that he forced Kreacher to perform the painful duty of
spying on the boy he wished was his master.  Harry accepted that
he needed to treat Kreacher  with kindness and respect.

 Ron stopped defending the status quo, in which wizards could
order elves to die for them. 

> 
> > Pippin:
> > And Kreacher becomes an activist in DH, leading the house-elves
> > into battle. The battle for elf-rights does not disappear. 
> 
> a_svirn:
> Because it has yet to appear. Kreacher leads house elves to fight
> wizarding battles. 

Pippin:
Voldemort's abuse of house-elves makes it a house-elf battle too.
Both Kreacher and Dobby tell us about how badly Voldemort
treated them. "Like vermin" Dobby says. 

a_svirn
. What elves' rights have to do with it? 

Pippin:
When Kreacher said, "fight for my master, defender of house-elves" 
what do you think he meant? Everyone thinks Harry is dead, he can't be
fighting to save him. And of course Regulus is dead, too. He may be
fighting in their name, but as he has no resurrection stone nor
portrait to give him orders, it's his own ideas of what they wanted 
that he's fighting for. And that was a world where elves would be
defended. 

Kreacher definitely understands the concept of being made to do 
things against his will, and he's definitely not okay with it. He doesn't 
have Dobby's compulsion to punish himself for speaking ill of his 
masters, either, so we can be sure his respect is sincere. The
battle shows that the elves have accepted him as a leader. 


> > Pippin:
> 
> > The reconciliation between enemies that everyone
> > hoped we would see in DH? We got it. 
> 
> a_svirn:
> Not that I hoped for it myself, but did we indeed get it?

Pippin:
There was reconciliation between Harry and Kreacher. Harry thought
Kreacher was lying and foul, and deserved to be treated badly by
Sirius. Kreacher hated Harry and despised his friends. At the end
they have won respect and think kindly of each other.

When the story leaves off,  house-elves are still enslaved.
But it's not true that nothing has changed. House-elves have
shown they can fight back. Hermione has learned how to
persuade people to  her view that elves should not be
abused. Ron is no longer satisfied with the status quo. Harry
no longer takes the morality of his own actions for granted. 

The question "What if there really was a master
race?" comes up all the time in speculative fiction, only it's
usually humans who are being subjugated. Rowling turns the 
tables on it, and asks, if there were creatures who enjoyed
being slaves to humans, would slavery still be immoral? 
One answer might be, no, not if the slaves were happy. 

But to believe that elves are going to be happy slaves from now 
on, you would have to believe that, now that Voldemort is gone, 
people will always treat them with kindness and respect. 

I believe that Harry's rejection of the Elder Wand shows that he
wouldn't agree. He now understands that would be 
expecting too much of even the finest person. Canon shows
that humans don't always treat each other with kindness and 
respect; they can hardly be expected to treat house-elves 
better. Storybook good guys can always make the right choice, 
Harry's crucio shows he isn't one of those, for eyes to see that 
can. 

If the reader needs or wants to believe in storybook good guys and
bad guys, Rowling isn't going to take that away, but
she does show just how different those fictional creatures are
from you and me. 

We don't know what the wizards did with their future beyond 
raising kids, and we don't know what became of the house-
elves after the war. But that's hardly the same as saying the story 
shows us that nothing *needed* to be done. We end with 
all being well because the world is well and truly saved from 
Voldemort, not because there's no work left for heroes to do.  

Pippin